Bay Area Californians form a dynamic photography team
Photo by Justin Tognetti. Searchlight signal glows green on a foggy night in California’s Sierra Nevada, indicating a clear track on Union Pacific’s mainline over Donner Pass. Click on the photo to view its entry on railroadheritage.org.
Bay Area Californians form a dynamic photography team, by Scott Lothes
It really was a dark and stormy night [in October 2009] when I stood with Mike Johannessen and Justin Tognetti, two young Californian railroad photographers, on a rugged hilltop overlooking the serpentine east slope of Union Pacific’s mainline over Donner Pass. The vantage point for this breathtaking view they had named “Turd Mountain,” the result of an unpleasant discovery during their first visit.
Mike Johannessen. Photo by Mel Patrick.
The irreverent sobriquet hints at the outward nature of these two “Millennials.” Their generation came of age during the first decade of the new millennium, grew up under the influence of The Simpsons, South Park, and Beavis & Butthead, and can barely remember the world without cell phones and Internet. Justin and Mike share a dark sense of humor peppered liberally with sarcasm, a tendency towards self-deprecation, and the quiet nature of introverts.
A brooding introvert myself, I sense there is much more to my two volunteer tour guides who graciously took me under their wings when they discovered me stumbling around in search of trains and photo angles on “their” home turf. I had already seen it in their top-notch railroad photography– they are among two of the best in a state full of bright young stars. I caught another glimpse during our drive back to civilization on that wintry night in October 2009.
Justin Tognetti. Photo by Mel Patrick.
The “road” is the old right-of-way over the summit of Donner Pass, the one hewn out manually by Chinese laborers in the 1860s, abandoned in 1993 in favor of the second, lower and longer summit tunnel completed in 1925. We drove through the original bore, and Mike stopped his SUV in the middle, stepped outside, and shined a spotlight directly above us. There, a tiny, jagged hole in the rock went straight up to the surface.
Mike explained, “That was a construction shaft so they could dig this tunnel from four faces. [One from each end and two going out from the middle.] They lowered laborers down through that hole.”
No one said anything for a long moment. When we got back in the vehicle and resumed our bumpy drive, the crass jokes of minutes before were nowhere to be found, swallowed by reverence for long-deceased laborers and engineers in the darkness.
Trains and photography provide Mike and Justin with the chance to escape from society and exercise masculine tendencies, much in the way fishing and hunting serve other groups of men. Yet beyond the veneer of sarcasm and self-deprecation (traits we Americans are said to have inherited from the British and Irish), these two young men take what they do very seriously. Their passion knows no bounds, from driving thousands of miles to staying up at all hours to sleeping in their trucks on freezing winter nights in the desert. Their curiosity is also limitless, always starting with the railroad but spanning myriad tangents from history to technology to geography.
Even their personalities and photography styles are far more different than I guessed at first glance. Johannessen, the lanky and clean-cut mechanical engineer, likes details and often uses telephoto lenses to isolate certain parts of a scene. He enjoys urban photography equally with rural escapes, recording commuter and transit rail approaches with the same enthusiasm he brings to the Sierra Nevada. Tognetti, the guitar player and senior by two years, is shorter, wears longer hair, and favors the liberal arts and the big picture. To him, the best photos come from remote places that no one else has discovered, or dared to venture.
The two form a team that is at times harmonious, at times paradoxical. Where did they come from? How did they meet? How have they developed together, and as individuals? Where are they going, and how will that impact the broader community of railroad photographers? I had to know, so I spent hours talking with them and their families.
Mike growing up
Union Pacific power turning on the wye at “South Oakland,” a segment of industrial trackage serving Schnitzer Steel. Photo by Mike Johannessen. Click on the photo to view its entry on railroadheritage.org.
Mike Johannessen was born in Berkeley, California, and grew up as an only child in nearby El Sobrante, within earshot of both Southern Pacific and Santa Fe mainlines through the Bay Area. I spoke first with his father, Bob Johannessen, a stay-at-home dad until Mike entered elementary school. He told me that Mike’s interest in trains surfaced at a very young age. “When Michael was two,” he said, “his uncle bought him an HO-scale Bachmann [model train] starter set . . . [and] he was hooked.”
Mike’s mother, Carol Morse, a U.S. Census worker, told me in a later phone interview how she learned the hard way that her young son took his train interest very seriously, a trait that continues to this day in his photography. “Not toy trains! That was my mistake,” she said with a chuckle. “Very early he knew the difference between toy trains and models.”
As young Mike and his father made the rounds of all the nearby parks, they discovered the Golden State Model Railroad Museum and the East Bay Model Engineers Society at Point Richmond. Their Sunday afternoons immediately took on a new focus.
“Pretty soon, it got to where all the guys at the club knew us by name,” Bob said. “I even became a member there myself. They told me that since we were coming so often, it would be cheaper for me to just join, so I went through their six-month student program and became a regular member.”
Both his parents and those who have examined his photographs find that Mike has a keen, almost obsessive attention to detail, a trait that I quickly recognized myself while he was showing me around Donner Pass. He told me that his initial photography interest grew out of his exacting standards for his models. His mother Carol said, “As he got a little older, and he wanted to model what he saw out by railroad tracks . . . he wanted to take pictures of them [the real trains], because the thing out of the box [the model train] wasn’t good enough for him, even though he was eight years old. … He started doing photography so he could have something to refer to, to model.”
Both his parents enjoy photography and supported their son’s new interest. Mike’s early efforts with disposable cameras led to their first buying him a Samsung point-and-shoot camera and then a Canon Rebel SLR with a 28-80 lens when he was twelve. Taking advantage of the growing digital imaging technology and online resources of the late 1990s, Mike soon had created a website of his equipment and detail photos of railroad equipment, using a flatbed scanner to digitize his color prints.
To learn more about the technical aspects of photography, Mike searched online and found “Grumpy’s World,” an early railroad photography website run by James Gilley that was especially popular at the turn of the millennium. It included an early incarnation of a photography blog and a detailed guide to railroad photography, seasoned by the webmaster’s highly opinionated views on composition and his devotion to absolute perfection in terms of sharpness and exposure.
“Even at age 13, I wanted to be the master,” Mike said. “I tried to follow [Gilley’s] rules as well as I could.”
At this stage in his development, Mike told me how he strongly believed that photography was strictly a means for documentation and reference, to the point that he “adamantly disagreed that photography could be a form of art.” Yet as he was continually exposed to more creative photography through his growing network of other photographers, he slowly began to shift his stance.
“I think what caused me to reconsider that was just trying it and seeing the results, and the potential for some sort of emotional response,” he said.
As Mike’s railroad interest transitioned from modeling to photography, and with his father working full-time again as a technology equipment buyer, Carol Johannessen became the more active parent in her son’s rail-related activities. Mike was already making friends with shared interests, both through modeling groups and via rail-related websites. Soon Carol and her big red van became the preferred conveyance for a sizable group of early teenaged boys (still without drivers’ licenses) to visit the railroad tracks. Carol took them there gladly—at all hours of the day and night.
“I was probably more accommodating than I should have been,” she told me, “and a lot of people think I was crazy, but I like photography, and I really like night photography. … I was interested in getting Michael into that.”
She succeeded. Mike’s interest in night photography took a firm hold, to the point that Mike has amassed a sizable arsenal of camera gear tailored for nocturnal shooting. (“Daytime shooting is overrated,” he told me in a recent phone call.) Always a throwback when it comes to photography, his first serious camera gear was a manual focus Canon FD system. When that was stolen in 2007, Mike immediately used the money he’d been saving from his summer engineering jobs to buy a Canon EOS 5D mark II digital camera and several prime lenses, preferring their extra brightness for night photography over the convenience of zoom lenses (which he is proud of not owning).
His mother kept the Canon Rebel and 28-80 zoom lens. She said, “I still take pictures of flowers. I’m mostly botanically-oriented, but I’ve done other stuff. … [T]he reason that I wanted to teach Michael photography is that it’s a life-long hobby. … [T]here’s no end to what you can do.”
Justin growing up
Union Pacific container train cresting the summit of Nevada’s Sand Pass. Photo by Justin Tognetti. Click on the photo to view its entry on railroadheritage.org.
Speaking with both of his parents on a conference call, I learned that Justin Tognetti’s fascination with trains also grew from a young age. His mother, Antonia Tognetti, said, “Ever since he was like three years old, it’s been a big deal for him. … My mom took care of Justin while my husband and I were at work [both for the City of Sunnyvale, a suburb of San Jose] and she lives really close to the CalTrains station here in Sunnyvale. She would take walks with him and my niece and nephew, and then Justin would start, ’Let’s go to the train station! Let’s go to the train station!’”
Railroad photography came first from Justin’s father, John, who would take photos of trains for his young son’s enjoyment. By age five Justin was taking his own photos, but his parents continued to play very supportive roles. His two half-brothers are several years older, so Justin received quite a bit of attention from his parents while he was growing up. John had been a photographer for his high school yearbook and provided early tutelage. As Justin explained to me in a phone interview, “My dad used to take photos; he had a darkroom at one point. He was very helpful to teach me to use the camera and all that. He never really took pictures of trains, but he knew what made a good photo.”
The family frequently went camping at Dunsmuir, in the mountains of northern California along Union Pacific’s former Southern Pacific mainline to Oregon, and Justin said, “Eventually I just started convincing my dad to let me have a couple of hours by the tracks to get whatever might come by.”
Both mother and father were more than happy to accommodate their youngest son’s interest, and they soon found that they, too, could take delight in excursions into remote railroad locations. Said John, “We enjoyed going on vacation and getting away, so it was kind of a double. We’d get out, and he’d get to take pictures. Wherever you go, there’s a railroad track someplace. … We’d run him all over the place!”
These family trips continued for several years, but they ended abruptly. I noted a touch of sadness in Antonia’s voice when she explained, “We would take him wherever he wanted to go. Then once he got his driver’s license, that was it, we didn’t get to go anymore.”
The trips created many fond memories, and John and Antonia continue to travel, revisiting many of the same places and sending text messages to Justin whenever they see trains. “We got to go to a lot of great places just by accident by doing this,” John said. “You drive into these little towns and you find these little hidden places that are great, that you really enjoy, that you mark down to go back.”
“It was great,” Antonia concluded. “It was an experience I wouldn’t have traded for anything.”
While Justin’s parents were “running him all over the place,” he was continuing to learn about photography on his own. Railroad photography websites were still in their infancy at this time, and Justin said, “It was kind of slim pickings in terms of finding really good photography [online].”
“When I was about age fourteen, I inherited literally hundreds of back issues of [railroad magazines] from a family friend who also happened to be somewhat of a railfan. I pored over the photographs in each issue, and became familiar with the work of talented photographers like Ted Benson, Dick Dorn, Elrond Lawrence, and Brian Solomon among many others. I began to notice key elements of their photography like lighting, composition, and location.”
Perhaps because of this, Justin still prefers printed publications to online media, both for learning and as an outlet for his own work. “I get a lot more out of seeing my stuff in print versus up on Railpictures,” making him something of a rarity in his Internet-hooked peer group.
“It’s kind of a personal opinion,” he said. “I just think the people who ran magazines like CTC Board have a lot more background. It’s also more kind of a bias thing, too, because I’ve enjoyed their work for a long time.”
Forming a team
Mike Johannessen (left) and Justin Tognetti shooting on location in the Nevada desert during a nine-day trip together in January 2010. Photo by Mel Patrick.
When Mike was thirteen, he arranged a face-to-face meeting with Justin who was fifteen at the time. They knew each other only from the Internet. Mike’s mother told me how she drove to the selected meeting place with a little trepidation, watching carefully from the car. Carol’s fears stemmed from the newness of the Internet at that time. “I was like, ’Oh, Justin’s a pedophile!’ You know, because Michael met him online and that was ten years ago, and it was kinda creepy. . . . [B]ut it was nice, it was like, ’okay, they’re kids.’ … [A]nd then it was like, ’c’mon, Mom, we gotta go to the railroad tracks!’”
The two hit it off quickly, and a young photography team was formed.
“Most of my photography trips have been with somebody,” Mike said, and when I asked if he traveled with anyone most frequently, he responded quickly, “Mr. Tognetti, by far.”
When I asked why he gravitated towards Justin, Mike said, “I think we just saw things very similarly. … Perhaps subconsciously at first, we wanted to do more than just document the trains themselves. We had the same level of interest in going the distance into the unknown.”
Justin concurred in a later phone interview. “At the time, Mikey was about the only other railfan I had met in my age bracket that was at least as serious about getting good photos as I was. … Mike and I share the same curiosity about certain things, and we both enjoy exploring hidden or unknown areas for things that have eluded other photographers’ lenses.”
Spending so much time together was not without its drawbacks. Said Mike, “As a result, our shooting styles developed alongside one another and in much the same way. … For a long time, actually, we’d just stand right next to each other and take the same picture.”
“I think we’ve diverged in the last few years. I’ve sort of gone into honing in on a certain aspect of a scene, and he’s gone more towards the big picture.”
With an early interest in geography, Justin’s parents told me how he navigated all of their family trips as soon as he was old enough to read a map, which he learned at a very young age. His interests in maps and geography have continued to develop alongside his interests in railroads and photography, and some of Justin’s best work portrays the railroad within the landscape.
“I’ve always been more about the landscape and the light, and different locations; especially stuff that no one seems to have photographed,” Justin said.
While Justin seeks out unique high vantages to show the “big picture,” Mike searches for unnoticed details. He said, “I like to just pull in particular parts of the scene.”
Mike told me that he recently has come to encompass transit and commuter rail in his work, especially BART, the Bay Area Rapid Transit, partly as a way to continue his growth as a photographer and partly reacting against the view of many railroad enthusiasts that such operations are not “real railroading”. “I’ve had a really tough time applying my ingrained techniques to those situations. Being in the City between a bunch of buildings, just popping on the 300[mm lens] and looking for an s-curve doesn’t really work. … I definitely enjoy the challenge.”
Future
Photo by Mike Johannessen. Heavy braking current sets an arc ablaze on a San Francisco Municipal Railroad train descending through Mission Dolores Park. Click on the photo to view its entry on railroadheritage.org.
Justin told me that when he inherited his collection of railroad magazines, he came to appreciate writing alongside photography. Hoping to combine his passions with a profession, he entered college at San Jose State as a journalism major, but changed to business after two years for practical concerns.
“I’ve always wanted to possibly pursue a position that was on some railroad. Not necessarily in train service, but dispatcher or other kinds of management. I just figured business administration might help me toward that,” Justin said. “But I’ve always kind of liked writing, and it was kind of hard to give up journalism, but I thought it was probably the best for me. … The way things are going with the [journalism] industry, it doesn’t look good.”
Mike, on the other hand, told me that he never seriously considered a career in anything related to photography. He developed a strong mechanical aptitude early in his childhood, working on model trains and quickly learning how to make drawings to scale and with perspective. After receiving a B.S. degree from Berkeley, he has started a career in mechanical engineering, and while he currently works in the wastewater industry, his railroad interest helped get him there. As his father said, “I think his mechanical aptitude is a direct result of his interest in trains.”
Trains even played a more direct role in Mike’s employment. He learned of his current job through a contact that his father made while riding the commuter train to work.
“I’m pretty happy with the separation between work and leisure right now,” Mike told me. “From the late high school era, I knew I wanted to go into engineering. … I also think I can make more money in engineering, and I enjoy [engineering], too.”
Justin and Mike continue to photograph extensively during the evenings, days off, and over long vacations. In January 2010, they made a nine-day photography trip to Nevada together with Mel Patrick, a long-time railroad photographer noted for his innovative uses of light. Mike and Justin also photograph frequently in California both together and independently. While their friendship hinges on railroads, they both told me that they share numerous other interests, frequently discovered in the long drives and waits between trains.
Both are going through the transitional phases of early adulthood, and the choices and circumstances they face now could have long-reaching impacts on both their friendship and their photography. Mike is settling into a career, and Justin is finishing college and working for the City of Sunnyvale while still seeking his longterm professional path. Mike remains single for now, while Justin’s girlfriend, Kelly, has become a frequent companion on their photography expeditions, taking the camping and “guy talk” in seemingly perfect stride. “I love the chance to get out and see different places,” she told me while we scouted photo locations with Justin and Mike on a logging road high in the Sierra. “It’s exciting.”
I see the work-life-passion balance as a challenge to both as they grow older. However, the strong and dynamic community of California railroad photographers offers a great support network. As Justin’s mother told me, “Those friends that he has made, his railroad photography friends, have been better friends for him than any of the friends he had in high school.”
Mike and Justin have already made great contributions to railroad photography, from Mike’s community-building through his pioneering websites, to both of their bodies of work, which builds on and enhances the Golden State’s strong legacy of railroad photography. I am not alone in hoping that the future will enable both of them to continue their contributions to the field.
September 2010
