I always moan at how in the UK we don’t get those lovely skies we see in those fabulous photos of steam in China. This is as good as we get in Preston. I wanted to capture the young lady at work on the engine, perhaps need a bit of dodging to bring her out a bit more.
More steam trains! If on the off chance you read this blog regularly, you’ll have noticed a few recent posts of steam train pictures. I love steam trains, and have done for years, although I kind of drift in and out of photographing them. I enjoy the challenge of trying to make something creative and interesting, as I find front three quarter photos in railway stations boring. Where’s the challenge in that? Hence I trek up and down the lineside and go to night shoots to try and get something different.
This is an example of this. From a technical perspective, it’s rubbish. It was taken handheld at ISO6400, and even with a stabilised lens, it’s slightly blurred. But when I saw the scene ahead of me, with the glint on the tracks, the man walking between the locos and the steam swirling in the light, I knew there was a photo in it. Sure it’s not the greatest railway photo I’ll ever take, but I doubt I’ll take one with more atmosphere than this.
I was approached via my main website (www.theviewfromthenorth.org) by a director of a mill in Huddersfield. They’d bought the old Brook Dyeing site and wanted a set of photos for their archives. I agreed on the proviso that they let me photograph their other, working, mill in Huddersfield. They agreed, and I spent an interesting morning in November with them. Unfortunately there was only a handful of people working that day and only a couple of machines operating, but being interested in anything mechanical, I was more interested seeing it all in action than taking photographs, so I only took about 30. This is a favourite. I used a slow shutter speed to blur the flywheel, and let the camera auto-ISO sort out the ISO settings. I’ve done a spot of curves adjustment to up the contrast, it suits the scene quite well.
What’s missing off this railway viaduct? A train. The steam hauled ‘Cotton Mills Express’ was due to travel over it, unfortunately the engine failed at Preston, so they cancelled it. I didn’t find this out until I got home, having waited for well over 2 hours. I kept thinking, I bet it’ll come as soon as I walk back to the car, but no. Still, it was a nice sunny day, and it was a nice spot to wile away a couple of hours on a Saturday.
I thought I might as well get a nice photo of the bridge (Uppermill Viaduct). Exposure was a headache and I was glad I was using digital. When I got there, the sun was off the left side of the frame, but as time went on, it got further and higher into the frame. Exposure was constantly changing, and as I was shooting directly into the sun, I had to cut my losses and go for a near silhouette. A pity the train didn’t turn up, I’m curious to what the picture would have ended up like. It’d be an ideal afternoon location, as the sun would be in a totally different location. Still, I consider it a location scouted out for next time!
Got to admit, I’m disappointed by the level of noise in this photo. OK, so I’m used to very low noise on the D700, but this was taken at ISO200 on the LX-3, and the noise levels are poor (and I’ve reduced the noise in post-processing). My old Fuji F31 was much, much better than this, only thing was it didn’t have a wide angle lens. Still, I tend to use the D700 for most low light stuff, but on this occasion it simply wasn’t practical (I had to poke the camera through some railings, and even the LX-3 was only just big enough). In retrospect, I’d have set it to ISO80 and propped the camera up against the railing using my monopod, but hey, that’s hindsight for you.
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. And again, in post processing I added some grain, as even though the image was taken at ISO2500, there wasn’t much noise. This time the grain is more visible, especially in the sky.
I was considering a crop but then thought otherwise. Someone had pointed out that the water tower is on a third and so is quite prominent, and to crop the signal box off. I know what they’re saying, but I like the fact that there’s a lot going on and a lot to look at, plus the background makes this a difficult image to date – is it 2010 or 1960?
I’ve now been using the Nikon D700 for exactly a year, and I know this because the first place I took it was to the East Lancs Railway winter steam gala at the end of January. One year on, time for a return visit.
Other than a nightshoot at Bury, I’d not done any railway photography since then, which is highly unusual for me. However, recently I’ve been looking at quite a lot of photos, online and in books, of the ‘progressive’ style, which is one that come o the fore in the 60’s as a rebellion to the technically perfect front three quarter views that had traditionally been taken, This style is best described on this flickr page and I suppose it’s one that I’ve been doing for years without really being aware of it.
This location on the East Lancs Railway was one that I first went to maybe 5 or 6 years ago, and took some shots on rather grainy film. By the time I’d cropped it, it was interesting but no masterpiece, so I always chose a spot on the other side of the tracks. However, when I got up, it was foggy, so I thought that it would make a nice spot as I could get the train coming round the corner out of the mist, plus it is still working hard, so would be throwing out some steam.
So that I wouldn’t have to crop too much, I chose to use a 70-300mm lens, which is unusual in railway photography, but this wasn’t about getting a photograph of the engine, it was about the overall scene, and it was a bit too far away for a standard zoom. As I was unsure as to the exact composition and placement that I wanted, I took about 20 on continuous. I think this one just about has the edge.
Post-processing – as you would imagine, the light was pretty flat and so the colours were subdued, so I cut my losses and converted to monochrome. I also added some grain using Color Efex Pro to add a bit of atmosphere. Now you may wonder what the point of having a Nikon D700 is if I’m going to add grain to the photos afterwards. The thing is, I see countless modern photos of steam converted to black and white to give a nostalgic look, but they’re so ‘clean’ that they’re quite clearly taken digitally. While this will never be mistaken for Ilford HP5, I prefer it to the original digital file. Does it need more contrast? Maybe, it’s difficult to know how far to go as it was a murky day.
OK, so it’s not that many, but it’s a milestone nonetheless! It’s about 6 months since I moved my blog to this one, and I’ve made more posts in that 6 months than in the previous 18 months, which isn’t bad going when you consider I spent 3 months on secondment with work at the other side of the country.
Plans for this year – err, well nothing specific, other than whatever I feel like writing about. Hopefully some stuff on creativity, and useful bits and bobs that I pick up on the way!
I was one told that a good way of deciding how and where to crop was to cover up the bits you wanted to keep and just look at the bits you want to crop. If they contained nothing of interest, or didn’t add anything to the image, then cut them off.
With that in mind, I successfully cropped about 40% off this image, mainly at the bottom, and a slice off the top. The main interest is at either side of the image, with the top and bottom only really adding texture. In addition, as the horses and steelworks are relatively small in the frame, cropping has stopped them looking as lost as they did.
Another day out, another test of the LX3. The above shot was taken on the beach at Southport (not sure what it is , but it’s old, iron and rusty, so is therefore interesting), with the high dynamic mode on. I then turned the camera into program mode and took another shot (below). The difference is noticeable.
What I don’t like though is the strange halo effect around the top of the pipe in high dynamic mode, and I’ve no idea how to get rid of it. This is something I’ve found before in this mode, and can also be seen when using the ‘Shadow and Highlights’ tool in Photoshop. I suppose the lesson here is that the High Dynamic mode is useful in certain circumstances, but I’d advise taking one in program mode as well, just in case!
