Two views exposed with my Lumix LX7 of a Rotem ICR (InterCity Railcar) running from Dublin to Cork that had paused at Thurles for its first station stop since departing Heuston Station.
Brian Solomon’s Tracking the Light posts everyday!
About a week ago an Irish Rail ICR rolled past me. These parade by at such regularity that I often pay them little notice. Nice to travel on, but common.
Hey, wait . . . did that one have purple doors? (Since delivery in 2007-2008, these have been forest green).
It did. And I failed to even lift the camera to make a photo.
Shame on me.
So, the other day in nice light when an ICR approached, I was ready. And this one too had the purple doors.
I wasn’t out for the ICR, but rather for the down IWT liner (container train to Ballina, County Mayo) that was running late. Actually, I was on my way to buy batteries for my Nikon F3, which had failed the day before. The stop at Islandbridge Junction was a sideshow.
Tracking the Light Posts Daily!
Here’s a panned view of an Irish Rail intercity railcar near Islandbridge, Dublin that I exposed a little while ago (February 18, 2013). A pan of a 22K-series ICR? No, this isn’t a litany of complaint regarding the common Rotem-built Irish Rail intercity vehicle. Rather, it’s an example of one of my favorite techniques for showing motion. I learned to pan from my father, who used the technique to compensate for slow speed Kodachrome film. In the early 1960s, he made some stunning rainy-day images of Pennsylvania Railroad’s Baldwin ‘Sharknose’ diesels working the New York & Long Branch. Check my Vintage Diesel Power by Voyageur Press to view some of these photos.
The trick to making a successful pan is to manually select a moderately slow shutter speed (1/15th to 1/60th of a second), then follow a train with the camera, gently releasing the shutter at an appropriate moment. I find that pivoting my whole body helps makes for smoother motion. Key to this exercise is planning to continue the panning motion after the shutter is released. Stopping too soon may result in unplanned blurring of the main subject. Also, I usually pick a fixed point in the frame to follow the front of the train. My Canon 7D has lines on the viewfinder screen that aids this effort. I’ll discuss the panning technique in greater detail in a future post.
