Zenfolio have decided to add a blog facility to the site. So, here goes...
All comments and observations are mine and don't represent anyone that I work for.
It's been a great few weeks here in Kuala Lumpur but the time has come to move on. This morning I booked my ticket on Friday's 08.45 'Sinaran Utara' train from KL to Butterworth, which will give me a last night in Georgetown (my favourite place in Malaysia) before catching the train back across the border into Thailand. The weather was beautiful - sunny and cool, which made me decide to enjoy a last trip up the branch to Batu Caves. Sadly, poor old KTMB weren't having a good day. At Sentral, the underground platform used by Batu trains resembled a cascade as a drainpipe had broken letting a torrent of water through the ceiling. One elderly member of staff was doing his best King Canute impression to keep the area clear, valiantly brushing the floodwaters that threatened to engulf him over the edge of the platform onto the tracks!
That was just the prelude. The train I caught ground to a halt just outside Batu caves, sitting there without explanation for 20 minutes before turning tail and retracing its tracks (literally) to the previous station where we were told to get off and wait for the next train - working 'bang road'.
It turned out that a cement train right in front of my train had failed and stopped the job.
But, in their wisdom (and to their credit) KTMB had installed bi-directional signalling when the line was modernised a couple of years ago. Thus a plan B was soon put into operation and the Batu branch effectively became a single line again. Not that it was much fun for the crew of the cement train. No-one seemed in a hurry to rescue it so it was still sitting there 4 hours later. I hope the cab air-conditioning still worked...
Having had enough excitement for one day I retreated back to my room in Chinatown before nipping out for a beer and a spot of people watching at my favourite spot - a Chinese restaurant straddling a busy corner*. As an 'old lag' I've got to know the staff. They were in a playful and talkative mood tonight because it was the bosses night off. That was when I learned what they earn in an 8 hour shift wouldn't even pay for three beers (around £9).
I made sure that I left a tip...
P
* There'll be more about this in a longer blog.
It's another grey and thundery day here in KL, so I decided to stay in and catch up on some more picture editing. They say that every cloud has a silver lining. Well, the upside of the demise of my old Fotopic site was that it gave the the impetus needed to go right back through my old archives and take another look at what I had.
Although (for obvious reasons) I haven't got all my old slides with me. I do have all the digital archive. The past few months in Asia have given me chance to start trawling through it, take a fresh look and decide what to add to this site.
Talk about a trip down memory lane..!
I went digital at the beginning of 2004. Like many photographers, I was hesitant because of the talk about quality issues. Now, with the benefit of hindsight I wish that I'd taken the plunge much earlier. Because one issue that some forgot was that you don't have to worry about the quality of a picture your camera is incapable of taking in the first place!
Looking back over the first few years makes me realise just how many more pictures I could take. There was no more swapping films mid-roll, or the need to carry around two camera bodies with different films in them. You just changed the ISO setting and away you went. The other thing digital allowed me was the freedom to experiment and to preview the image - learning from your mistakes as you made them. No more worries about how much it was costing you to press the shutter, no need to be miserly with your exposures - what freedom it gave us!
Right now I'm editing the pictures taken on my first DSLR - a Nikon D100. The quality of them still impresses me now. What's also interesting to see is the way my photographic skills and techniques developed because of that new found freedom - even if my Photoshop ones lagged behind!
There is another thing that looking through the early archive shows - which is just how much the subject matter was changing. The mid-noughties was a crucial time for the railways as modernisation of the train fleets really took off. In 2005 the old Southern slammers were in their final months of service, as was LHCS on the West Coast. Plus, Cross-Country was going over to an all Voyager fleet.
And it wasn't all about the trains. Building the second part of the Channel tunnel rail link into St Pancras was well under way and I was lucky enough to be commissioned by RAIL magazine to follow the progress - as well as taking a lot of my own archive shots. It was a great time to be a photographer following the railways.
OK, I've talked about the silver lining, but let's not forget about the cloud. Re-editing all these pictures, uploading them to the site and then adding captions is a nightmare in the amount of time it takes. It took me 7 years to get them on-line in the first place. I don't have the luxury of another seven to get them back online. But for me it's a job and it's got to be done. The people I feel sorry for are the photographers who lost their websites when Fotopic pulled the plug and who have neither the time, or in some cases - the pictures to replace. It still makes me angry that a lot of social history has disappeared from the archive through Fotopics actions - and we're all the poorer for it.
Damn you Fotopic!
Paul
I'm starting to lose track of time here in Kuala Lumpur. What was meant to be a quick visit has turned into a five week sojourn. A word of advice. If you ever need to get a camera lens repaired here check just how many holidays you might fall foul of. I got caught out by both the Chinese New Year and the Hindu festival of Thaipusam!
On the bright side, kicking my heels here turned out to be very useful as various opportunities presented themselves that I would have missed if I'd just nipped through..
Paul