A PHOTOGRAPHER’S VIEWPOINT

In Issue 142, 30^th September – 27^th October 2010, of Heritage Railway we find an article by David Wilcock about modern steam railway photography entitled “Dying a slow death from ‘Kinchley Lane Syndrome’“.  His opening paragraph reads as follows; “It’s difficult, if not impossible to assess just how many people regularly take railway photographs in the UK today, but one thing that isn’t in doubt, is the quality of their work.  For the most part, it ranges from ‘decidedly average’ to ‘lamentable’, frequently lacking in imagination and originality, and often technically bankrupt.”

In one single breath he has both guaranteed to grab your attention and raise your hackles.  A journalistic trick that’s pretty well played out by the tabloids every day, but not one that might be expected to be seen amongst the pages of an allegedly respected railway magazine.  In his own defence he goes on to state; “I’m sure these comments will be regarded as deliberately provocative in some quarters, and made with the intention of supporting a ‘cheap headline – but hand-on-heart, they are not.”

Well that’s a matter of opinion and judging by the mail in the following edition the comment fell upon stony ground.  But he had certainly loaded the gun and as the article progressed it was pretty clear that the muzzle was beginning to droop towards his own feet.  Wilcock is always viewed as a controversial writer but doesn’t seem to have grasped that controversy for controversy’s sake isn’t always a good thing.  In more than 30 years of working in the railway press, he states, he has served three terms in the editorial chair of different magazines.  An interesting admission!

The problem is that Wilcock doesn’t define just who these people who regularly take photographs of railways are.  We must therefore assume that he includes the many thousands of ‘linesiders’, which I will define as enthusiasts and additionally people who happen to be in the right place at the right time to take a ‘snap’ of a passing steam train.  The very same people who would wave at a train were it not for the camera pressed to their face.  Perhaps their photographs are average, but does that matter a jot if they later derive pleasure from viewing their image.  That’s what amateur photography is all about after all, whether it’s a picture of a train, your cat or grandma and the kids on the beach at Brighton, as long as it gives pleasure then that’s ok in my book.

And surely is it not these enthusiasts who put their hand in their pockets to buy magazines such as Heritage Railway?  A brave thing, this article, since it’s sanitised sneering is evident through the passage of the paragraphs.  Did it get my back up?  Sure it did with passages such as “……the message is – go away, up your game, produce competent, balanced, imaginative photographs that set your contributions apart from those taken by the flocks of sheep….”  So now his readership is no more than a flock of sheep!  Bah humbug!

Basically Wilcock is banging on about the standard of railway photography being no more than the standard three quarter view of an approaching train and that few photographers are innovative.  In this sense the article is mischievous since it fails to mention that railway magazines print page after page of ‘standard’ three quarter views of approaching trains.  If editors have a choice from the thousands of images he states pass across the desk, then some of those must be innovative which begs the question why aren’t more chosen?  Wilcock counters this by saying “Even editors are sometimes afraid to publish adventuresome or avant garde shots.”

So where is he going?  The masses are apparently producing photographs which are “frequently lacking in imagination and originality”; and yet if they did produce something imaginative the editor may be afraid to publish them.  The muzzle of his gun is now passing his knee in its downwards traverse.

My own experience with what we shall call 'an inovative' image occurred at the time our Collett Mixed Traffic loco 3205 returned to service earlier this year.  I photographed for two days with the express intention of sending images of this momentous event to the railway magazines.  I received an email from a railway magazine correspondent stating that whilst he thought the images were great the magazine designer wouldn’t let him use them.  When I asked why I was told that the designer didn’t like telephoto lenses, but if I had a good three quarter front view they would print that.  The rejected image is on the right. I pass no comment!

In a determined effort to show his readers what an innovative image is, on page 45 he prints a photograph of Duchess of Sutherland entering a tunnel.  The photograph was shot through the tunnel from the far end.  Admittedly it was an excellent shot of the dark walls of a tunnel but one person who wrote in to the following month’s edition said, “I don’t want to stand at the entrance to a small tunnel and experiment with innovation by photographing the front of the boiler of Duchess of Sutherland.”  Another on the Letters Page complained about, “David Wilcock’s vitriolic attack against thousands of enthusiastic amateur photographers who spend a great deal of their time and money pursuing their hobby of railway photography.”  He describes some of the words used, quoted by me earlier, as a, “disgraceful attack on those who cannot defend themselves.”  And he ends up by describing Wilcock’s example of innovation as, “a small image of a lopsided loco entering a tunnel.”  Well that shot went down well then – like dropping the fire at the end of a day’s running.