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Oxford

We made a brief visit to the famous university town of Oxford on 24 February 2024.

It had been a quarter century to my first visit here. In February 1999, I traveled by ferry and train from Dublin to visit a friend who was studying at Oxford’s Jesus College. Over the next few years, I made a number of trips centered on Oxford. I have many fond memories and lots of Fujichrome slides from these adventures. My last visit was in the Spring of 2007.

On our February 2024 visit, I made this selection of photos of trains using my Nikon Z7-II, my first digital images at the Oxford station.

We had rich and changeable wintery light, which lent to exposing some interesting back lit and side lit images of the passing trains at Oxford station. I modified the Nikon NEF RAW files in post processing to make the most of the light.

Among the places we visited in Oxford was the Ashmolean museum, where I photographed artifacts with my Lumix LX7.

LX7 photo at the Ashmolean Museum.

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photography

At Par for Virgin.

Yes, you read the title correctly.

In July 2002, my Irish friends and I paid a visit to Cornwall in the west of England, to photograph long distance passenger trains on the old Great Western Railway main line.

To make a long story short; the car we were traveling in developed a ‘fault’ at Par, which invovled a delay to our travels, and resulted in a trip on a stink buggy ( a common bus) in order to reach the railway station.

Ultimately the automobile was repaired and so we visited myriad other destinations and locations in the south western regions of England, but in the meantine we made the best of being at the station at Par.

Using my Contax G2 rangefinder, I made this view of an approaching Virgin Cross Country ‘HST’ passenger train operating approaching Par on a bright overcast morning.

I was working with Fuji Neopan 400 black & white film that I later processed using my custom tailored recipe using Agfa Rodinal Special mixed about 1 to 60 with water. If anything, these negatives are too constrasty and required some post processing adjustment using Adobe Lightroom

Tracking the Light Posts Daily!