Morning Stop In Sacramento Canvas Print

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I made this photograph while still in bed! It was a little after 7:00 am on March 2nd, 2004. My wife and I were aboard Amtrak's Coast Starlight on the lower-level of a sleeping car. This was our view of Sacramento while we were stopped at the station there.

I believe the old buildings date back to the 19th Century, and were part of Union Pacific's western transcontinental terminal.

This will be considered a historic photograph in its own right before long. As I write this a major redevelopment plan is in the works for the old Sacramento Railyards. These old buildings will be preserved and repurposed, but the surrounding landscape will be dominated by modern high-rise hotels and office buildings.

Photo Copyright James B. Toy.

In the fall of 1959, Mr. Toy entered this world at a place called Carmel on California's Monterey Peninsula. Nine years later his family pulled up stakes for the rain-soaked city of Salem, Oregon where he never quite fit in. When he was 12, he and his mother viewed an exhibit of photographs by a Salem newspaper photographer, which inspired him to take his first photography class. During his teenage years he gradually developed his eye for composition and his skills with light and exposure. Though he did not pursue photography as a career, he has continued to document his observations of the world on small frames of film. In 1984, Mr. Toy and his wife Heidi returned to the Monterey Peninsula where his heart belonged. In 1997, on a bit of...