new camera

 

(All Bristol Parson Street 26.10.2013 copyright Rail Thing)

 

I treated myself to a new camera the other day and yesterday was the first chance I got to use it on the rails. My stepdaughter lives a minute away from Parson Street so I spent half an hour on the station. I've been here before and found it quite a hard place to photograph, the location is on a curve so there's no a lot of scope to snap the trains, and the bottom half of the platforms is out of bounds and overgrown. Previous shots just haven't worked for me.

 

The new camera is a Fujifilm Finepix HS50, a bridge camera, and it has an brilliant 42x manual telephoto lens. So I tried something different - actually using the telephoto to follow the trains in. This gave me far more scope to capture the trains and I'm quite pleased with the results.

 

My wife's keen for me to take up photography full time, which would be a great idea, but having run businesses for years I know just how difficult it can be to make a living from anything, let alone from something you love doing! We'll see ...

salisbury 1983

(All 27.10.1983)

Salisbury was always a favourite photographic location for me. In the 80s, like today, it was exclusively diesel operated, but still had very much a steam and 60s atmosphere. Of course back then I regretted missing the steam period, but then I reckon we all feel we were born a few decades too late!

The point is - get down there and photograph everything that goes through NOW - it's even easier with digital photograpy. Nothing stays around long on the railways, or stays the same. One thing is for certain - in thirty years time there'll be no diesels at Salisbury. All trains will be electric or steam!