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.
