Photography: "Mirrorless Mark" - Chasing Trains & Infrared

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Intro by Skip Cohen

Mark Toal is back for "Mirrorless Mark Monday," and when I got to the last paragraph, I started laughing. There's a national campaign on to get people to stop texting and driving, but nobody ever said anything about photography and driving! Knowing Mark, I know he wasn't putting anybody in danger, but there is something to be said about the safety of auto-focus and program mode while driving! LOL

Mark's a big fan of infrared and his episode of "Why?" and a previous "Mirrorless Mark Monday" were both infrared images. In the second post he shared a lot of great information about how to convert a camera to shoot infrared.

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by Mark Toal

Anybody who knows me knows I love photographing trains. My fascination with trains started when I left Miami, Florida for Reno, Nevada when I was 22 years old. I decided to take the five-day train trip, so I could get a sense of how far I was moving across the country. I’ll never forget the adventure of riding that train. Years later when she was near death, my mother told me the sound of a train always made her sad because it reminded her of taking me to the train station for that trip.
 
I was recently in Fresno, California. As I prepared for my drive to San Jose, I noticed the big fluffy clouds against a blue sky as a storm moved in from the west. I grabbed my Infrared converted Panasonic Lumix GX7 with the Lumix 7-14mm lens and put it in the passenger seat. I choose the Infrared camera because it records skies and clouds very dramatically.
 
A few miles out of Fresno I noticed a freight train out my passenger side window going almost the same speed that I was. I zoomed the lens to 14mm and held it as close to the car window as possible to avoid reflection and shot a few frames as we both passed a row of old houses. I had the camera set to the Program mode since I was going 60 miles an hour while trying to watch the road, hold the camera and press the shutter.