The photos I have on Imagekind are of two kinds, my own images that I've taken over the last 45 years or so, and those in my collection of historic images. My father was a Northern Pacific Railroad Conductor, and also a very serious photographer. I grew up around both trains and photography, riding with dad from the time I was 4 or 5 years old (corporate America was much more liberal about dad's taking there son's along back then). We worked in the darkroom together, yes I had my hands in the print trays once a week or more!
So, although dad photographed many things, he was definitly a steam loco fan. I have all his images in my collection, mostly 4x5 negatives, which I have digitized. Oddly, many railroaders seem to have been heavily into photography. I got to know them through dad, and several left me their collections. So, I will slowly make many of these historic images available. I do photo restoration work for museums and historians, along with family photos, so I 've also applied these skills to the images, cleaning up various damage that's occured to negatives, slides and prints, over the past years.
I've personally been photographing trains since I was about 10. Both dad and I tried to work in good composition, textures, viewpoints, etc. so I like to think that many of my photos are more than just train pix! I still love history, and have worked around several RR museums, allowing me to get photos of equipment and operations from some interesting spots. One frustration in my life, since moving to the southern Oregon coast, the closest rail (60 miles away) operation closed down, so now, I have to go about 100 miles to practice my hobby! Ah well my favorites are steam operations, and for those I have to go much farther anyway.
Steve