Going-Away Shot
A photograph taken of a train after it has passed, showing the rear of the consist receding into the distance.
Photo coming soon
Have a Creative Commons-licensed image of going-away shot? Send it our way — we credit every contributor.
A going-away shot is a photograph of a train taken after it has passed the camera, showing the rear of the consist receding into the distance. The composition is the temporal mirror of the wedge: where the wedge captures arrival and presence, the going-away captures departure and memory. The two shots are often taken seconds apart of the same train, with the photographer pivoting through the passage.
What makes a going-away work is the geometry of the receding consist combined with the surrounding landscape. A pure tail-end going-away — caboose or shoving platform centred in the frame with the train trailing off to a vanishing point — is graphically clean but visually monotonous. The composition opens up when the train rounds a curve, threads through a cutting, or crosses a bridge: the receding consist gives scale to the landscape, and the landscape gives meaning to the receding train. Going-away shots of long heavy freights are particularly effective because the visible length of the consist tells the viewer the scale of the operation at a glance.
Technical considerations differ from a wedge. Telephoto compression is more useful here than wider angles: a 200-300 mm pull-back compresses the consist and the landscape into a layered composition. Slow shutter speeds can introduce blur of the trailing freight cars to emphasise motion. Light direction matters: cross-light or back-light on a going-away train flares dramatically off the receding equipment.
The going-away shot also has a sub-genre in night photography: the receding red marker lights of a freight train against a moonlit landscape, taken on a 30-second exposure. Done well it conveys the slow constant work of the railway in a way no daylight photograph can.
For railfans, the going-away is what you take when the wedge angle is wrong, when the light is from the wrong direction, or when the going-away composition is simply better than the approach. Some photographers prefer it as their default style — the "going-away school" — and have built distinctive bodies of work around the receding train as the dominant subject.