I am a pure amateur photographer and contrary to many, I enjoy as much the post processing of images as I like to go out taking the pictures.

I don’t have a particular or personal style, nor subject preference. When I visit a city, I love to dwell with my camera in train stations.

This image was taken at the Antwerp central station, and a have it both in color and black & white versions. Antwerp Central station is one of the oldest and most beautiful train stations in Belgium, and a regular destination for many amateur photographers. And the advantage of a big railway station is that it’s easy to reach… by train.

Although from time to time I do some ICM, usually I take my pictures using (very) short shutter times. Depending on my mood and inspiration, I might select a few of the images to apply post-processing, using different techniques, until I come to a result that appeals to me. This might take me anything from half an hour to several hours, sometimes spread over a couple of days. My “acceptance” of the end result is driven rather by the mood that it stirs in me, more than by a technical assessment.

This shot started as a “frozen” 1/200 sec image with low ISO, because taken from the inside of the station hall against relatively bright daylight. When converting to black and white I increased the contrast to add more “depth”.

As it comes, the subject is rather ordinary as it only depicts people on their way to embark on a waiting train, so I decided to enhance the mood by using the vertical and horizontal elements in the shot, but in a soft way.

What do you think are the TWO most impactful features that make your image a good photograph? Don’t be shy!

In contrary to ports and airports, it is easier to capture the connection between the travelers, the stayers and the means of travel at train stations. It creates a specific atmosphere. A second thing is that although every person, every part of the scene and every train is unique and has formal identifiers like a name, a number or a destination, to me as a photographer-observer, everything happens in total anonymity. Thirdly and finally, although there might be a lot of “still moments”, the essence of a station is movement, activity. The combination of those three elements might give some of the viewers a feeling of familiarity and relation to this image.

If you would be able to make this photo once again, what would be the ONE thing you would like to do better or different?

In the black and white version I’d definitely try to remove or “attenuate” the black announcement board just above the train, as it takes just that too much focus away from the globality of the scene. This is much less the case in the color version of the same image, as the yellow characters indicating the destination are bringing the right amount of balance, making this part perfectly fit into the whole image. Here, due to the B&W conversion, it stands out too strongly.

Bruno Flour shared this photograph in the FRAMES Facebook Group.

Photographer

Bruno Flour, Oostende, Belgium

WEBSITE

Equipment and settings

Canon EOS 5DS + 70-200mm lens.
Post processing in Lightroom and Photoshop.