DURANGO, COLORADO - 2025

STANDARD
37” x 48” Unframed 52” x 63” Framed Edition of 12
LARGE
56” x 72” Unframed 71” x 87” Framed Edition of 12

Shooting a late 19th century steam engine at night, in a dimly lit Colorado depot, was a fresh challenge, but our default strategy is to be wary of comfort zones. We often fail in new ideas, but better that than never to try.

Camera capability in low light has evolved constantly since the beginning of my career but employing slow shutter speeds when filming moving subjects is still
as bad a combination as it has always been. The maths has not changed and it remains a low percentage gig.

The bonus of shooting at night in a location like this is that the stark lighting not only adds drama, it allows for unwelcome distractions to be too dark for the eye to see. The rich blacks suit train stations and many of the great movie sets in such locations have been filmed at night, no more so than with Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca.

The steam and smoke emitted from an early day’s steam train are most certainly a gift to filmmakers as they offer an extra character into the narrative and allow for isolation of the protagonist. We have a fondness for anything in a picture that defies gravity and I knew that this idea had potential.

The cowboy and the iron horse were unlikely bedfellows in the push west and most of the time they enabled each other and collaborated. But in the loosely governed final frontier, there were no certainties and danger lurked at every stopping point. I wanted to evoke not only the sense of journey but also the implicit danger. To travel in this era was to engage with the random walk of luck.

~ David Yarrow