Ghost Train

I have been making regular rail commutes across the north west region of England for a couple of months now. Whilst on one of these journeys I became interested in the relationship between the environment of the train carriage, my fellow passengers and the world outside the window. As a dedicated iphoneographer I am always looking for interesting new projects. The setting of the train carriage had great potential for shooting unobserved portraits - lots of unique characters sitting in close proximity, engrossed in their own little worlds. I liked the idea of shooting a series of portraits of people traveling on trains but I wanted to give the images an edge - present them in a slightly different way. Whilst surreptitiously checking out my fellow passengers I was occasionally looked back at. When the eyes of strangers meet, in this way, there is often a slight embarrassment before one of the people, breaks the gaze and looks away. Invariably it was me that looked away first - sometimes focusing on other passengers but mostly, swivelling my head to look out of the window . The quality of light outside the train hugely affected what I saw. If bright, I would clearly see the outside view rushing by, if darker conditions prevailed, the inside of the carriage would be reflected back in the glass. I decided I wanted to get all of this visual information into one shot. To achieve this I could either shoot reflections (something I often do) or I could make multiple exposures. I opted for the latter.

Having only briefly experimented with Hipstamatic’s multiple exposure kit I began to shoot exclusively with the button activated. My first exposure is always the portrait and the second is either an interior shot (of the train carriage) or the view from the window. The end result is a portrait, with additional information about the subject’s environment. By exposing twice, more information is packed into the final frame, overlapping scenes give ghostly reflections and the appearance of intersecting worlds. My lens of choice is the Loftus and

I’m using it in combination with the D-Type Plate film.