Introducing Explorations
The caboose, once an end-of-train sentinel, now rests at the Whippany Railway Museum—a marker of history preserved in sunlight and shadow.
The new Explorations gallery is where I step outside the strict boundaries of macro photography to follow other visual paths. This space will grow gradually, branching into subjects such as film, astronomy, and other areas that spark curiosity. It is meant as a complement to the main galleries, a place for experiments, side projects, and the occasional detour.
The first group of images in Explorations comes from a railway visit made with a camera that has deep personal significance: the Nikon F2. This was the first camera I ever used, and returning to it now felt like opening a dialogue with my younger self. I paired it with Kodak Tri-X film, a classic black-and-white stock whose grain and tonal character shaped the way I learned to see. Metering was done by hand, a process that slows everything down and demands both intuition and patience.
I chose the railway as my subject not only for its textures and history but also for the way its structures and machinery echo the strength of analog tools. The caboose at the Whippany Railway Museum was the very first frame I exposed with this camera after so many years. Its presence, weathered, solid, and immovable, was an ideal starting point for this renewed exploration.
Explorations will not replace macro photography, but it opens a parallel thread. Just as the F2 and Tri-X connected me back to the origins of my practice, these projects remind me that photography is not confined to one subject or one scale. It is, at its best, an ongoing experiment.