The railroad is the Great Northern's High Line, somewhere in central Montana. I made this photo late in the summer of 1990 which I spent camping and kayaking all over the upper great plains and northern Rockies. I remember driving over a non-descript railroad overpass just at sunset and slamming on the brakes to rush back and get a few photos before the light changed. The frame I used was the first I shot, which I grabbed even before I got to the center of the short span because I was afraid the light would fade before I took ten more steps. I was right, too. The railroad: Nikon N90, Fuji 100 color negative film, probably a 15mm F5.6 Nikkor.

I shot the Stratocaster on my and Amy's kitchen counter: Canon 50D, 17-85mm EF-S IS, F32 for extreme depth of field, 580EX Speedlite bounced off the ceiling, 430EX aimed down and toward the camera to light up the strings, ST-E2 remote trigger on the camera, RAW mode, ISO 200.

In Photoshop, I adjusted the perspectives in the two shots so that the fretboard and the railroad ties, the strings and the rails, would all line up. Then I messed around with layers and transparency until the shot did what I wanted. Here are the two originals:

I like that about as much as I do these which I did for "(It must be) Something in the Water" way back at the start of my involvement with the Caldwell County Traditional Musicians Showcase project:

No musical instruments were dunked in the creation of the first graphic, and the streams of Caldwell County do not really flow over beds of Fender pebbles — Amy had two picks in a mandolin case. I cloned and varied them and then blurred and tweaked the image until the picks appeared to lie under flowing water. The two rocks were in a plate on our kitchen counter with a quarter inch or so of water on them. I do a lot of work on the kitchen and bathroom counters, come to think of it.

 

And these from "Good Old Boys Like Me" (2005):

See there wasn't a sign there saying "Good Ole Boys Like Me" (I think there was a clay pot and a red flower), and I got to play around for days trying to get the sign just so in the digital world. I did "A Picker Goes to the Races" for the inside of the insert for the same CD. Patrick Crouch didn't really take his banjo to a race at Tri-County Speedway (but he might have), and I had to use Photoshop to lean it up against the fence in this two frame, handheld panorama. Then I spent a lot of time simulating the backlighting and shadows to "sell" the effect.

Patrick and Kay Crouch, of the bluegrass trio Strictly Clean and Decent, are the forces behind the Caldwell County Traditional Musicians Showcase series (they were also the official witnesses at my and Amy's wedding). Thanks, guys, for a lovely couple of gigs.