Reflections: mainline steam

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Mainline Steam ... in monochrome

Just looking through some of the shots from yesterday I decided to changes some of them to monochrome. Some of them don't look too bad, and I suppose, due to the age of steam locomotives, you kind of expect the images to be in black and white. A few of the locomotives were built in the later 1930s or 1940s and most people taking photographs of the railways were using black and white rather than colour. So, here's a few more shots from Mainline Steam. Let me know what you think.

Gloria facing Auckland City. Interesting halo effect from ice crystals in the clouds.

Inside the workshops. 3 shot HDR image

Ja1267 inside the workshops at Mainline Steam

I just liked the light falling onto the smokebox door of this locomotive.

Saturday, April 30, 2011

Avocados ... and steam engines!

Pretty cool eh? The council has an avocado orchard and you're allowed to pop along and pick the fruit for free. Just don't be greedy or silly. Take five, and don't take them if they're not going to be useful. Amazing! In this user pays world in which we live, finding something like this is really rather special. Are there any avocados? Of course!

There's heaps of avocados, but they're all rather green and the notice does say they won't ripen if they're picked. I'm not sure about this. Reasonable sized avocados put amongst other fruits like bananas and oranges seem to go ripe rather well. Any comments or hints on ripening avocados you'd like to share?

After visiting the avocado orchard we headed into Auckland City. We'd decided to have a walk around Parnell ... quite a quaint part of the city with lovely old buildings and a pleasant atmosphere. Anyway, whilst in Parnell we heard the unmistakable sound of a steam engine. Mainline Steam were playing trains ... except these were big full size mainline steam locomotives ... not model trains. We had a great time looking around the facility.