Photography and random writings from some crazy Cajun with a camera!

Greetings, and welcome to the December 2013 Sampler essay.  December 2013 was a period of transition in my life, as I finally permanently left the employer at which I had had my greatest professional – and even personal – success after sputtering for more than three years after burning out. I didn’t use my DSLR […]

Welcome to a cursory look back via 35-milimeter film to November 2003.  This is a sample of images from that time, and the sample is dictated by what of my 35-mm slides from that time had been scanned prior to the spring of 2014.  At the time of the publication of this post, I do […]

In this photo essay, published in September 2023, I will do two things. The first is that I will share some scanned film, scanned 35mm color slides, that I took in the first seven months of the year 2003, two decades ago this year, minus the June 2003 trip (because those pictures are already in […]

The first and foremost question that confronted me in how to incorporate the few pictures that I took from July 2013 to October 2013 inclusive into my pattern of “sampler” essays is whether to include them in a July-October post or whether to split them into a July post and an August-September-October post, because there […]

Greetings, and welcome to the May 2013 Sampler essay. There are plenty of images in this essay, meaning that I took my DSLR camera out and made at least one presentable image with it on several days in the month of May 2013. This was a strange month for me. I came off of medical […]

Greetings, and welcome to the March 2013 Sampler essay. This one will be brief. I was, let’s say, “going through some things” at the time, with a worsening back situation while also stuck working on a job that I felt that I had, for lack of a better characterization, outgrown. This was the month in […]

Greetings, and welcome to the January 2013 Sampler essay.  For me, this was the beginning of a strange year, though, for me, most years could be said to be strange.  Still, this was the first full year that I would know that I would eventually be losing my home for the most embarrassing of reasons […]

Jimbaux searched for form and landFor years and years he roamedHe gazed a gazeless stareThey walked a million hillsHe must have died aloneA long, long time ago. A Hot Mess Family fragments, and I fragment with it. This probably was inevitable. I probably never had a chance. I read the story in the newspaper that […]

Schriever Is Boring This was just a strange day, which means that this will be a strange post. If you’re seeking brilliant railroad photography, then close out the page and come back later when I have something else to post. This was an emotional day, not surprisingly, because I returned to my homeland to go […]

Greetings, and welcome to the October 2012 Sampler essay, which documents a time of loss and transition in my life.  As told in the “September 2012 Sampler” essay, my paternal grandmother had just died, and the funeral would be in early October.  I was actively pursuing a plan to get myself back to the New […]

Greetings, and welcome to the September 2012 Sampler essay.  As readers of the “August 2012 Sampler” essay would have seen, the defining story at the end of August 2012 was Tropical Storm or Hurricane Isaac, and it would be the story of the beginning of September 2012, too.  The end of the month, however, was […]

Greetings, and welcome to the July 2012 Sampler essay.  This one follows a pattern similar to that of the previous month, particularly in the fact that it covers the area from Saint Mary Parish to New Orleans inclusive, with pictures of the Chip Local and other trains on the Lafayette Subdivision and pictures of trains […]

Now Jimbaux is here, and he’s all aloneStill he knows how it feelsHe’s alone again. Peartree’s Last Day Working The Ground Today, Tuesday 14 June 2022, was Peartree’s second-to-last day railroading and his last day working the ground. Yesterday, I got many pictures on his third-to-last day railroading. We start by the depot in New […]

There is not much here. There was nothing new or interesting at the port. This was Peartree’s last Friday railroading. I got to the depot in New Iberia just as he and CV were arriving to tie up for the day. Peartree started railroading in 1973 for the Southern Pacific railroad. He was away from […]

Jimbaux is crawling back to the start. Unceremony My experience this morning reinforced the perception that foaming is a thing of the past, even though I got a promising shot late in this morning. This post is also a follow-up from yesterday, in which I, among other things, scoped out the Port Of Iberia hoping […]

Jimbaux believes that his soul is on fire. Hey! Hoo, boy, do I have a heck of a show for you today! Today has been a memorable day with some great scenes that I was able to record. I had to go back home for my twice-yearly visit to the dentist, and I made the […]

Maybe It’s More That Photographs Can Be Currency This is the story of debt and of settling a debt, though maybe also establishing further credit, using photographs. I really cannot share the details now, but I hope to do so at some point, because it’s supposed to be about a pleasant surprise for someone. After […]

This is part of the Eastern Great Plains Spring Break 2012 Road Trip series. Greetings, and welcome to Day 10 of 10 of Jimbaux’s Spring Break 2012 Road Trip.  These pictures were taken on Sunday 8 April 2012, Easter Sunday.  It’s great that this is finally about to be over.  It’s the beginning of the end, and […]

This is part of the Eastern Great Plains Spring Break 2012 Road Trip series. Greetings, and welcome to Day 8 of Jimbaux’s Spring Break 2012 Road Trip, Friday 6 April 2012, Good Friday. This day was both anticlimactic and emotional.  Done were the big train-hunting days with huge catches, like Day 6, two days before, and done, […]

This is part of the Eastern Great Plains Spring Break 2012 Road Trip series. Greetings, and welcome to Day 6, Wednesday 4 April 2012, of my Spring Break 2020 Road Trip. Day 6 of the trip takes place in southwestern Minnesota and eastern South Dakota, a day after a friend and I traveled there northward from Omaha […]

This is part of the Eastern Great Plains Spring Break 2012 Road Trip series. Greetings, and welcome to Part 3 of Day 6 of Jimbaux’s 2012 Spring Break Road Trip.  Part 2 ended with Canadian Pacific Railway train 277 moving south of Lake Benton, Minnesota, on its way to Huron, South Dakota, and we start right here […]

This is part of the Eastern Great Plains Spring Break 2012 Road Trip series. Greetings, and welcome to Part 1 of 4 of Day 6 of Jimbaux’s Spring Break 2012 Eastern Great Plains Road Trip. This day was essentially the climax of the trip, for many reasons.  It is appropriately at the midpoint, or the day before […]

This is part of the Eastern Great Plains Spring Break 2012 Road Trip series. Greetings, and welcome to Day 4 of Jimbaux’s 2012 Spring Break Road Trip, which – Day 4, not the trip – starts in Lincoln, Nebraska. On the previous evening, I arrived in Lincoln after spending the morning in Kansas, a few dozen miles […]

This is part of the Eastern Great Plains Spring Break 2012 Road Trip series. Welcome to Part 2 of Day 3 of Jimbaux’s Spring Break 2012 Road Trip. After spending the morning foaming the old Santa Fe Transcon west of Kansas City and then paying a visit to the Midland Railway Historical Association, as seen in Part […]

This is part of the Eastern Great Plains Spring Break 2012 Road Trip series. Welcome to Day 2 of Jimbaux’s Spring Break 2012 Eastern Great Plains Road Trip, which follows the initial northward journey through Louisiana to Oklahoma on Day 1. Due to the large size of the quantity of photographs made this day, Saturday 31 March […]

This is part of the Eastern Great Plains Spring Break 2012 Road Trip series. Welcome to Day 2 of my 10-day Spring Break 2012 Road Trip.  This is Part 1 of two parts for the pictures taken on Saturday 31 March 2012. As we ended Day 1, we started Day 2 in Heavener, Oklahoma, right next to […]

There was a very specific point to today’s outing: photographing the LDRR 1709, presumably in action, on this specific date, today. For reasons that I learned only today but that could easily have been foreseen, the “in action” part was not to be, though I did photograph the locomotive with other action happening proximate to […]

Jimbaux does have to live like a refugee. Today was an emotional day, and this will be a long post with plenty of pictures.  I went to the homeland.  As I was driving back westbound to the homestead, I heard the song “Bitter Sweet Symphony” by The Verve, “Jumper” by Third Eye Blind played shortly […]

Jimbaux is fighting hard to hold his ownJust can’t make it all aloneIs holding on, can’t fall backIs just a calm ’bout to fade to black Is beggin’, beggin’ youPut your loving hand out, babyI’m beggin’, beggin’ youSo, put your loving hand out, darling. New Iberia just sucks. Also, I don’t particularly like that song, […]

Greetings, and welcome to the February 2012 Sampler essay. Wednesday, The 1st There were still a couple of weeks left in my final hopeless quest to pursue an engineering degree long after what would have been the optimal time for me to do it, and that’s why I was heading north of I-610 in New […]

It was weird to be essentially foaming by the track today, even though there were no trains on this track and even though I had no expectation or even hope that there would be one. I wanted to get shots of the last of the sugarcane trucks coming from west of Bayou Vermilion, where the […]

Greetings, and welcome to the January 2012 Sampler essay. This is the start of what may be the last year for which I do these “sampler” essays, as I hope to resume all-out all-good-pictures-from-every-day postings in 2013, which I think is possible since I took much fewer pictures that year, which would give me a […]

Greetings, and welcome to the December 2011 Sampler, an almost-welcome anti-climax to the “November 2011 Sampler” essay. This one will be relatively brief, particularly for a set of images that I made in the month of the winter solstice, and is an anticlimactic way to end a tumultuous year. Thursday, The 1st All of the […]

I was hoping to bag some good train shots today, but friendship won out, thankfully, as I returned home for the first time in only three days!  I really didn’t understand friendship until the Trump Era, though.  I did get some railroad pictures and even photographed one moving train, though. I learned about Rock 97.7. […]

Jimbaux knows that we’re told this is the golden ageAnd gold is the reason for the wars we wage. I left the house at about 7:39ish, but only at 7:52 did I start moving from a position a mile from the house due to being stopped by maritime traffic at the bridge, something that won’t […]

Greetings, and welcome to the November 2011 Sampler, with 21 pictures from as many days (one from each day, following the pattern), and I believe that this is the largest sampler essay that I have ever done. Because I took the unusual step of adding a few retrospective blog essays of October 2011 pictures after […]

It’s Saturday 29 October 2011, the day after the funeral and burial of Marie Anne Ory Dupont, around which I got some pictures and had some thought. She died on October 23, and I read her obituary on the 26th. So, on this day, the 29th, with life and death on my mind, I just […]

Jimbaux wonders what the hell he is doing here, He doesn’t belong here. The Mid-City Marine, a great friend whom circumstances have prevented me from seeing for a few years, and I had scheduled to meet at Schriever this weekend, but the weather was too damn warm. I suggested that we meet in Hammond, where […]

Today is Monday 18 October 2021. The Duke and I had some construction-related errands to run today. Hopefully, this will become more common in the future, without The Duke. Yesterday, in New Iberia, I noticed that there was no UP local train, and I got worried. According to Perry, the train didn’t run, because no […]

It was both a sign of the times and a sign of one’s reactive male youth, albeit fading, that prompted the outcomes from the incident on the afternoon of Friday 14 October 2011, and it was also an “it had to happen” thing. The pictures started during a break from workplace that morning, probably to […]

Jimbaux knows that Life is a waterfall,We drink from the river,Then we turn around and put up our walls. Today is Saturday 11 September 2021, and you know what 20-year anniversary today is, but it’s also a 10-year anniversary of a large set of pictures that I made on a big picture outing that I […]

They told Jimbaux to run, but just how far?Can he go wearing the black mask of fear? At first, I wasn’t going to go out in the heat to chase a steam locomotive among a bunch of other people photographing it, but I decided a few days ago that, today, Thursday 19 August 2021, I […]

Greetings, and welcome to the August 2011 Sampler essay, which neatly follows my “July 2011 Sampler” essay that documented my last days in the Washington area and then my first days back home and which (this essay) will foreshadow the direction – almost literally there – in which my life would later go. At first, […]

Welcome to the July 2011 Sampler. “Just come home,” Dad wrote to me on the afternoon of 29 June 2011 in response to my description of my situation and my options. So, I relented and, less than a month later, came home, and it was such an obviously correct decision in retrospect. So, this post […]

Today is Wednesday 16 June 2021, and, today, as I make my last train pictures before I put away the camera – or, more accurately, stay away from the track, because I am sure to take more pictures of personal things – for a while, I reflect upon a vivid dream that I had 10 […]

Okay, this set of pictures, being not of an actual train or anything “action” related, was not included in the real-time posts from 2020 here. So, it is being included one year later, and it requires a little bit of background information. So, as you may recall, the rice mill in Abbeville, Louisiana, closed in […]

Today is Monday 31 May 2021, Memorial Day, and I tried to get some quiet meditation by the track for the last time until the weather cools off in the fall, but it wasn’t that great. Yesterday was rather cool, and I perhaps should have tried to do this yesterday. Six months ago yesterday was […]

Today is Monday 24 May 2021, and I had to meet with the folks right before my departure for the track, which made me miss the outbound Port Rail train from the port this morning. I got gasoline, apparently after realizing that the train was arriving into the interchange yard, and then to Gerstner just […]

This one will be brief and insipid, less interesting than the previous month’s sampler essay. Saturday, The 7th I was on my way to do a photography project at the 1920 Club in Washington, DC, when I grabbed this image along 14th Street at Swann Street NW. That was really the best part of the […]