A Journey by Train HD

You are about to embark on a train ride from a twelve week photography project to collect a pictorial experience of the Carlow to Waterford railway line. Now at last you can see a video slideshow of the project. A train journey from Carlow Railway Station to Waterford Railway Station. How many places do you recognize along the way? For several days each week I ventured back and forth from my home in Kilkenny, travelling North, mapping the line towards Carlow, or South towards Waterford. I spent many hours researching locations along the track, both on Ordnance Survey maps and on the internet, plotting my viewpoints, looking for opportunities, framing my goals. Many minutes were spent at each location, first, pacing my chosen site to view and anticipate what it might look like with the train in the scene. Then, setting up my camera onto a tripod I estimated the speed of the train against the speed of my shutter. Finally I would wait, listen and watch. With timetable in pocket I would wait and guess the time that the train would pass. I listened carefully for the familiar trumpet sound or the rumbling like a rushing river. Where I could see, I would watch for distant headlights or the wiggling and winding, like a snake in the grass along the far reaching rails. Then, in an excited moment of anticipation I would press my cable release, like a detonator that was timed with perfection to explode that moment, that movement and that marvellous climax of a perfect plan ! Hopefully ! Each image in this series is hallmarked with the strategy and thought of the location along with the entrance of the mighty subject and honoured guest to the silent and empty frame -- the moving train. Most of the images are made from more than just a single press of the detonator but rather they have been blended with parts of a second or third exposure. My aim was never to record a moment as it stood, frozen in time, but instead to create an impression of all I experienced whilst immersed in those minutes, alongside the speed of the train. My chosen frame was like my canvas, my tripod was my easel. Whatever emerged onto my canvas for the duration of my stay became an element for design. A passer by, a vehicle, a bird in flight or a spill of light would paint itself upon my canvas so I could create a useful piece of art rather than a cold record. But in it all I give precedence to the appearance of the speed and presence of the train. It arrives on schedule and is gone again, but is indelibly marked upon my canvas as the basis and purpose for all these images, emerging then flying away, usually unnoticed by the world it just disturbed !