Who said railway photography has to have the train as the main, or only, compositional element? OK, so unless you are a railway enthusiast you may not recognise these lamps as being used on steam engines, but as part of a larger set of images, it adds a different perspective to it. As I often say in these blog posts, context is everything. As a stand alone image, it’s quite interesting, but as part of a larger set, it adds another dimension. To that end, here’s a few more taken on the day, showing different perspectives.

I’m not a great people photographer and often feel a bit self-conscious of asking people, probably becasue I’m English. It’s something to work on as this would have been a much better picture if I’d been closer and more engaged with the railwaymen. Still, this isn’t too bad as it does show the gents in their environment.

I’ve cropped this heavily to remove a modern train on the right, but I composed it in the camera so that the water tower was where it was, a rare case of me planning ahead! In retrospect, I wish I’d composed it ‘portrait’, but hey that’s hindsight.

Finally, a classic three quarter ‘wedge’ shot, of which 95% of all railway photographs are made up of. Record shots are fine, but tend to think of myself as a photographer who is interested in railways, rather than a railway enthusiast with a camera.

While they’re not necessarily the strongest of images individually, they maybe work better as a set as they present a picture of what I saw rather than more and more steam train pictures.  It’s also more of a challenge to get different angles and different perspectives, and more rewarding to look at. Full set on my flickr here.