River Frontage

Here’s a deceptively simple image that’s part luck, part skill. A reflex shot—the scene presented itself and I grabbed it—from the window of a train on Tuesday, November 16^th, 2010, on my journey south from Sunderland to London, to head back to Australia. This is maybe 90 minutes after I got the pics of Durham Cathedral through the haze, and several hours before I framed up the neon lighting at Heathrow Airport (see older posts). The train ran through considerable fog, through towns, past great steam-belching power stations, and by the time I was around the latitudes of Birmingham, the weather cleared to sun and blue sky. This is the River Nene, where it flows through Peterborough, and I managed to catch it through a clean patch of window, with the sun angle right for the scene and not to make every speck of dirt on the glass flare. Some adjustments were done—it was squared-up using custom rotation, and the contrast and colour were tweaked just a little. Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

Geometry in Iron

Repeating shapes always make for interesting visual exercises, and this is mid-Victorian ironwork—Brunel’s masterpiece, Paddington Station, in London. After booking into my hotel on Sunday, October 31^st, 2010, I walked back round to the station to play with imagery, and this one was taken from a footbridge spanning the tracks. In the 1850s (Paddington opened in 1854), British railway engineering was a boom industry, and cast iron was the masterstroke of the age, making possible shapes and sizes of structure previously unknown. Here, thousands of tons of iron create an airy, arched pavilion large enough to accommodate the smoke of steam trains without choking the commuters, and to this day it is one of the busiest railway terminals in London. A simple shot, it took advantage of the topography, creating an almost organic feel. Minor enhancement only—just contrast and colour. Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike