I’ve been on an eBook kick lately. This one is a product of my 2014 portrait project with the guys from the Central Michigan Model Railroad Club that first appeared on this blog.
Now, it’s a free eBook, available as a PDF download or an Apple iBook.
This is the project that kickstarted my community-focused portrait projects, like Artists In Jackson. It was fun to revisit this project and see the guys again.
Enjoy, and let me know what you think!
They call David “The Conductor.”
He joined the Central Michigan Model Railroad Club at 16. A wunderkind who became the club’s treasurer.
He’s also a bit of a jokester.
“I still live in my childhood home,” David says. “I just kicked my parents out.”
David is the first one in on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday nights, and usually the last one to turn out the lights. The club meets in a second story loft in downtown Jackson, Mich. The hours come from the club’s old location at the local mall. It used to be they’d meet on Mondays and Fridays, but David says they started using Wednesday as a “work day.”
Though “work” is always code for “social.”
“It’s more social than anything. This is my social club,” David says.
Craig grew up across the street from the Pontiac rail yards. He’s been watching them for a lot of years.
When he was 18, he got into model trains, but never really had a place to run them. In 2002, he moved to Jackson, and found the Central Michigan Model Railroad Club.
“Then I had a place to play with them,” Craig says.
Before then, Craig studied geography in college. He also collected stamps and license plates. “It’s an OCD thing,” he says, with all the colors, symbols, and numbers. Organizing. Categorizing.
Craig works in the travel industry in Novi.
Both sides of Blair’s family has worked on the railroad. He has five family members riding the rails.
“I love seeing my brother drive by on the train,” he says.
Blair’s been collecting train memorabilia since he was young. He has an O-gauge train set at home, and the GTs are his favorites.
He’s grateful for the Central Michigan Model Railroad Club.
“I can’t personally work on the railroad because I’m deaf, so this is the next best thing.”
Art has been collecting model trains all his life.
His mom and dad got him started as a kid, and he still has the original toy train. “It still runs,” he says.
After his children left the house, he converted their bedrooms into train rooms.
“It keeps me occupied,” Art says.
After 20 years in the club, with everyone placing trains on each other’s sets, how does he know which train is his?
“We just know.”
Both sides of Blair’s family have worked on the railroad. He has five family members riding the rails.
“I love seeing my brother drive by on the train,” he says.
Blair’s been collecting train memorabilia since he was young. He has an O-gauge train set at home, and the GTs are his favorites.
He’s grateful for the Central Michigan Model Railroad Club.
“I can’t personally work on the railroad because I’m deaf, so this is the next best thing.”
Gene is 85 years old. He’s been seriously collecting trains for more than 55 years. It all started with a $5 set during the Depression.
He served two tours of duty in World War II and in the Korean War.
“When I got home from the service, I started collecting more.”
Since then, he’s been a bit of everything: pest control, fencing (as in fences), antiques.
He’s been with the Central Michigan Model Railroad Club since the beginning, in the 1960s. It’s the tradition – the idea of keeping these old trains alive – that keeps him interested. He likes the G-gauge trains: “The big ones.”
His set is full of moving parts, like a talking car wash, and a tornado that spins around on an old record player.
Gene also collects barbed wire.
My community portrait project based on musicians who live and perform in Jackson, Michigan.
A small photo book of urbex and rurex photo shoots on my iPhone, now available on MagCloud.
A community portrait project featuring 15 local artists and creatives from Jackson, Michigan.
A portrait project featuring the Central Michigan Model Railroad Club. Download the free Trains eBook.
Documentary film about Ken Shenstone’s ceramics studio in Albion, Michigan.
Series of Q&A sessions with photographers I enjoy on Tumblr and elsewhere.
Capture small towns and villages around the Mitten.
A documentary film about the restoration of the historic Bohm Theatre in downtown Albion, Michigan.
Adapt exhibition at Ella Sharp Museum, July 2020 – exploring quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic
County Fair exhibition at Sandhill Crane Vineyards, September 2018
People, Places, and Things exhibition at Essa Art Gallery, May 2018
Artists In Jackson exhibition at Sandhill Crane Vineyards, May 2016
Part of Art 634’s Emerging Artists show, June 2016.
Abandoned photography featured in The Phoblographer.
Made Tumblr’s Radar feature a few times (here and here, too).
Appeared on The Bart Hawley Show on JTV, promoting Artists In Jackson.
Since June, I’ve been working away on a portrait project featuring artists from my hometown of Jackson, Michigan.
For one, it’s the second part in what I hope will be an annual project of highlighting interesting people in my community. And two, I love talking to people with interesting talents and hobbies. It was great to meet the 15 artists profiled and chat about artsy stuff with them, the artistic community in Jackson, and what their successes and roadblocks look like.
The project is now just about ready for primetime. You can see the particulars at artistsinjackson.com.
There’s lots more to do. I’m working on a printed book, the flagship end product of this project. Once that’s done and ready to print, I’ll publish the artist profiles on the website, and release an eBook version of the print book.
And from there, I hope to have a show of some sort in the Jackson community, and invite the community to meet the artists and see some of their work.
It’s been a lot of work, and a lot of fun. Artistically, it’s very different from the kind of photography I’ve focused on in the past. I feel different, too. It’s like all the portraits and images I’ve worked on before this have been overly amateurish.
With this project, I’m actually making photographs that matter.
I hope you join me for the ride in the next few weeks.