POTD - Winter Travel

The ritual of boarding a train from small town America is almost as old as the nation itself. In Fraser, Colorado, passengers wait in the shelter along the platform on a snowy evening in March 2003 to board the nightly Amtrak number 6, commonly known as the eastbound California Zephyr. Their next stop will be hours deeper into the night and 3,386 feet lower when they pull into Denver's Union Station before the thousand mile journey across the plains to Chicago.

Photo of the Day: Steve Brown
(click the photo to view a larger, unmarked original)

For all the difficulties it can cause photographers, nighttime still has a way of focusing the energy and taking away the distractions available in the daylight. Steve Brown makes excellent use of the ambient light to focus attention on the conductor at the head of the line of anxious passengers. A flash, a requisite for night photography in years past, would catch the thousands of flakes concealed in the darkness and throw the light back, ruining the moment. Instead, Mr. Brown lets the light on the wood interior of the platform carry a flavor of warmth to contrast with the icy cold of the drifted snow hampering even the basic task of boarding a train.⚒