Our year in pictures: Richard’s most memorable shots of 2024

After an obviously tremendous 2023, this has been a year that has helped me reconnect with my love for photography.

Some trips to the UK have definitely helped. Despite being nominally on vacation, it’s always tempting to use a home visit as a means of spending ‘real world’ time on camera, or to take a literal change of scenery as a way of adding variety to our sample galleries. Is. It was still a surprise to see that none of the images I chose for my favorites were taken in Seattle.

My final choice was as much about the experience of shooting it as it was about the image. It was taken during a five-day hike in North Wales, because it seemed like the sensible thing to do in late October.

“This was taken on the third day of a five-day walk in North Wales”

The third day of the trip included the first serious rain and our feelings were a little gloomy when we stopped for lunch. Our break was interrupted by the distant sound of the whistle of a steam train, and suddenly I connected the stream of smoke which we had seen in the day from a high vantage point in the Glaslyn valley.

After another hour’s walk our route eventually crossed the extremely narrow-gauge tracks of the Welsh Highland Railway at Nantmore Halt. A search of the station turned up no sign of a timetable, and there was no rush to turn to roaming data, but eventually we found that a southbound train was due to arrive at the station to the north of us in about ten minutes’ time. .

This gave my companion a chance to rest his legs and gave me enough time to set up the camera for the arrival of the train. Could I possibly take both video and photos of a train that wasn’t necessarily going to stop? To achieve both I had to change camera settings very rapidly.

Thankfully I knew that the ‘Movie Optimized Control’ mode on the Shoot video at 48 seconds or 1/1000th.

The fleeting patch of sunshine meant five minutes of anxiously adjusting the Vari ND in front of the lens, but it also meant there was a decent level of contrast when the train finally appeared.

I captured about 22 seconds of video of the train’s arrival before it stopped and exposed the ND filter to the front of the lens. I then managed to take about three steps back and quickly zoom the lens out before hitting the shutter.

The result is a surprisingly good shot of a Manchester-built, ex-South African Railways 2-6-2+2-6-2T Garrett loco. Or a train that “looks like a sad one-eyed monster” as a friend described it.

Richard runs too

I always find it difficult to evaluate my photos. Here are others that didn’t quite make the cut, along with an explanation of why I chose them:

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