Yesterday was the day many were waiting for. Those who had never been to the subway or who at least had never walked its length appeared in some pretty impressive numbers for this get together and we walked from the western entrance to the eastern end by Dinosaur BBQ. This mile long tunnel really isn’t that long and you can get through it pretty quickly, sadly for me it seems to feel like it’s shorter every time I go.
The walk almost ended rather quickly for a lot of people but problems were solved and everyone got to see the extent of the mile long tunnel. I would have been hugely disappointed if all these people who wanted to appreciate a soon-to-disappear bit of Rochester wouldn’t have had the chance to complete a walk of the subway. Before long when you can’t walk this full length anymore it will be nice to be able to say you’ve done and and got to see what was down there. I imagine quite a few of the roughly forty people who attended yesterday had never walked the length of the subway before, and I know many had never been in any part of it at all!
I didn’t really shoot much in the subway yesterday, in spite of the fact that I carried all this extra gear in anticipation of doing something more with it. My main photographic intention was to do some light painting shots, which is pretty much all I did! Unfortunately I really didn’t think too much about it when I started so with an ISO of 100 I picked f/8. That wouldn’t be a big deal if I was actively running around and lighting everything myself. But since I wanted to let the lights used by the other people walking the subway light it up, I should have made some adjustments.
Among my various mistakes the one that really messed me up the most was having noise reduction turned on and not bothering to turn it off because I didn’t feel like waiting through several minutes of dark image processing. Basically this worked out like it used to be when shooting film, I didn’t know what I got until I got home and transferred the files to my computer. Waiting another four minutes after a four minute exposure just wasn’t on my agenda so I just kept shooting until I was done, turned the camera off and put it in my bag where it continued to do noise reduction. What I got were a bunch of severely underexposed images (which I expected) but there was still something to get from each of them if for nothing other than the memories (and the lesson). Cameras these days are truly amazing for the amount of detail they can capture, even several stops down buried in the shadows of a severely underexposed image, and I’m happy with these results compared to nothing at all. It’s not that I haven’t done something like this before with success, but I never really put much effort in during these group events; I have more fun just hanging out with people than trying to shoot with a crowd floating around.
From what I’ve learned there may be some future group walks through the subway and I might attend those. I think what I am most interested in doing right now is going back down and redoing these shots with a couple friends, noise reduction off and more focus on the photography (hah, pun!). I also learned a fair bit more about the plans for the subway and will be following that closely. Some sound good, some sound bad and overall it sounds like they’re going to piss off somebody no matter what they do. As usual.
It’s been a busy weekend and I’m rather tired already (plus I’ll be shooting with some friends later), so that might impact the number of errors in this post 
These turned out great Carl! Hopefully I will see you at the next walk through. Love the Jenga towers!
Thanks! I really would have preferred better but I’m glad these came out as well as they did all things considered. I’m not sure when the next one will be, I’ll have to talk to some people about that, but I sure hope to be there too.
Im still confused about how the 1 Series does its noise reduction. It seems like you can continue to shoot even during the NR, and then itll just pick up where it left off.
the Subway is a Rochester Icon, and I hope they dont fill it all in, but what can you do. I remember 10 years ago (sheesh its been that long!) when i walked the length just after midnight with PhotoHouse members of RIT.
hopefully by the time we get back up there, we’ll still be able to make one more trip down its length.