In each issue of Railways Illustrated, we ask a photographer to select their 10 favourite rail-related images and tell us the reasons why they believe these photos stand out from the crowd.
David Staines
10 Pictures this month features yet another stunning selection, this time from the lens of well-known photographer David Staines.
Attempts at serious railway photography began for David in 1979. Railways and photography were both interests and they soon made for an early match. For a schoolkid scrimping and saving pocket money, any second-hand 35mm SLR was seen as the way forward. David says that photographers of a certain age will wryly smile at the brand name Zenith. In the 1970s, the USSR exported these cheap, heavy and basic cameras as they sought hard European currency. These Russian imports were rugged, to put it politely, but they were a bottom-shelf entry into proper photography. Although only able to afford an already battered second-hand Zenith camera, 35mm provided a quantum leap over the dodgy hand-me-down family cameras that had provided grotty and wasted images of the last days of the ‘Westerns’.
Another quick lesson learnt was not to use prints or budget films developers, with a quick elevation to Kodachrome transparencies. Cost was another impeding factor. Today, not only has digital ‘democratised’ photography, it has also slashed the price. The price of a process-paid 36-exposure Kodachrome film bought in 1980 and adjusted for inflation is now more than £40, and without the benefit of any kind of post-production digital manipulation of exposure or cropping – you had to get it right first time, every time. 1983 saw David’s first picture (56037 at Port Talbot) published in the railway press.
What would today be described as peer reviews of early results of bad composition and poor location choices saw an upping of standards. This brought a greater interest in combining the railway scene within the wider landscape. A good mantra is that a decent scenic railway photograph could still be an interesting picture even if a train wasn’t in the frame. In due course, Olympus kit was followed by an upgrade to a medium format Mamiya 645. The 1990s and 2000s saw the days of photographic weekends to opposite ends of the country reigned in for a while, given the obligations of bringing up a young family.
And so on to the digital era where the railway – and photographic scene – has been transformed. For David, the 1980s remains a firm nostalgic favourite, but there is a ready concession that the railway today is now undoubtedly visually more vibrant
