Exercise 10: Moment and gesture

For this exercise on movement and gesture I took a sequence of photographs at my local railway as they reversed up a large number of carriages (about 11 I think) back into the sidings and sheds. In post processing I have cropped to 16:9 for the panoramics and 5:4 for the detail shots.

1) This first shot is just to show what is going on, the station they are going into is on the far right:

From OCA People and Place Photos

2) Here a crew of two in the cab are both looking back out of their respective windows as they reverse:

From OCA People and Place Photos

3) Arm gestures from the man in the cap, standing below a ScotRail logo on the side of the diesel unit

From OCA People and Place Photos

4) Climbing down from the cab:

From OCA People and Place Photos

5) Discussions up front while one person proceeds to the rear:

From OCA People and Place Photos

6) Beckoning the driver back

From OCA People and Place Photos

7) Driver and assistant working together:

From OCA People and Place Photos

8) Last few yards:

From OCA People and Place Photos

My local railway is a steam railway, http://www.srps.org.uk/railway/home.html, but it is too early in the year for them to have started regular services yet. Meanwhile diesel units tend to act as workhorses when rolling stock need shifting. The diesel unit featured here is a class 47, number 47643, dating back to the 60s and about the same age as me, more details can be found at http://www.class47.co.uk/.

Tips

• Here a telephoto lens and fast shutter speeds have helped capture the action.
• The images were shot as single frames. I find that 'machine gunning' a burst of frames tends to miss the action and can even 'lock up' the camera while it catches up, causing a vital moment to be missed.
• Some gestures such as arm waving are very quick so may take several attempts to get the shot.