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Creative Photography (Railway Related)


Ian J.
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Detail shot in rail blue days. Note the patch on the bottom of the door, the cantrail stripe denoting non-smoking second class, the missing paint, the beer cans and paper around the buffers welded zig-zags on top of the rails to help prevent sliding (and make a racket)...

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Here's one from 1974, known as The Ghost of Newton Abbott.

 

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My mate and I were down in the West Country chasing Westerns and had decided to spend a chilly evening on Newton Abbott station. While there I experimented with some long exposures, including this one, with my mate in the frame for half the exposure as the "ghost" perpetually waiting for his train. Well, we thought it was funny at the time...

 

It was always a talking point in the days when I used to give slide shows to local clubs.

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Here's one from 1974, known as The Ghost of Newton Abbott.

...

My mate and I were down in the West Country chasing Westerns and had decided to spend a chilly evening on Newton Abbott station. While there I experimented with some long exposures, including this one, with my mate in the frame for half the exposure as the "ghost" perpetually waiting for his train. Well, we thought it was funny at the time...

 

You just reminded me of something I tried to do when the HSTs were coming in on the St Pancras services, a double exposure with the old and the new. Unfortunately when I got the photos back I discovered my tripod had either moved or I knocked it slightly, so the double image didn't work.

Thanks to the wonders of Photoshop, I've just tried to recreate that shot with two single exposures from that night. I wouldn't call it a great work of art, but the new train with the "ghost" of the old seemed like too good an idea to abandon completely:

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The ghost is on a separate layer, with its opacity set to 40%, and everything but the train erased.

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I locked the shutter open and did painting with light by popping off a hand held flashgun to iluminate undergear etc of a stationary train at night, the trick being to be constantly on the move so that one would not register as a ghost image on film.

 

Eastwestdivide, I like the idea of the HST replacing the Class 45s. How about making the Class 45 loco a monochrome image?

Edited by coachmann
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How about making the Class 45 loco a monochrome image?

Excellent idea - I've also tidied up some of the overlaps, and smudged some of the hard edges.

Pity the source material wasn't better, but it survived 20-odd years in someone else's loft, so I should be grateful I've still got them...

 

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Excellent idea - I've also tidied up some of the overlaps, and smudged some of the hard edges.

Pity the source material wasn't better, but it survived 20-odd years in someone else's loft, so I should be grateful I've still got them...

 

I can understand the rationale behind the shot, but I think it would have worked better with the old train alongside the new. As you say, you're probably limited by your source material. Nice try though!

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I can understand the rationale behind the shot, but I think it would have worked better with the old train alongside the new. As you say, you're probably limited by your source material. Nice try though!

Did you mean in adjacent platforms for example? I though that would be a bit boring, as it happened in real life.

Or did you mean in adjacent platforms, but with the Peak in mono and ghosted out? That would be more like the "ghosts of trains past" idea.

Just realised while writing this, that in film days, it helped for it to be dark to get the flexibility for that kind of double exposure, but a bit of photoshopping would work just as well on daytime shots. On the other hand, we all know ghosts only come out in the dark, preferably when the wind's howling in the telegraph wires.

Also in danger of re-opening the argument on what constitutes creative photography here. To me, any process between the original scene and the finished picture is available, ranging from focussing the camera and choosing a shutter speed, to darkroom tinkering and photoshoppery. Surely it's the result and the creative thought process that counts.

Enough of the philosophising - more photos please!

Edited by eastwestdivide
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I suppose the most creative part in this was the precarious climb along a ledge to this position above Penmaenrhos Tunnel.......Not possible today becasue of cliff erosion. A Class 40 droans through Llysfaen with a teatime working in the 1970s before the A55 Expressway arrived to cut across the beach on the left.....

 

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Nothing spells "Railway" more to me are instantly recognisable shots without a single locomotive et al in sight. Muchalls Viaduct (one of many) south of Aberdeen. Six careful owners (Aberdeen Railway (since re-modelled), Scottish North Eastern, Caledonian, London Midland & Scotttish, British Railways & Network Rail. Shortly to be wrapped up and refurbished by that 1980s Heavy Metal band "Carillion"

 

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apologies if it's a bit low on the creativity front!

Edited by Bob-65b
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I have recently come across a number of films taken by my late brother Steve, a small number of them

are railway pictures. Like me he was a fifth generation railwayman, joining straight from school.

Unlike me he was not a railway enthusiast, he was a better photographer though, and some of the pictures

he took of railway subjects are worth posting.

 

 

Early morning, I think it is Gloucester, about 1981, (SJR)

 

cheers

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Edited by Rivercider
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