1 Year Of Digital Bus Photography!

Today (16th February 2009) I celebrate 1 year of digital bus photography! On the 16th of February 2008 I ventured out to Portsmouth to take the Gosport Ferry to Gosport when one of my friends convinced me to take my camera along (view my very first digital bus photograph!).

I have used the camera before on the 19th January 2008 when I visited my local Dairy Crest Milk Float depot. Since then my interest in bus photograph has gone from strength to strength and I have now got one of the largest collection of photographs of Southern England buses. I have tried train photography but I am not very good at it (view my photographs of the new steam locomotive Tornado!) therefore I only have a few train photographs.

My highlight of last year was officially taking the first ever photograph of a new Stagecoach South Alexander Dennis Enviro 300 for route 23 while it was on a test run in Purbrook. This was by chance as I was a passenger in a car at the time and had to take it through the windscreen! I think it came out quite good. So it seemed right to take a photograph of one of these buses for a special anniversary photograph, you can view this at the top of this post. I would like to thank all my supporters out there and I hope you still enjoy looking at my photographs. Lets hope for another good year to come!

BlueStars New Blue Buses

BlueStar

Originally uploaded by Black Telephone

As you may well know, the Scania OmniCity has now become the souths favourite new double decker bus! Metrobus, Southern Vectis, Unilink, Wilts & Dorset, Brighton & Hove and now BlueStar now operate them. BlueStar had a small launch cavocade before they enter service next monday. BlueStars OmniCities have the same specification as Wilts & Dorsets with leather trim on the seats. The only difference being them branded BlueStar. I am very impressed with these.

Note this is the very first post I made via Flickr, click on the photograph to view a larger version!

Bright New Buses In Brighton

I visited Brighton again today to view the brand new Scania OmniCity double deckers entering service on the orange ’Metro’ 5 route. I must say they are very impressive beasts! Nice comfortable Esteban seats which are much better than the previous MTB variety, hopefully this will be the end of faded seat back handles! The interior is quite dark though with the blue walls and window pillars combined with the dark grey seat backs but I do not find this a problem. The heater (which is located in a Wright Eclipse style ’saddle’ above the staircase) was very warm and I was actually sweating while there was an ‘artic’ chill outside! Overall 8/10, it would have been 10/10 if it were not for the terrible drivers.

Click on the photograph for a larger version!

New National Express Coaches!

At long last Portsmouth have recieved new coaches for National Express services! This is because Tellings Golden Miller have pulled out for some reason with Lucketts Travel taking over National Express duties and Stagecoach South taking over the Hoverbus. Twelve new Caetano Levantes were brought in to operate the National Express services which provide a much more comfortable and dignified journey. Certainly a lot more cheaper than the train nowadays and easier than driving the car to London.

Click here for a larger version of this photograph!

TGI Fotopic!

Yes, the Transport Enthusiasts favourite Photograph sharing website has returned today – Fotopic! Millions of photographs from over 60,000 users, some not even on the owners computer, could have been lost but hopefully this is now not the case. My Flickr website for the time being will be kept and will hold all my Telephone box photographs.

Bah Humbug!

So, what did I do over the Christmas holidays?

What presents did I get? Well like many other people, I got one ‘main’ present and many ‘little’ presents. This year I have got what I have been waiting for years for – a PlayStation 3! It is the latest model – the 160gb model which was only launched in the UK last October. Of course I did get some games with it, here is a list, if there is not a paragraph accompanying the game title it means I have not played it yet.

• LittleBigPlanet. I also got some James Bond and Doctor Who DVDs.   Great game for little brats but not suitable for someone of my age and attention span. Good graphics and colours. Stupendously easy and embarrassing to play in front of your parents!
• Midnight Club: Los Angeles. Superb game especially thanks to it’s very high definition graphics. The cars realistically crash and drive and the actual computerized person inside moves realistically, unlike old games where you could not see anyone inside the cars. The city is realistically reproduced in computer model form but the best bit is the way the ‘camera’ moves across the city to and from different races.
• Quantum of Solace. More and more games use pre-rendered footage to join up game sequences. Yes they look good but only the first time you see it, after which when you play the game again gets boring and tiring especially when you cannot press a button to move it on. Anyway about Quantum of Solace – I only played the couple of minutes as it was very annoying you cannot see Bond while playing as on the previous game From Russia With Love. Also the camera doesn’t turn with him but stays in the same place so you cannot see where you are going. The graphics are very poor for a supposedly Blue-Ray Playstation 3 quality game.
• Tomb Raider Underworld. Very good graphics to show off Lara Crofts assets. Could be a very good game but the instructions are not that clear with random quotes and buttons popping up everywhere. Once I dived into the sea that was it for me. Once I find someone who knows how to play it I’ll give it a good old excellent mark.

 

• Fifa 09.
• WWE Showdown.
• Grand Theft Auto IV.

Yesterday I finished taking photographs of the new Stagecoach South Enviro 300s as I have finally got a photograph of all eighteen.

Hello world!

Hello everybody! Welcome to my new web log! This is where I will post regularly about my adventures here in the south of england.

Now, to start things off let me tell you why I called this web log ‘The Black Telephone’. Well today, this morning a vintage antique black telephone arrived as an early Christmas present. Don’t worry folks I didn’t open a present early, it wasn’t wrapped up! Anyway I recieved it from someone who knows I have a keen interest in telephone boxes and he thought this was one of the old 200 series Bakelite telephones that used to be in the old K1 – K6 telephone boxes. Unfortunately it wasn’t but I liked it and decided to keep it anyway. I was always wondering what to write my first web log post about and what to call it and now I know.

Last Saturday I also visited Portsmouth to take more Photographs of Stagecoach South’s new Alexander Dennis Enviro 300s on route 23. So far I have thirteen out of eighteen. Unfortunately I did not get a photograph of the remaining five which are 27559/62/64/66/67. I did however add another Telephone box to my collection which was in Gosport near the Bus Station.

If you are interested in Telephone and Post boxes and transportation in the south of england then this is the place for you so stay tuned for more posts!