Only an hour late, battle commences with the first runpast, by which time the sun's gone apart from a momentary appearance about an hour later. At least the loco hadn't stopped for water when the sun came out!
And this time I've blundered. I was late - just threw the camera bag in the back of the car and set off. A real problem emerged on arrival at Snibston - no filter holder for my graduated filters.
Given that a dull day usually results in at least five stops between the sky and the subject - and that a digital camera just can't deal with that - a three stop grad is pretty much essential to get anything worthwhile.
So what do you do? The best option is keep the sky out of the shots - but the nature of the colliery meant that wasn't going to be a runner.
All I could do was go for manual exposure with the metering set for the sky. That way at least there's no burnt highlights to deal with later - they're unrecoverable - but it's always a fag trying to get the detail out of the shadows later.
Sunday morning was spent with Photoshop using the Channel Mixer to go mono, then multiple Curves and Levels layers to bring out the shadow detail.
Why mono? When you bring up the shadows as much as I had to do it gets a bit grainy - and that suits mono much more than colour. The subject suits it too - hard working saddletank in a colliery just shouts gritty mono!
If the subject matter wasn't cutting it, as always the gossip was entertaining. The light and weather was awful, so Simon and I repaired to the chip shop. On the wall was a poster of a truly stunning blonde with what appeared to be a nice rack in bed with her fella having a 'full filling experience'.
No, I'm not making up the poster, it's real. Now call me a sceptic, but if I'd been the fella in the bed with the girl with the norks, Pukka Pies however 'full filling', would not be at the top of my agenda.
Naturally this had to be discussed in depth. Would it be a post-coital pie? A pre-coital pie? Or worse - a during-coital pie? And where would the crumbs go? And what does the breath of a Pukka Pie eating girl smell like? And is a Pukka Pie a substitute for a boob job? Your views appreciated...
The other subject debated in depth was a rumoured northern rival to Easyjet in the form of Yorkshire Airways. Apparently they've now received airworthiness approval to mount an outside privy on both wings of an A320. The training for cabin attendants features some uniques too. Their uniform includes a flat cap. The standard 'Good Morning' as you get on is replaced by 'Ay-up'. The in-flight catering includes both tea and mushy peas (at extra cost). And Business Class is branded 'Whippet Class'.
Truly the gateway to the north... Check out Yorkshire Airways latest commercial...
We did get around to taking some pictures - check out my Snibston Colliery album here.
