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Category Archives: Photojournalism

Rolling blog: tales of the unexpected…

13 Tuesday Nov 2018

Posted by in I love my job, Photojournalism, Rolling blogs, Travel

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There was me, having a quiet day at home, catching up on some chores, paperwork and blogging, when the phone rang. Next thing I knew I had a commission in London tomorrow morning for something that will remain “hush hush” at this stage (all will be revealed on Wednesday).

I’d nipped out to get some autumnal pictures around Todmorden as the leaves are looking stunning at the moment. As is often the case, the the weather didn’t play ball but hopefully I’ll show you the fruits later. Right now I’ve got to head home as things have stepped up and I need to get to London this evening.

Sadly, (as often happens now) Northern services are running late so my schedules slipped already…

17:30.

Home, packed and off again. Now to get to London…

19:56.

Despite more late running by Northern I made it from Halifax to Leeds to catch my LNER service to London. Northern provided 2-car 150270 to work the 17:43 so it was full and standing as far as Bradford. I had 15 mins to make my connection which gave me just enough time to grab a sandwich before boarding. This time of evening the trains fairly quiet. I’d estimate it’s about 25-30% capacity after leaving Doncaster.

20:21.

We’ve now left Peterborough to run non-stop to London. We’ve exchanged a fair few passengers too, leaving our numbers slightly down but not much. I use to make this trip regularly back in the late 80s-early 90s and it was always a trade off between cost and time. You paid a premium for the Intercity train taking 50 mins or saved yourself few quid and caught the slower stopping service – although the clientele could be less condusive to enjoying the journey…

I’m enjoying the LNER Mk4 rake I’m travelling on because of the new information screens which are at the end of each coach. They tell you about journey times, stops and connections, so they’re really useful. Real-time information makes such a difference to being able to plan onward connections.

21:39

I’ve swapped the national network for the delights of the Piccadilly line.

22:10.

Phew! Arrived at the hotel in Hounslow ready for a busy day tomorrow. My colleagues are already abed as it’s an early start with breakfast at 07:00. Tomorrow’s rolling blog should be interesting…

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Another mad week begins!

11 Monday Jun 2018

Posted by in Calder Valley, Germany, Hs2, I love my job, Never a dull life, Northern Rail, Photography, Photojournalism, Rail Investment, Travel

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The old expression “feast or famine” springs to mind this week as I find myself with one of those weeks where there’s just too much happening at the same time, leaving me with an interesting exercise in logistics and juggling.

Right now I’m off to Manchester to check on rail improvement work and the effects of the timetable ‘difficulties’. I’ll report back on what I find. At least my train from Sowerby Bridge to Manchester’s only a minute late. It’s 158905, which is one of the DMUs West Yorkshire PTE funded ‘back in the day’. It’s still providing sterling service, even if it’s carrying a lighter load than usual today.

Funnily enough, I’ve just passed one of its sister units at Hebden Bridge which is still carrying Scotrail livery (158871). It’s the delayed cascade of units like 871 that’s contributed to Northern’s present difficulties

Tomorrow, the fun starts in earnest. I’m attending the High Speed Rail Industry Leaders conference in Leeds then heading straight down to London in readiness for an early morning flight to Germany. I’m part of a Siemens press trip which will preview some of their new products ahead of the massive Innotrans trade fair in Berlin in September. It’s going to be a busy couple of days in Germany but as soon as I land I have to dash again – this time to Crewe as I’ve volunteered to take the pictures on the Railway Children charities annual ‘3 peaks by rail’ fundraiser. This is only being made possible by my long-suffereing wife, Dawn – who will be meeting me (fleetingly) in London for a rapid kit change! Hopefully (Heathrow customs permitting) I’ll make it to Crewe in time to catch the train. If not, I’ll be catching up with them in Bangor at some God-awful hour!

The ‘3 Peaks by rail’ event lasts from Thursday evening until Saturday evening, when I should land back in Preston in time to get home. Last year that didn’t happen. One of the pair of Class 37s had to be changed at Carlisle so we were late and I had to stay over in Manchester. I’m hoping for better luck this time. Dawn’s on standby with the car, just in case…

As you can see, there’s going to be plenty to shoot and write about, so watch this space…

15.37.

Right now I’m returning from a look at electrification of and expansion to Bolton station. The delays to this project are another reason for Northern’s problems…

London bound…

15 Tuesday May 2018

Posted by in London, Photojournalism, Railways, Travel

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I’m on my way back to London for a couple of days as I’m covering tomorrow’s annual “Community rail in the city” event. ACoRP staff and community rail partnership workers and volunteers will have a variety of stalls on many of London’s main stations from 7am until 7pm. You can find details here.

It’s a glorious day for travelling. The sun’s shining and the East Coast Main Line’s behaving itself. As a consequence I expect to have a busy afternoon when I arrive – this weather’s a photographic Godsend! First stop will be Euston to get some shots of Hs2 work around the station, so watch out for some pictures shortly…

15:14

As promised, here’s the first pictures. This is one of the new blocks that have been built to rehome people having to move out of nearby homes to make way for Hs2. They’re quite impressive as they look to allow far more natural light in than the blocks they’re replacing. They also have private balconies

Right now, I’m having a late lunch in nearby Drummond St. Understandably, the restaurants here have been concerned that trade will suffer during Hs2 construction due to direct routes to the station being blocked. I’m optimistic that won’t happen and that the influx of hundreds of extra workers to the area may have the opposite effect. Either way they’ll continue to get my business. I wonder how many of those opposing Hs2 have ever done that? Here’s Ravi Shankar’s Tuesday special – a delicious veg Biriyani

Ok, it’s the end of the day – and the blog. It’s been lovely to catch up with an old friend – and old haunts. Now I’m staying in a part of  the world that’s still familiar, but only because I’ve been around long enough to see it change!

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Happy Easter folks!

31 Saturday Mar 2018

Posted by in Photojournalism, Surrey, Travel

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Greetings from soggy Surrey! Yesterday was a bit of a washout as the rain meant my camera stayed in its bag all day. Instead I had a relaxed day with my wife’s family doing nothing much at all – although I did manage to re-edit a few archive pictures, just to keep my hand in. I still have several hundred old pictures that used to be on my former Photopic site that I’ve not had chance to add to my new Zenfolio website. That said, I’m lucky, 99% of my pictures were backed-up on hard-drives so when Fotopic suddenly pulled the plug I didn’t lose out – unlike many people who hadn’t kept their pictures safe elsewhere. I still curse the people who destroyed the vast Photopic website. It was a rich social and historical archive with a worldwide base that’s been lost because they had no idea of its historical value. Here’s one of the pictures I was editing. Class 42 number 42-2718 (Luxembourg number 5519) at Eisenach, Germany in the early hours of a February morning in 2007.

FDG05167. 5519. Eisenach. Germany. 11.2.07

Today we’ve been up early, preparing the evening meal before we join a group of friends for an amble around Tilford which (inevitably) will end up in a pub somewhere. I’ve been helping Dawn prepare this leg of lamb which will be slow roasted whilst we’re out..

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I hope you and yours have an enjoyable Easter. I should be back later with a few more pictures…

SUNDAY UPDATE.

Despite the gloomy weather yesterday’s walk had a good turnout, especially amongst the younger members of the Tilford troop who had a wonderful day rushing headlong through all the massive puddles we encountered en-route. The fun they had in such innocent pleasures took me back to my own childhood. The rain stayed away right until we stopped for a break at a local pub (The Duke of Cambridge) then the drizzle arrived briefly, but cleared before we moved on to the final leg which took us back into the village. Here’s a few pictures from the walk.

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Strolling along the banks of a very full River Wey

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The depth of some of the puddles meant a snorkel would’ve been more useful than wellies…

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A game for all the family…

Enjoying a post walk drink at the Barley Mow, Tilford.

Whilst we’d been out walking, the lamb had been cooking slowly for several hours. When we got home and checked the oven, this is what we found…

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Cooked to perfection…

Dawn had prepared a two different desserts to finish off the evening. The Lemon Meringue pie proved especially popular and didn’t last long!

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Going back to my roots…

28 Sunday Jan 2018

Posted by in I love my job, London, Photojournalism

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I’m working in London for the next few days and for a change – it’s nothing to do with railways. Instead, I’m going back to old haunts and shades of a former career.

Back in the 1980s-90s before I became a photographer I used to work and live in social housing. In fact, it was the focus of my life. I was a Housing Officer for the London Borough of Tower Hamlets as well as being very much involved in running the tenant management Housing Co-op in which I lived – which went by the name of ‘Wilfrid’ (after one of Beano comic strip Bash St kids). It’s over 20 years ago now as I moved out of the co-op in 1996 and left housing in 1997 but I always maintained an interest in the sector – helped by the fact my ex-wife worked for various charities at the time, including Homeless Network and the Big Issue. I look back on those days with fondness and treasure a lot of the memories. The stories that I could tell…

For the next three days I’m looking forward to combining my love of photography and interest in housing as I have a commission to take pictures in a trio of private homes for the elderly in North London. I suspect I’m going to meet some fascinating people and hear some interesting stories in the process.

I’m still here!

04 Friday Aug 2017

Posted by in ACoRP, Photojournalism, Travel

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Finally, I’ve found a few minutes to blog. I’m sitting on a train from Leeds to Derby to meet up with a fellow ACoRP judge (Paul Cook of the Royal Horticultural Society) before we go looking at stations that are entered in the ‘It’s Your Station’ section of the community rail awards.

It’s been a hectic month, which is why I’ve not had any time to blog. The only writing I’ve been doing has been for a living. There’s one article on the 3 peaks by rail event in this weeks RAIL magazine and another on a Welsh railway line is in preparation. I’ve also been busy getting pictures from around the country for ACoRP’s ‘Scenic rail Britain’ website (which you can find here). All this has meant most of my time has been taken up by travelling, picture editing or writing – not that I’m complaining! I’ve had a wonderful time visiting some great places. Here’s a sample, the beautiful Borders railway in Scotland.

DG275804. 158869. Stow. 3.7.17

The next couple of weeks will be taken up by the awards judging. We’ve stations all over the England to visit, so it’s quite time-consuming. After that I should be able to spend more time at home – but then, I’ve said that before. In this job, you never know what’s going to come up next!

Apologies for absence…

10 Thursday Mar 2016

Posted by in Photojournalism, Uncategorized, Work

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I’m sorry about the lack of any blogs recently. This has been due to two things,  beginning the mammoth task of scanning my old slide collection – and the virtual collapse of the anti Hs2 campaign.

I converted to digital photography in March 2004 but between then and October 1989 all my pictures were taken on a variety of slide films (remember names like Kodachrome, Velvia & Provia?). I started off using a Pentax ME Super that I bought second-hand off a friend before switching to Nikon in the early 1990s. I gradually upgraded models before finally standardising on an F5 and F90x loaded with 50 asa Fuji Velvia and a ‘fast’ 400 asa Provia.

My collection grew to something like 25,000 images which took up two long shelves in my home in North London. I’d bought a Nikon Coolscan slide scanner & I’d scan a few every now and then but my commercial work meant there was never enough time to do them all. After moving to Yorkshire they went into storage and the scanner fell into disuse as the software became outdated & incompatible with modern versions of Windows.

Now I’ve decided it’s finally time to get my arse into gear & get them scanned. I’ve bought new scanner software, dug out my lightbox, a few albums and begun the process – which is going to take me a couple of years at least! To ensure the quality of each image and that each slide is ready to scan takes time (dust was always the bane of a film photographers life). On a good day I can do around 40 – but this has to fit around my commissioned work.

The end result should be worth it as an amazing collection of rail and travel pictures will be added to my website. I spent a lot of those years travelling the world, including two long trips between 1991-92 and 1997-99*. On the railway front there’s pictures that encompass the latter days of British Rail and the early days of privatisation. I’ve started off with two albums I had handy which are pictures from Tanzania, the UK and Greece (follow the links to see the pictures).

I’ll still be blogging, but right now I’m trying to work out a new work/life balance, so please forgive me if blogs are a little sparse!

 

*It was after that 18 month trip that I packed up my previous career working in local government managing social housing to become a freelance professional photographer – but that’s another story…

The job is changing, thanks to social media

30 Sunday Aug 2015

Posted by in Network Rail, Photojournalism, SAIP, Stafford, Work

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The world of photojournalism has never really stood still. Even when it was film based the technology that allowed pictures to be transmitted & disseminated was always changing. I remember when I first started out in the late 1990s. Then, living in London was a huge advantage. Most of my work at the time was travel photography. Newspapers used to ring me up and ask me about a list of pictures or fax me over an article (yes, fax. Remember them?) to illustrate. If I had suitable pictures to send they’d get a motorcycle courier to collect them – and pay me a £25 search and service fee for submitting them whether they were used or not.

How the internet age has changed all that!

This bank holiday I’m working for Network Rail on the Stafford Area Improvement Programme (SAIP) again. Taking the pictures is only part of the job nowadays. What’s equally important and just as time consuming is getting them to the client asap, along with caption details. This can be either a description of the work being undertaken – or a bio (or even short interview) with a person being portrayed. All this is to feed the beast: Social media. Pictures are needed fast to tweet, add to Facebook or go on corporate newsboards.

Now, my hotel rooms are transformed into mini editing suites where the speed of the internet is as great a consideration as the comfort of the bed or how good the shower is!

What this also means is the job is getting longer & more time consuming, something that has to be factored in as a simple ‘shoot’ is simple no more. Defining how long the job will take now is like asking ‘how long’s a piece of string?’

I still love this job. The places I get to go to and the things I get to see still fascinate & amaze me – and I learn so much. Here’s what I was doing in the early hours of Saturday morning, whilst most of you were tucked up in bed.

DG222848. SRS Palfinger crane. Stafford 29.8.15

An SRS Palfinger crane prepares to lift signal droppers onto the new gantry at the South end of platform 2 at Stafford