Transport Of Sorts

Idiot Box

As the television seems to be full of nonsense tonight, with Red or Black and X Factor, I’ll update my photography blog. I cannot bear to sit there and waste the whole evening with no creativity or other stupid adventures that I might get involved in.

Well, the category for July was “Transport” and if you’ve read any earlier posts you’ll know that the scoring mechanism is 10 points max for sticking to the brief plus another maximum of 10 points for the photo being great.

I had a load of great ideas for this month and was determined to submit a worthy photo. Two of my initial ideas were Shanks’ Pony (walking) and a grotty old lift (elevator) in somewhere like the Shrewsbury market.

Competitor in Competition

Due to the fact that I carry my Canon 500D in the car with me all the time I’d come across an opportunity to take a photo of some interesting fork lift trucks. Now bear with me here, I know that fork lift trucks aren’t in the least exciting unless you’re a five year old boy, but I saw a huge number of JCB’s all stacked into the yard behind a local dealer. There seemed to be a hierarchy to the machines that looked like one of them was the boss and the other rank and file looked to be the subordinates. But could I take a reasonable picture that got across to the viewer my take on this situation.

No. The best of a bad bunch is here and pulling out any further meant that there was too much foreground clutter. Plus, if I’d entered this into the Caterpillar Photographic Society, a photo of the competitors machinery might not have gone down too well.

Luvilee Jubilee

The next idea was made available as a few of us volunteered to attend the Queens Diamond Jubilee Celebrations at Cosford. The Queen would be there, but better than that there would also be lots of transport in the form of vintage machinery and of course because it’s an RAF base there was bound to be loads of aircraft.

I spent most of the day on the Caterpillar stand handing out pencils to kids and making fun of old people, (slapped wrist) so I didn’t get out with my camera much. Among the photos I took on the day were a Victorian Policeman on his bicycle, parts of an F1 Car, different parts of a Sentinel Steam Waggon and the Queens Bentley containing Phil & Liz. But none of them were contenders, the photos not the monarchy.

A trip into town was what was required, there was loads of transport in town. I booked myself out for the night and went for a wonder around my home town of Shrewsbury. The station would be a wealth of material with commuters coming out of the station and jumping in the old traditional black cabs before being whisked off home. No such joy, there were a few people around but they weren’t getting into the cabs and the cabs themselves were not traditional black cabs but the minibus types used to move disabled people about in. Not a great picture there I didn’t think.

Spot the Train Nerd

That’s when I noticed that the gateway to platform 3 was open and it was a straightforward walk into the station without being bothered by pesky staff.. There I was stood on the platform looking like one of the nerds that stand there drawing lines underneath numbers in an Ian Allen book but I was telling myself not to take photos of trains but the surroundings. A commuter sat on a bench reading a book made a good picture but there was something that didn’t look right. I think that there was too much detail in the background as I’d had to zoom across onto another platform it meant that I couldn’t get the required depth of field to blur that stuff out. I grayscaled the photo in Photoshop and did a Gaussian blur of the part that annoyed me to be a bit more bokeh-y. Still didn’t work.

Moving down the platform a few pigeons had found the only bit of masonry missing the pointy,pigeon poking sticks and I took a few photos of them as the flew back and forth to the edge of the platform. There was a trio of young adults on the other platform who were messing about but alas there were no decent photos out of them, even though the 19 yr old girl had an incredibly short pair of shorts on.

No Pot Of Gold

I walked to the end of the centre platform without being accosted by over zealous officials and as I walked towards the large signal box, it began to rain. The sky was now dark with heavy rain-clouds and a rainbow appeared. It was a double rainbow and I managed to take a few pics of it in the frame with a signal. I tried different exposures to get the decent picture I’d need for the win but nothing again… Gutted. This I took home and grayscaled it again after HDR’ing it from three pictures 2 F stops apart. You couldn’t see the rainbows but the signal would stand out if I painted it back in by using an adjustment layer and erasing the mono effect from the top layer to expose the colourful layer.

I tried the same unveiling effect on the rainbows but it looked like I’d drawn it on with a crayon so I left it.

Skate or Die Tryin’

Walking out of the station to see what other delights awaited me I stumbled across some more young adults trying to impress some girls by doing some gnarly tricks on their skateboards. I stopped by a shop window and snapped at the action, I got a few funny looks until I explained briefly what I was doing and that I wasn’t from the council or police. There we some good shots to be had but the light had dropped and my 50mm Prime Lens wasn’t quite quick enough to get the shot I wanted. Again the background ruined this shot for me, I’d got a reasonable action shot with some motion blur but the pink posters act as too much of a distraction.

With the lack of success that I’d originally envisaged I went home to regroup my thoughts.

I went back to the idea of the feet and walking so I went with my family to the play park and took some pictures of my daughters leg ends on the balancing beam but this too left me feeling flat, it was too sunny to take a decent picture even dropping down a stop or two.

The next day my beloved wife (in case she reads this) and the kids went off to a Scout and Guide Camp for the week leaving me home alone. On the very same day I went to the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, a huge water carrying bridge across the River Dee just outside of Llangollen. Canal barges, locks, aqueducts and the river were bound to provide me with some inspiration.

Magnum PIcture

In Trevor, a village close by, was a Ferrari 308 stopped in a lay by so I stopped to take some pictures but I was unable to take a decent image of this nice looking vehicle. I tried a few abstract angles and well used angles but none gave me anything special. Gutted again. I though I was bound to get a winner from a vehicle such as this.

On the tow-path by the car park was a Morgan car with a nice couple sat behind it having a sunny afternoon picnic so I asked permission to take some pictures and promptly did so. Again, there were some abstract angles where the chrome did a good job but there were too many distractions in the background, AGAIN, that would ruin any chance of me submitting any of this set.

Continuing on to the Aqueduct itself there were ample opportunities for some good photos and I squandered them with aplomb. Due to the fact that this piece of architecture was huge I couldn’t fit it in to a single frame without leaving out some important part of the story. It’s really high up above the Dee but I had no way of expressing this except for taking a photo from below, alongside the fast flowing Dee. Again, it was an exceptionally sunny day and the light was a bit too much again. The sky washed out before I even pressed the shutter release.

Hooked

Another trip into town presented me with an opportunity for some pictures so I wondered around the multi storey car park looking for decent shots. There was a giant crane being used to build a new hotel on Smithfield Road so I snapped a few of this with the blue sky complete with a few clouds in the clutter free background. The first is an unusual angle that piqued my interest. I tried a decent enough aperture of 10 to get all of the structure in the depth of field so that there were no blurry bits. I liked it but didn’t think it would constitute “Transport” so I didn’t submit it.

The second of the crane set I titled Sky Hooks as it reminded me of a prank that a late colleague had played on me when I was an apprentice. I shot them from underneath with a small aperture which looked ok but I think this works well, the hooks are at the top of the image to give the impression of height and ability to lift something up. The pictures I took with the hooks in the lower half of the image seemed to make less sense. (for some strange reason).

British Moto X

Struggling to find a decent entry to the Transport category and with my family out for the day still I googled Motor-sport in Shropshire. It was the British Moto X Championships in Hawkstone Park so I headed off over there.

I took over 1500 photos in roughly three hours of furious moto x action and as well as GB’s of images I also achieved a sense of respect for these riders. Phew, the speed that they ride at and the way they control the bikes in the air was breath taking. I took many many photos of bikes going over jumps and across the track in front of me but they didn’t seem dynamic enough to me so I remembered back to an article I’d read about “Panning” to get motion effects.

It seemed like it took hundreds of attempts but I got two photos from this panning method. For those who don’t know about panning, imagine you hold the camera still and the bike speeds past just as you release the shutter. The background would be in focus and sharp while the bike and rider is blurred. Now imagine that you “Pan” or move the camera to keep your viewfinder on the bike while it moves. A slower shutter speed of 1/100sec and an ISO of 800 combined with the f/14 meant that the background was blurred while the bike and rider stayed in focus.

I tried it with many combinations of shutter speed in Tv (Shutter Priority Mode on Canon) mode and altered til it looked OK on the LCD. The first one I considered submitting was a decent photo ( I think) using this method, the only unfortunate part of the image was that there was a young family with multi coloured buggy in the background just around where the front mudguard is that completely distracted attention so I altered the saturation of the colours in Lightroom to almost a Sepia effect and cropped in a bit to remove unnecessary trees and track etc.

Whilst I liked this photo, my wife preferred this next shot. I polled a few people who also leaned towards it so I entered it. Again it was the same shutter speed and the other photographers at track side must have thought I was loopy following the riders as they sped past. All other camera holders there were stationary and didn’t feel like making themselves dizzy like I was.

I desaturated the colours a little again on this picture but left enough to look interesting whilst not too much as to be distracting. The title of this was “Dirt Merchant”

I didn’t win the category at the time of voting in the meeting and was told that Moto X bikes weren’t really fitting the “Transport” category as much as a couple of other pictures of trains and buses that had been submitted. Heh heh.

If I’d submitted any of my shortlist photos I think I would have fallen foul of this subjective view of the scoring criteria and I’m glad I submitted one of my Hawkstone photos. The photo that did win was of a train in Shrewsbury Station and was a very worthy winner as it was most definitely a method of Transport and also a great example of an HDR photo. While some people aren’t fans of the HDR thing I quite enjoy how it represents the colours and details as you would normally see it with your eyes.

I didn’t screw up the maths behind the scoring again and think I’ve finally put that piece of bad publicity behind me…

Gosh, that was an incredibly long and winding blog post, so if you’re still reading, bless you.

My summary on this task then;

• Pay careful attention to background contents, it can easily ruin a great photo.
• Carry your camera with you at all times.
• Don’t assume that the subject of the photo will automatically equal a great picture.
• If entering a topic based competition, enter what you think is topic relevant and be prepared to fight for it.

See you soon for the next category of “Black and White” Edit: Some of my ideas are here already

Thanks for reading.