I had the lovely photographer Sarah around today to do the pictures for the magazine article I wrote. We initially started by carrying the model railway into the snow in the back garden and taking pictures there. The light was very good, but it was disconcerting to hear the “tink – tink” noises of things contracting in the freezing conditions. I think it is safe to say that even at 1:72 scale, railway lines suffer just as much from the weather. I was afraid of solder joints cracking under the strain of shrinking track, so we came back into the warmth to continue.

I had been worried about the feeble fake glow from the energy saving 8W bulbs, however Sarah and her kit impressed me. She took a photo of nothing but a white sheet of paper, then used a setting on her camera to treat the colour of the resulting image as the camera’s white-point. Then hey presto! Suddenly all the pictures looked just like we were outside again with perfect light, only we weren’t.

Later on tonight I’m going to choose a dozen or so pictures to send and write the captions. Then I’ll send them off to the editor via email. Easy peasy. Or something like that.