2010

Here's the second shot of the 810 and its coach on the crossing.

And, finally, to conclude the sequence, here are the gates raising.

Immediately after getting back from Greece, I loaded up the Ikoflex, for the first time in a few years, with a roll of expired Pan F that I had. The results were fine, some of my better shots, actually, but I had trouble finding a lab that were willing to scan the negatives. In the end, I had prints made and scanned them, but I'm still looking for a proper scanner to have these done.

Swinging the Ikoflex (still on the tripod) over to my right, I got this shot right after the Tynsky Chram shot.

While crossing the Vltava on the Manesuv Most, I used both the Ikoflex and the cameraphone, although strangely I preferred what the cameraphone gave me on this occasion.

In Malostranske Namesti, I took two shots of Miklasky Chram. This was the better one. The lines through the picture in the sky are the cantenary for the trams, another fixture of the square for over 100 years.

As I was walking back from the Mala Strana, I thought the light had improved, so I took another shot of Tynsky Chram. I haven't decided which is better, as this one actually looks darker.

I decided awhile ago to cut back on the idiot parking shots, but this was so good I couldn't resist. The car on the right is not only double-parked, but double-parked in heavy snow, and obviously immobile for a long time. The Audi in the foreground was only able to park because this is the last spot before the corner.

On my first night back in Prague, there was a major snowstorm, and my flight only just made it back without having to be cancelled. On my first full day after the storm, I shot 120 film with my Ikoflex, for the first time in several years. I shot expired film, and when I had finished, I realised that my roll of Fujicolor Superia 1600 was also expired, and that I had to use it before it expired too badly. I had meant to take Metro photos with it, which I did, but I also got pictures like this one, in the snow, at night, with a handheld camera (my Nikon N80).

This is the southern entrance to the Metro station at Haje. I did the photo shoot at night. Haje was originally called Kosmonautů when it was opened in 1980.

DPP started to take delivery of their Seimens M1 Metro trains in 1998, but it took until 2003 for them to fully replace the Communist-era trains on the C-Line, or red line. By the time I arrived a few years later, they were already badly vandalised, but since that time they've been cleaned up. Really, Prague needs more of them, on the C-Line and elsewhere, but DPP are stalling on buying new rolling stock. The trains have become quite overloaded in the past two years, and still the problem continues. On this night, however, the trains were pretty empty because it was too early for the clubbers to be coming home, yet too late for most of them to be heading out, even though it was Saturday.

The light traffic at the hour I did my shoot allowed me to get some decent interior shots of the M1.

Here's a shot right down the middle of the aisle. The M1's come in two seating configurations that I know of, one without any seats facing inward, and one with them, like this one. To the best of my knowledge, nearly everyone prefers this configuration, as the former obstructs seating, standing, and movement through the coach. Generally speaking, I can't think of what moron would think that using seats not facing inward on a Metro train would be a good idea, as I've nearly had my knees taken out, or been shoved into the seats by rude people, on multiple occassions. For that matter, I think that ALL of the seats should face in, as on the old Russian Metro trains that were still in use when I moved to Prague. This is the system used on the New York City subway, the Tokyo subway, the Budapest Metro, and most of the London Underground (with the exception of the Metropolitan and East London Lines), so it's a no-brainer that it's quite standard throughout the world for a reason.

This is the I.P. Pavlova Metro station, one of the oldest on the system, built around 1970, if I'm not mistaken. Construction of the Metro lasted from about 1967-1974, with service starting between what is now Florenc (then called Sokolovska) and Kacerov in 1974.

Having 1600 ISO film allowed me to photograph moving trams with a handheld camera in the middle of the night, so since I had limited time to photograph the Metro as midnight approached, I settled down in I.P. Pavlova to do some tram photography. This T3SU, on Jugoslavska at the intersection of Jugoslavska and Belehradska, has advertising livery for a bakery.

Here's a T6A5 at the intersection of Jugoslavska and Belehradska. The snow was much deeper than it looks here, partly because the streets have been partially ploughed already.

Here's #8604 at the I.P. Pavlova tram stop on Jugoslavska, which becomes Jecna after the next intersection. The Metro station in on the corner of that intersection behind the tram stop in this photo.

This was the scene on Monday morning, with powdered snow still swirling around. The temperature stayed very low for a very long time, days and days. At one point it supposedly got down to -26 Celsius, although not for a long time (this figure may have been taken outside Prague).