(11 Sep 2015, 11:40 am)MurdnunoC But what, do you feel, goes wrong?
Just as you have you right to take photographs of buses in public places, the public also have the same right to walk in front of any shot you're attempting to take. I get the impression you seem to take it personally but, more often than not, people are indifferent to what you are doing and probably don't notice you with your camera out.
You also seemingly get upset when things go to 'plan' - nothing peculiar about that as most of us do. But, in the context of your hobby, is there any need to plan? Why don't you just go with the flow instead? Get whichever bus happens to be in there instead of planning to get this specific bus at this specific time to get that specific shot. When plans go wrong, you get upset. But if you don't have a plan there's nothing to really get upset about and, you never know, something unexpected may show to photograph instead.
Don't take your hobby too seriously is what, I think, I'm trying to say.
I understand the first point about people walking in front of the camera, there is nothing to stop them walking in front but it is a little frustrating when it's something you'd like a photo of, yesterday was especially annoying as I was in Ripon yesterday so the photo that got screwed up is not something I could easily get again another day and was part of the reason why I ventured to Ripon again yesterday was because I had previously done a trip to Ripon a few months back and had very little time in Ripon and I ended up missing getting a photo because the bus arrived in Ripon late and my next bus left just before it came back. Fortunately the bus I wanted a photo of came back shortly afterwards and was parked in the bus station for the next hour.
I tend to not do many concrete plans anymore, I usually only do so when I am travelling on routes with limited frequency's such as many of the routes I was using yesterday. The last time I went totally mad about not sticking to a plan was because a bus turned up late and left out of service leaving us to wait longer and I was at serious risk at being stuck in Northallerton for nearly two hours and I came
very close to this happening, this is usually when I get a bit annoyed when there is a risk of being "stuck" somewhere for a considerable amount of time although I did get annoyed that day I ventured up to Carlisle where I had planned to head up to Hexham on the way but had to drop it from the plan due to delays due to roadworks on the 7 and X21 routes putting me behind time. I don't make many solid plans, I usually plan roughly where I plan to go, so for example I could say I'm heading to Newcastle then see where the day takes me sort of thing or if I do plan to go places I will plan to go places but if it's somewhere with a reasonable frequency it won't bother me so much if I end up on a different bus to what I was originally aiming for.
Fortunately I am very busy next week doing other things so I may quickly head up to Bishop Auckland for the Sapphire launch on Tuesday then maybe take a few photos of them in service the following day. This will give me a bit of a break from the hobby for a bit.
(11 Sep 2015, 11:42 am)aureolin When I first started taking photos again, I used to run round like an idiot getting 'rare workings' photographed or even buses on their first days in service. Nowadays I'm much more relaxed about it, and just travel where I want to travel. I'll spend a bit of time there photographing and simply seeing what comes along.
With rare workings I don't usually tend go right out of way to get photos of them usually, if I spot a post in say, the Arriva Odd Workings thread of a unusual allocation I will only usually chase after it if I know exactly when it will appear somewhere and if I'm in the area, so if something will pass through Newton Aycliffe at a certain time and I'm not doing anything I will quickly run out for a photo as I'm only out for not very long in this case or if I'm in say, Newcastle and someone says they have just seen a odd working at Regent Centre heading towards Haymarket I will hang around a few minutes for it to appear. I don't always get odd workings though, could have had 1406 on the 7 last night but I didn't bother, especially as I had been out for nearly 12 hours by this point due to the issues with the X66. I do tend to make some effort with new stuff, on Tuesday I made a quick trip to Stockton to photograph one of the new E300's but I knew it was on a fairly local route so I wouldn't have more than about an hour to wait and fortunately on my way there someone gave the journey it was currently operating so I knew what time it would reappear in Stockton so I had 30 minutes to wait so I did some other things in this time including having a look in Sound It Out to kill the time rather than having a long boring snapping session so then turned up just before it came back and got the photo and then got a few more as I had a few minutes to wait for the X66 back to Darlington. Don't always go out of my way to get new buses and stuff like repaints/new brands etc. I haven't made much attempt to photograph the Diamond Citaro's which have been repainted blue, the two photos I've got of them so far have both been when I've spent a few minutes around MetroCentre and Newcastle, the one I took on Saturday I was only out getting photos for 5 minutes, I was going to get a shot of the X24 leaving the MetroCentre and thankfully it arrived on-time so I had a few minutes to wait for it to leave and in this time 5286 appeared so I got myself a photo whilst I was waiting. I'm not usually bothered about having every bus in a batch, I'm usually happy if I have just one photo, I've only uploaded one photo of the new Crusader branding and I've not been bothered about snapping any more although I did snap one the other day but didn't upload it as I had other stuff to upload and it wasn't a great photo because of where the sun was at the time which was the main reason for not uploading it.
