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American Photographs
My Story
From 1965 through the early 1970s photography was my major pastime. Through high school and college in Pennsylvania I worked as a school newspaper and yearbook photographer, which provided film and many opportunities for photography. Music, politics, and railfanning were my other passions, and many of my photographs reflect these interests.
In 1970 I moved to Boston, and continued to photograph the scene around me. Throughout the 1970s I traveled throughout the country and Quebec province of Canada, photographing landscapes. Later, during the 1990s, I focused more on railroading, since I was writing and publishing books on that topic. Since 2010, I have been visiting, shopping at, and above all, photographing the Brimfield Antique Shows.
Work
Portfolio 1: Rock and Blues
Between 1967 and 1971 I attended numerous rock concerts at college and elsewhere. Among the acts shown here are Janis Joplin, the Association, Country Joe & the Fish, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, and Blood, Sweat & Tears.
Portfolio 2: Northeast Railroads
For more than 40 years I have been photographing the railroads of New England, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. Posted here are a sampling of these, many of which have appeared in my books. The best represented railroads are the Penn Central, Boston & Maine, Guilford, and Conrail, 1971-2007.
Portfolio 3: Brimfield
Held three times yearly in Central Massachusetts the Brimfield Antique Show is one of the largest outdoors antique markets in the world. I’ve been attending the shows with my cameras for many years.
Technical
Ron Karr 1975
During the 1960s and 1970s most of these photographs were taken with Pentaxes or a Nikon SP rangefinder 35mm camera, using lenses ranging from 35mm to 400mm. I almost always used Tri-X film for the black & white images and Kodachrome or Ektachrome for color.
During the 1960s I occasionally used 120 cameras (Yashica Mats) or 4×5 cameras, and these became more common in the 1970s when I acquired a vintage Rolliecord 120. Most of my last black and white photographs in the late 1990s and early 2000s were shot with an old Nikon F, with lenses from 24 mm to 200 mm.
Most of the photos on this site were scanned from the original negatives, using an Epson v-700 scanner and Photoshop (or if color slides, a Nikon LS-50 slide scanner). Some of these were scanned from black and white prints I made back in the 1960s or 1970s.