Tag: East Lancashire Railway

#140 – East Lancashire Tornado Part 2 of 3

  Tornado must be one of the most written about steam locomotives in the country, and one of the best known. With it’s appearance on Top Gear and massive media coverage, it has single handedly brought steam railways into the public conscious. I was intrigued to hear a comment on the platform at Rawtenstall station from a lady,…

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#139 – East Lancashire Tornado Part 1 of 3

  Last train of the day at Rawtenstall. I must have misread the timetable as I didn’t think Tornado was timetabled for this train, but I nipped over anyway to experiment with some low light shots, and was pleasantly surprised to see Tornado hauling the train in. It wasn’t as dark as I’d expected or…

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#81 – White Balance Nightmare!!

I’d only had the camera a few weeks when I took this, so I suppose that’s my excuse for not fathoming out how to take a manual white balance for this scene. In actual fact, i struggle the whole night with the sodium vapour lighting, but for the most part I was able to correct it in…

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#68 – light and location (part 1)

For me, location is hugely important in railway photography. Once a good location has been found, it is well worth re-visiting, especially at different times of the day and different times of the year. These are taken at Townsendfold on the East Lancs Railway. This first one was taken in 2007 at the winter steam gala,…

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#67 – Colour? Or black and white?

I took this late on a February afternoon, with the sun low in the sky on the other side of the bridge. Clouds kept partially obscuring it, but I kept getting some terrific light on the railway arches, but no train! It finally arrived (on time), and I got this image. I must admit that…

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#65 – over-reliance on technology?

Stabilised lenses (VR in the case of the Nikon system that I use) are a fantastic innovation that has allowed me to take photos in circumstances that would be impossible with a normal lenses. However, I learnt an important (but cringingly obvious) lesson the other night – by and large, they work best when the…

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#64 – Guesswork / bulb mode

Sometimes, you run out of pre-set exposure times on your camera and you have to resort to the ‘guess’ mode, AKA  Bulb. This particular scene was tricky as the big floodlight in the background kept being turned on and off, which made exposure a pain. After several tests, I ended up thinking f*ck it, counted to…

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#52 – Adding a Bit of Atmosphere 2

Following on from my last post, here’s another from the East Lancs Railway. Same idea, as before, although the engine is now a much larger part of the overall scene. However, I chose to compose it with the mill, water tower and signal box all in the scene, to help add a bit more visual interest….

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#43 – the importance of a good title

When entering photographs into competitions, especially ‘open’ (i.e. unthemed) ones, it is critical to choose a great title for your entry. A good title can make the difference between a judge (or any viewer) looking at the image and thinking ‘I don’t know what the photographer is trying to say!’, or thinking ‘Ah, I get it’….

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