Frankie Leal, the publisher or Traffic Magazine called me about their cover story for the Oct/Nov issue. The story is about the Train Depot in Kingsburg, Calif. rising Phoenix-like from the ashes of decades of neglect.

Unbeknownst to Frankie, this isn’t the first time I’ve shot a train depot for the cover of a magazine. The last time was in Ellicott City, Maryland. I was in an Intermediate Photojournalism Course at the Defense Information School, and our military class descended like the Invasion of Normandy upon this sleepy little town. We set up editor’s offices in a 3-story coffee shop and held reporters meetings at The Judge’s Bench. We spent about a week covering every aspect of the city’s life. I wrote a rather unexceptional piece on a controversial zoning change, and others took pictures of local barbers in action. But the cover shot was supposed to be a picture of the train coming through town, zooming by the B&O Railroad museum.

5 of us photographers set up to take pictures. I, being one of the lesser photographers in the class, was supposed to take a horizontal photo that would run as a smaller supporting image in the story. We didn’t know when the train would come to town, but we had a firm deadline. So this was a one-shot deal. All 5 of us waited for 4 hours, some smoking, the rest of us chatting and waiting. This was before iPods and cell phones were ubiquitous, so we waited like an old-fashioned stake-out. The train came suddenly, filling our consciousness like an explosion and catching one of two people unaware. Some other folks were not positioned well, and after the noise and ruckus died down, we compared notes to find that I had the best photo. It ran as a double-truck, covering the front AND back covers of the mag.

So when Frankie called, I had some ideas already in the can. But I wanted to make something different. I asked to read the article, and Jenny Peters, the editor of Traffic, sent it over for me. Reading the article gave me the idea to make more of an illustration rather than a straight photo. I wanted to show the depot moving from plan to reality, and I thought a pencil-sketch effect would work well.

I met Jolene Polyack, the author of the story, and her husband Richard at the depot. She had keys to get into the depot, which is fenced-off during construction. We walked around and looked at the angles first. Jolene told me the story of the Depot’s rehab. I looked at the sun’s position relative to the train tracks. Luckily, Jolene knew the train schedule, and we didn’t have to wait 4 hours this time. The train comes by every 45 minutes, so we had several chances to take photos while we were there.

After we had our first shot at the train, I started looking around for another angle. The Kingsburg water tower, which is shaped like a teapot and a strong local symbol, is visible from the depot. I thought that including it visually would make for a great photo. So we talked across the street, looking for the Teapot angle. Unfortunately, there were trees and phone lines in the frame, and I wanted those gone. We walked across the street and asked to climb on the roof of a local business. After an initial incredulous look from the owner, Jolene’s charm got us permission to climb on their roof. Though it was fun to climb on a roof, there were too many trees between us and the depot. Only one of those pictures was used in the final article, and it wasn’t a great picture.

We climbed down from the roof just as another train was coming, so I set up a tripod and caught a train-in-motion picture in front of the depot. That’s the images that ended up on the cover of Traffic Magazine.

Then Jolene, Richard and I walked around inside the depot, talking about the restoration project and the interesting characters involved. I shot a few more supporting photos for the story.

When I got back to the studio and processed the images in Adobe Lightroom, I created a few HDR (High Dynamic Range) images that I thought might work. None of those were actually used in the story. The main concept image that I had in mind was the picture that was used as the dominant image for the story instead of the cover photo. It was a line drawing mixed with the photo. I created the outlines using Adobe Illustrator and blended them into the photo using Photoshop. Frankie actually put the finishing touch on that image, which was to use a paper texture to make the outlines stand out and feel more realistic. He’s good, that Frankie!

I shot several images that I like, but that we didn’t use in the story. They’re more like before pictures in the before-and-after story of the depot, so they didn’t really fit thematically. You can see them below as out-takes from the shoot.

That’s the process of shooting a cover story, beginning to end!