I took this photo back in 2005 at Ramsbottom station on the East Lancs Railway. I loved the photo, especially the station master emerging from the steam on the right. Unfortunately, as I was shooting straight into the light, I got some ugly lens flare on the front of the engine, and try as I might, I couldn’t do a decent job of cloning it out. So, reluctantly, I wrote the image off and forgot about it.

Earlier this year, I stumbled across it, and decided to have another go at it. As I’d got a little more competent with black and white, I thought it’d be a good candidate for this treatment, and once I’d made the conversion, lo and behold the lens flare vanished! Problem solved! Other than that, a bit of darkening to the sky was applied and that was pretty much that. Last month I’m proud to say it won the monthly competition in my local photographic society. So much for writing it off as a bad job in 2005!