Field Trip: Live Steam in Cuba

Marilyn Cornwell is a long time friend of mine, who on retirement decide to pursue photography as a hobby to complement  her passion for flower gardening.  She primarily photographs gardens and the patterns of surfaces in the world around us.  Luckily for us, her husband is an avid railway enthusiast so she also often travels to railways of interest to us and captures them in images.

In 2012, they travelled to Cuba where they visited a sugar Mill that houses a steam locomotive museum with operating trains.   Click here to see an extensive overview of pictures of the mill and locomotives.

Marilyn found this description of the mill:

"Simón Bolivar (Mill 448)  was one of a pair of mills with unusual 2'3½" gauge railway, east of Caibarién. While its locomotives were invariably scruffy, the 'bank at Bolivar' was one of the stiffest tasks on the narrow gauge railways in Cuba, a steep climb for empties up to the plateau south of the mill."

You will notice below that Marilyn's images from the pictures she took there look like paintings.  For those photography enthusiasts out there, Marilyn shares her process as follows:

1. Use Photomatix to process image as a single image HDR
2. Use Topaz to gain clarity with street scenes
3. Use Topaz to adjust image using HDR presets  

The effects are stunning!

Marilyn publishes a daily newsletter with a few of other images and a brief story about them which I avidly consume each morning. I encourage everyone to subscribe to them through this web page.

You can also follow her blogs by clicking here and here.  She also has her images for sale here and here.

Posting by Russ Milland; Images by Marilyn Cornwell

Click on each image for a closer look!