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30 Aug 2016

Seen from the bus


So often I see photos from a car,a bus,a train or even a plane but then they are  gone before I have my camera out.
I was travelling on a country train in Italy 6 years ago and it was rattling along at a fair clip when suddenly a beautiful small village on a hill bathed in golden late afternoon light was precisely framed through the window on the opposite side of the compartment. I had my camera on the seat next to me,I rapidly raised it to my eye,powered it up but the scene had gone. I can still see it in my mind's eye.
Too often when I am driving I see a photo op but just do not have the opportunity to stop and turn round and shoot it. Also when I am driving a long distance I have this irrational desire to keep moving and cover the ground.
A few weeks ago I was driving back along a backroad south of Foster,NSW when I passed an abandoned farmhouse up a muddy track. I thought " photo" and for once decided to turn back. I found a place to pull over and went back but when I got there it was a disappointment. Perhaps I had mentally Photoshopped the scene in my mind after it had flashed past. Because I had made the effort to turn back I felt obligated to take a few photos but I knew that they were destined for the trash bin.
The photo above is one I did not miss. Taken through the window of a bus in Myanmar. In fact the bus was in a line of slow moving traffic leaving a temple complex and had already passed the herdsman once so I was ready for when he repassed us on the sidetrack. I lucked it with the late afternoon light and perhaps more surprisingly the bus window was clean.
Note since writing this I have realised that no way could I have taken that photo through the glass window of a dirty local bus so I must have slid the bus window open.

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