Steam Museum - first shots

The operation to take a series of shots for a new book for the local steam railway museum began in earnest yesterday. I concentrated on photographing the entrance to the museum - particularly a couple of scenes I highlighted in an earlier post.

I put my camera on a tripod and used long shutter speeds to capture visitors to the museum walking into the entrance area. I was using a Sigma 10-20mm lens - ultra wide angle - and this allowed me to capture the whole of the scene, including a number of television screens and the main welcome sign.

The slow shutter speed created motion blur as the visitors walked along - an effect I had been looking for mainly because it adds to the atmosphere. I had to experiment a little because if the shutter speed was set too low, the subjects almost disappeared entirely from the scene. The results are shown in the following shot:

However, I might have a further attempt on my next visit - not just because the man pictured is too static, but because I want to get the visitors' shadows on the facing wall.

There are wonderful curved walls in this section of the museum and I was keen to capture this architecture. The next shot shows the railway signal from a different angle, looking back towards the entrance. The photo needs a little Photoshop work to clone out the slightly scuffed walls, but I quite liked the effect of the curves leading the viewer to the signal.

While we were at the museum we were fortunate to have the opportunity to look inside one of the old workshop buildings on the site. It was a photographers' paradise because rooms in the building were just as they were left 30 years ago - except for very extensive decay. This is one of the rooms, which had lockers still in place, but vegetation threatening to take over. Pipework had also crashed to the ground, creating a sort of giant metal daddy longlegs in the middle of the room. Excuse the distortion from the wide angle lens.

Despite the shoot's successes, it was also a little frustrating. I had planned to use flash in a couple of other shots, but had problems with my equipment. I also failed to make arrangements for a slightly more difficult shot inside the boiler of an old steam engine. But I guess they are important lessons learned and I can rectify them next time.