More Worth Valley Railway night abstracts

 

A further update on an on-going project, doing long-exposure pictures on the KWVR at night, to get some deliberately abstract shots.  The original few sets were taken around a point where the Worth Valley were running specific night-time services, but having established the sorts of images I wanted to take, I ended up having no chances to get out and photograph the trains, until the combination of the pre-Christmas services and the shortest days of the year gave me the chance.  Locations of choice this time were around Haworth/Oakworth, spots I've often used in the past for 'traditional' daylight pictures of trains, but these days there tends to be too many other photographers around getting the best spots...  a little annoying, but then there's a limit to how many viewpoints there are on such a short, well-known line.

 

First stop, the public footpath running alongside the line looking towards Mytholmes tunnel.  I managed a shot here in the first block of shooting, resting the camera on the top of the wall for stability (no room for a tripod), and went with the same approach this time.  Annoyingly, the light was rather too bright for the first of three evening services (DMU to Keighley, Steam to Oxenhope, DMU returning an hour later).

 

I ended up playing around a bit with the shot of the DMU passing, in post production, as the light-sky was annoying me.  Still, the resultant image looked nice.

 

The next night, it was back to the same location, and this time on the bank above the path.  Again, the sky was that little bit too light...

 

But another reasonably abstract shot, mainly caused by the tail-lights of the DMU.

 

What would have been a reasonable shot of the steam-hauled service ten minutes later, were it not for an inexplicable failure of the focussing on the camera which ended up losing the focal distance that I'd pre-set.

Lens-flare-o-rama shot with the oncoming DMU in the dark.

A week later, and an attempt a bit further down the path, to replicate the earlier shots which featured a river.  Once more, even this close to Christmas, the light was rather too bright.

 

For the steam service, I moved to another favourite location nearby, and the seemingly-abandoned nature reserve the other side of Ebor Lane Bridge.  By this time a fine, misting rain had set in, which required cleaning of the camera lens every minute or so.

 

But a dramatic shot when the train, a Santa Special, came hammering past.  It was travelling far too fast for me to identify the loco, and the ground-shaking pass ruined the later shots with vibrations, but I love the sparks curling from the chimney.

 

 

 

Final location was at Oakworth.  This is a spot I've not used often in the past, as the public footpath was somewhat blocked-in with trees, but these have been cut back in the last year by the look of it.  I was only in time to photograph a DMU here, on the very last train of the Christmas weekends.

 

Nice sky, lit by the streetlamps of Keighley and Ingrow.

 

Bored waiting for the train, and some playing around with zooming and waving the camera around.

 

The DMU eventually passed, and whilst I was happy with the location, I wasn't happy with the shot.  Or the local who wandered up in the dark, and stopped about ten yards away to urinate in the dark, then expressed shock and annoyance there was a photographer lurking.

 

So what now?  I'm reasonably happy with the shots, but feel I need to work out the project a bit more to establish the theme and look I want.  We'll see where it leads in the future, though with the nights drawing out and the clocks shortly to move, I may end up leaving it for a year.  I am however planning something on a similar theme with miniatures, if I get chance...