When it comes to rail photography it is a fairly simple business but there are a few things that can improve your shots greatly. I will go through how I go about taking my railway photos and although most of it is common sense it you can improve your photos. There are a few main points I will go through which are:- Lighting, Location, Framing and Exposure.
Most rail photographers probably started off on the station platform taking their photos and while you can get some nice images in and around the platform area I think there are better shots to be had line side where the scenery is much nicer and less cluttered than urban areas. In fact line side scenery can be spectacular if you are visiting areas such as Scotland or the Settle & Carlisle line.
Lighting
I think lighting is the most important area to focus on when improving your rail photos. There are a large number of shots that I see posted on the web where it is taken looking into the sun, when you do this you lose all a lot of colour in the shot and lose a lot of detail in the shadows. Personally I find the best lighting for your shots is with the sun over your shoulder when you are facing the train to take your shots. Ideally I like the light to be as side on as possible while still striking the front of the train as it cuts out most reflections on the side of the loco or coaches. I usually aim to get both the cab and loco side in sunlight but if it isn’t possible I will shoot in light which is on the side of the loco and leave the cab in shadow as you can still get a decent result.
Location
The location is the next point I want to talk about and is largely influenced by the lighting. Once you have decided to photograph a particular train you need to decide where you are going to go to take your picture, this is largely influenced by the point above as you want a location where the sun will be in an ideal position. The most common line side locations that are used are over bridges as it enables you to take a shot where you are looking down on the train. Other places often good for photography are embankments and line side footpaths. I would suggest you purchase a detailed map of your local area and look for points where roads and footpaths cross the railway line. It is a good idea to scout out these locations before hand as they may be overgrown and unsuitable or some other obstruction may ruin the shot. There are a few locations that you seen in magazines quite often as they offer a good shot and it is nice to shoot from these places but try and find some new locations and vary up your shots as they become boring after awhile.
Framing
When you actually come to taking you photo try and have the shot planned before hand, look at the shot through the viewfinder with no train, can you see anything the ruins the shot. Is there a pylon or building that gets in the way, if so can you move your position so it is out of shot or can you use a different lens to get rid of it. When you take your shot you want to try and keep the whole of the train in the image as it looks much better and if you do have to cut the end of the train off make sure it is the scenery that does it and not the edge of your frame. For example the end of the train is behind bushes or trees or even still in a tunnel. So you have your shot setup and your waiting for a train, unless you have an auto focus camera you will want to prefocus to ensure you get a sharp image. Look at your frame, where do you want the front of the loco to be when you take your shot? Focus on that point before the train is in the frame and then when it does appear point the camera back to the original location so you can fire the shutter when the loco reaches your prefocused point.
Exposure
Finally we come to the exposure where we look at shutter speed and aperture which are both linked together. The aperture is the size of the hole in the lens when you press the shutter, a large aperture allows a lot of light in but produces a shallow depth of field. A large aperture however allows a small amount of light in but a large depth of field. With rail photography we normally want a large depth of field as it allows more of the train to be in focus. The problem with this is that only a small amount of light gets through the aperture we need to increase the exposure time to get a properly exposed image. As the train is moving a longer shutter time means the train will become blurred so we are in a difficult situation where we need to juggle the shutter speed and aperture to produce a good shot. As image blur is a lot more important than depth of field we set the shot up with shutter speed as priority and for a normal shot I would shoot at 1/500th of a second shutter speed. A fast moving train above 70MPH I would suggest a shutter speed of around 1/1000th of a second. If the train is only crawling along or pulling away from a stop then you can drop down to around 1/250th of a second.