Custom Scanning/Printing
Frank D. Frisch, Photographer
1207 W. Quincy Street
Garrett, IN 46738
(260) 357-6863
| Matted/Framed
Prints Custom Scanning/Printing Frank D. Frisch, Photographer 1207 W. Quincy Street Garrett, IN 46738 (260) 357-6863 |
| Born in Fort Wayne, Indiana in 1962, Photographer Frank Frisch lived within
a mile of the Nickel Plate and GR&I during the early years of his life.
As with most children, he was mesmerized by the trains. His grandfather
worked as a conductor for Pennsy/Penn Central/Conrail out of Fort Wayne
and he has vivid reminiscences of occasional trips to the roundhouse and
Piqua. There seemed to be trains wherever the family went. At age 12, his family moved to Huntertown, Indiana which had the Penn Central (former GR&I) single track connecting Fort Wayne (Pennsy) to the NYC Lakeshore Route in Kendallville, Indiana running 5 - 6 trains each way daily. At this young age, Frank met several other teenagers who were as infatuated with the trains as he. They would gravitate trackside on their bicycles when the whistles were heard. A couple of them delivered newspapers and there was always an extra one for the crews on both ends of the trains that came through town while he was awake. His interest increased with the appearance of Conrail merger member paint schemes, leading him to begin his "photography" affliction in 1976. When able to drive and with access to a vehicle, he would head to Fort Wayne, New Haven, Garrett, Butler, Corunna or Kendallville to attempt to photograph the Chessie System, Conrail and Norfolk & Western trains. Frank graduated from high school and entered the United States Air Force in 1980. This was a period when he strayed from his zeal for the photography of trains. He was on this "train picture taking hiatus" until moving to Oklahoma City in 1985. Shortly after arriving, he saw the first Santa Fe SD45, 5394, painted into the SPSF merger scheme (Kodachrome with white lettering) at the GM facility just south of the Air Force base on his way home. He raced home and grabbed his dusty camera, got the shot and has never looked back. Train photography has remained and grown to be a dominate factor in his life. Frank has attempted photography while living/working in Huntertown, IN, Fort Wayne, IN, Garrett, IN, Bowling Green, KY, and Oklahoma City, OK. After college and several jobs, he moved back to Garrett in 1996 and bought a home. He is employed as an engineer, working in the manufacture of automotive components and will probably live out his life in Garrett. The railroading layout and traffic density in Northeast Indiana is truly awesome with the NS' NorthEast-SouthWest Detroit to St. Louis former Wabash line crossing the East-West (Chicago) exNYC/Conrail Waterlevel Route at Butler, CSX' former B&O at St. Joe, NS' former Nickel Plate line at New Haven and the former Pennsy (now CF&E) line in Fort Wayne. The Wabash is a long funnel from Butler to Hugo, which crosses a trio of east west main lines. The volume and variety of trains is incredible. The train magazine traffic density maps show the corridor between Chicago and New York with very heavy tonnage levels. Northeast Indiana offers a lot from a photography perspective: changing seasons, rural settings and numerous photo locations. Over years of reading railroad/photography books/magazines and the desire to improve his own photography, Frank has developed a set of rules about photographing trains (see methods section). His photographs have been published in several railroad magazines and books. He started buying enlargements and framing them in the late nineties. He learned to mat and frame and opened his photography studio in 2005 in Garrett, Indiana. |