#226 – People In Railway Photography Revisited – Part 2

As I wasn’t using the optimal lens for the job, cropping played an important part of post processing., and this is where having a reasonably high megapixel count comes in handy. Now I’ve never subscribed to the theory that you should get it right in camera and never crop – it’s a laudable idea, but sometimes a crop can improve a photo. In these instances, I’ve cropped to improve the composition of the final image, as I simply didn’t have the reach using the lens I had.

Deciding on where to crop so as to get a balanced composition is difficult, but the tools in Lightroom do make the task itself easy.  Some of the images lent themselves to a square composition (link to previous blog post on square),  while others remained in the same format but ended up smaller to remove any extraneous elements. What constitutes extraneous? Basically, anything that is not adding to the composition, or something that, if removed, would not detract from what is left.

As mentioned in the previous post, in an ideal world, I’d like to have been a lot closer, and not having to rely on a short telephoto to capture the image, but that simply wasn’t an option in the circumstances.

To show the extent of the crops (and the post processing generally), I’ve included the original unprocessed file as it was out of the camera.

To get into this position, I ended up in amongst an impenetrable forest of tripod legs, camera bags and other photographers. A crop was essential to get rid of the foreground.

I was unsure of if I should crop this, or even how, but a square format allowed me to emphasise the repetition in the composition. It would probably work as well with a less drastic crop.

In this, there is nothing happening in the photo to the left of the driver, so off it went. The question then was how much of the rest of the image to remove while retaining balance. I’m still not sure I’ve got it right, and it may need some reworking before it looks and feels right.

#225 – People in Railway Photography Revisited – Part 1

 

Due to the usual late running on the Saturday of the East Lancs Steam Gala, the planned nightshoot was also running late, so by the time the assembled throng were let in, the engines were still being put down for the night. Never one to miss an opportunity to do something different, I hiked up the ISO to 12800, and hendheld at 1/50 F2.8 to try and capture some of the goings on. Sod’s law meant that I’d decided to leave my stabilised 70-300 VR telephoto at home due to it the fact that its focal length meant it rarely if ever gets used at nightshoot, so it’s just weight in the bag.  In the circumstances, 70mm was barely long enough on the 28-70mm, but it’s constant F2.8 was some consolation, and using my tripod as a monopod helped as well. Lesson learned – better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it.

Still, in the circumstances, the photo’s came out OK. I’d like to have got closer, but that was never going to happen due to H & S, plus there were 30 odd other snappers trying to get shots using flash and tripod.

I couldn’t really avoid post processing due to the strange colour of light (adding blue and red in colour balance neutralises the effect), but I still struggled to get something I liked. ISO12800 is noisy, but a quick lick of noise ninja improved things no end, and then I ran the images through Nik Silver Efex, with either an Ilford HP5 or Kodak Tri-X filter to add some grain back in.

 

#141 – East Lancashire Tornado Part 3 of 3

Another set up shot, but I’d faffed around with various compositions and shutter speeds without getting something that I was really happy with. So I left the rest of the gathered throng and went to look at the other locos, before coming back and trying again. By then everyone else was looking at Leander and the Black 5′s, so I found myself on my own with a bit more freedom to experiment with compositions. I wanted to include the rails of the adjacent track on so I used a 16-35 lens and hand held at ISO4000, to get the smoke looking like smoke and not mist. 

The wide angle lens allowed me to leave lots of space around the engine, and I under exposed as well to give lots of black so as to give the image a lot of contrast. The image is almost monochrome, but you might be able to pick out a hint of green on the engine and tender. Possibly my favourite picture of the night.

Here it is in landscape format. Sure, it shows more of the loco, but I think the first one works better using the principle of  ‘less is more’.

#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, obviously a non-enthusiast, who said ‘It’s wonderful, you can see why people become obsessive about them’. Indeed.

Sat quietly hissing and ticking away under the lights at Buckley Wells in Bury, Tornado looked magnificent, and despite being in service now for over a year, still looked like a new engine. You really can see why people become obsessive about them.

I can’t take much credit for this photo, as all I had to do was turn up at the nightshoot, set the camera and tripod up and press the button. Credit goes to Nigel Valentine and the guys at the East Lancs Railway who set everything up, thanks for another great evening!

#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 hoped which turned out to be no bad things as the lights on the platform and from the surroundings weren’t as bright as I’d expected or hoped either. Also, despite being dusk, the clouds meant there wasn’t one of those deep blue skys that I’m so fond of.  From an equipent prspective, I left my tripod at home and used a stabilised lens and high ISO to give myself more flexibility.

With this one, I wanted to get the line of lights on the platform and some of the reflections in the puddles. I’d like to have got a bit more of the cab on, but a gaggle of people were camped out talking to the driver, so I had to cut my losses and compose with what was available to me. There’s two things missing from this photo – 1) steam  – I only noticed when I got home and was looking at the picture on the computerand 2) people on the platform. Yes I know I’ve just said there was a gang of people talking to the driver, but I could have done with them shifting 30 feet further down the platform. Never mind eh?

 

 

And here is the aforementioned gang of people, or some of them anyway. They weren’t for moving hence the composition in the top photo. 

Finally, one of the train leaving. The lighting conditions made exposure tricky, but I still managed to freeeze the moving train. Not sure whether it would have looked better blurred, but the steam in the sky gives the game away that it’s moving.

All these images have had quite a lot of post processing done on them, lightening the bits that were too dark, and darkening the bits that were too light. I’ve also upped the saturation as well to give them a lift as they looked somewhat flat. Overall, not a bad result, but the lack of ambient light made this a bit of a struggle.

#138 – Two Views

Despite sending in photos to the railway mags, I’ve never had any published. I presume it’s because they’re either too alternative (possible) or not good enough (probably more likely!). I’m not losing sleep over it, I don’t photograph with the intention of publication, I do it as I enjoy the challenge of doing something different.

A point in case is these two pictures, the one above I much prefer to the one below. Try as I might, I could not  satisfactorily get rid of the damned colour cast, so I gave up and decided to enjoy the unusual lighting instead.

The one below is of the same engine, but from the traditional head height / front three-quarter perspective. OK, I’ve tried to include what I could of the shed, but the it’s still a bit too much of a record shot. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but it doesn’t move me, doesn’t make me think. It works well as part of a set, but is nothing special as a stand-alone image.

#136 – Sunrise Over London 2

Panasonic Lumix LX-3, ISO 400

I’ll admit that I’m not overly happy with the composition of this, but I was in a moving plane over which I had no control, so I was reduced to taking snapshots really. Actually, seconds after this was taken, the cabin lights went on for landing resulting in all kinds of reflections in the window, so given the circumstances, I was quite fortunate to even get this really.

#134 – Sunrise Over London

 

Panasonic Lumix LX-3, ISO400

**Another off-topic post**

There aren’t many consolations to flying back into the UK from Boston at 6 on a Saturday morning. The two things that did make it worthwhile were 1) business class (I wasn’t paying, the company was) and 2) watching the sun rise over London.

Panasonic Lumix LX-3, ISO400

Wish I’d had my SLR on me instead of the LX-3 as it’s noisy as hell in low light (even at ISO400), but it did fit in my hand luggage. Better to have any camera than none at all! A liberal application of noise ninja has resulted in some passable images though.

#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 Photoshop by simply adjusting the colour balance – there was way too much yellow, so I simply increased the amount of blue (and thereby decreased the yellow) and voila an accurate representation of reality.

However, for the life of me, I cannot get anything out of Photoshop that I like, so I’ve simply left it as it is, as I kind of like it this way. While the lesson from this is to learn how to take a manual white balance, sometimes, not being accurate and lifelike can make an interesting change from the norm!

#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 stabilisation is switched ‘on’.

I’d switched the stabilisation off as I was using the lens on a tripod (necessary as any vibrations transmitted through the tripod can confuse the system), and then swapped lenses. I then swapped back, forgot the stabilisation was off and began snapping away. D’oh! And then I got home and wondered why some of the shots were blurred……….

This got me thinking. With the rate of innovation we are seeing in cameras now, are we beginning to use technology as a crutch? OK, so I simply forgot that I’d switched the stabilisation off, but as I normally have it on at all times, I’ve got so used to be able to do previously impossible things that I take it for granted that things will work without me thinking about it. This is a godsend in some respects, as I can concentrate on what is important to me (composition, catching the moment, etc). I don’t strive for technical perfection, I delegate much of that to the camera, I strive to make an interesting image.

The only usable one of the sequence of shots that I took, and it’s probably the worst. It is reasonably sharp, but sharpness does not make an image!