Bus Bingo - not ready to call yet!
When your favourite bus company introduces forty-five new vehicles the race is on for enthusiasts like us to get out and capture a photo of each one while they're ever so shiny and new.
However, bringing them out in November and December makes the task for us all the more difficult: the number of daylight hours available at this time of year amounts to just a few (usually best only between 11 and 1.30), the quality of the the light is either very poor with gloomy conditions that challenge even the best camera or the low sun casts so many shadows it's sometimes more of a hindrance. And with the salt and grime from the road surface dirtying the buses you might be tempted to ask the question....why bother?
With so many new fleet numbers to find it's best to make a list and cancel them off as each one is photographed. I call this playing Bus Bingo! The snapshot here of these numbers is my third list this past month and shows the fleet numbers I still require to find. You can see the crossed-out numbers that have already been captured and those still outstanding. As the numbers diminish the task gets harder as there are fewer of them to locate. It's just like being at the Bingo: you cross the numbers off your list as you get them and wait for ages for the last one.
When I cross the last one off this scrappy piece of paper I can call HOUSE! I'll then have a photo of every Lothian bus in the fleet..all 650 of them. It's as simple as that, but then there's a story to write for each one just to keep you all amused!
One day Lothian's former Environmental Manager Dr Steve Johnson kindly invited me into the office and showed me the computerised bus running programme. It was marvellous to see where about every bus was and on which route at that moment. I said I would love to be able to access this in order to know where everything was, but Steve said "ah but Stuart it's the chase that makes it all the more fun, to find them for yourself". How true that statement is.
Stuart Montgomery completed capturing photographs of Lothan's B5's and Volvo Hybrid single deckers on Saturday the 11th of January 2015.
Bus Bingo - not ready to call yet!
When your favourite bus company introduces forty-five new vehicles the race is on for enthusiasts like us to get out and capture a photo of each one while they're ever so shiny and new.
However, bringing them out in November and December makes the task for us all the more difficult: the number of daylight hours available at this time of year amounts to just a few (usually best only between 11 and 1.30), the quality of the the light is either very poor with gloomy conditions that challenge even the best camera or the low sun casts so many shadows it's sometimes more of a hindrance. And with the salt and grime from the road surface dirtying the buses you might be tempted to ask the question....why bother?
With so many new fleet numbers to find it's best to make a list and cancel them off as each one is photographed. I call this playing Bus Bingo! The snapshot here of these numbers is my third list this past month and shows the fleet numbers I still require to find. You can see the crossed-out numbers that have already been captured and those still outstanding. As the numbers diminish the task gets harder as there are fewer of them to locate. It's just like being at the Bingo: you cross the numbers off your list as you get them and wait for ages for the last one.
When I cross the last one off this scrappy piece of paper I can call HOUSE! I'll then have a photo of every Lothian bus in the fleet..all 650 of them. It's as simple as that, but then there's a story to write for each one just to keep you all amused!
One day Lothian's former Environmental Manager Dr Steve Johnson kindly invited me into the office and showed me the computerised bus running programme. It was marvellous to see where about every bus was and on which route at that moment. I said I would love to be able to access this in order to know where everything was, but Steve said "ah but Stuart it's the chase that makes it all the more fun, to find them for yourself". How true that statement is.
Stuart Montgomery completed capturing photographs of Lothan's B5's and Volvo Hybrid single deckers on Saturday the 11th of January 2015.