Planes, Trains, Automobiles (& Ships) update

Planes, Trains, Automobiles (& Ships) update

Hopefully you have read my previous blog ‘book project’ which gives some insight into my thought process for the concept of this book and the later blogs about the various great places we have visited.

With approximately 1600 miles travelled to many locations around the country including York, London, Southampton and Portsmouth to take photographs of the various exhibits of Planes, Trains, Cars and Ships for my book I am finally coming to the end of the epic journey. Although hopefully weather permitting we will visit Blue Anchor, Minehead to see their working steam train so I can try and photograph one more moving train.

Generally we encountered few problems during our travels except for a couple of traffic jams returning home but we did encounter inclement weather on a number of occasions. The worst issue was caused by rain resulting in having to ensure the camera was kept as dry as possible and having to constantly wipe the lens to ensure no photographs had water spots.

Although I tried to meticulously plan all the visits and group them together there were a few mishaps along the way. Unfortunately we visited Blaenafon Steam railway, Butterly Midland Railway and Didcot Railway centre when the steam trains were not running which could have saved a journey if I had read the timetable. But sometimes luck is on your side because we would not have found Chinnor & Princess Risborough Railway had the steam train at Didcot been running. I also did not realise that other attractions were also nearby some places we visited, for example the Matthew which is a replica of the English ship that discovered North America in 1497 is located near SS Great Britain.

I was also pleasantly surprised how helpful and interested the volunteers were in my college book project at the various locations and the support and time they gave me regarding some of the exhibits. Being fortunately allowed to have unrestricted access to Concorde’s cockpit at Brooklands was unbelievable along with invaluable history and information whilst photographing inside the Vulcan bomber at the Jet Age Museum made the visits even more memorable. I must also remember to provide a copy of my photographs to the Jet Age Museum for use in their promotional literature.

The venues we visited during our travels ranged in size and cost with some allowing free entry and others charging a fee. All asked for a gift aid donation which I was happy to provide and some venues provided a year’s free admission with the gift aid receipt which would allow me to revisit them again once the weather improves assuming we have a summer this year.

The next challenge was to collate all the photographs and start to create the book in Blurb, the colleges recommended site. Although this was something new to me I was looking forward to starting the process. I downloaded and installed the software and started to create the book in a very easy to use and understand program. As I wanted to present my pages across two pages I used the standard template but this did not allow me to add any text which created a problem. Thinking outside the box I created my own customised pages and joined two images together to form one by carefully ensuring they lined up. 

With all the photographs taken I started to add as much as possible to the book to be able to show the readers all the details of the great steam trains, plane, cars and ships we visited. Once the photographs were added I started to research the different exhibits in books and the internet as I want to make it feel like a book you would want to purchase in a store and not have one or two line saying what it was and where photograph was taken. I wanted to ensure the reader enjoyed seeing the various modes of transport and would want to visit them to learn more. Although I must admit it is far bigger that I originally intended but I believe it was worth the time and effort involved creating it and would not change anything.