Not quite the shot at Ticknock

Sometimes despite a lot of preparation, the photo you plan eludes you.

Dublin Bus Volvo Olympian RV414 at Ticknock (click on any photo for fullsize version)

The bus is climbing Simon’s Ridge, having just left the 114 terminus in the development below, and is headed for the coastal village of Blackrock, where it meets with the DART rail service. Like the 102 on the northside, this is an official “DART feeder route” so through bus/rail tickets can be bought from the driver.

Just a few years ago, the only service that passed anywhere close to this spot was the infrequent single-deck 44B on its way to the mountain communities of Barnacullia and Glencullen. Now, as the city rapidly spreads up into the foothills of the Dublin Mountains, more regular bus services have followed.

This spot affords a fine view across the city below, and of Dublin Bay, and I’d wanted for a while to get a shot of a bus here with the city as backdrop.

It didn’t quite work out as I planned though, for reasons discussed below, and this view is to fuzzy and not exactly the one I wanted, though it is passable I suppose.

When I positioned mself by the roadside to get the picture, I noticed that from my position, the 114 terminus was visible in the development down below. I would therefore easily be able to see when the bus was on its way up, and I grabbed a shot of it from afar with the city behind, as a csort of “bus in landscape” picture. Behind the apartments is the M50, though invisible here, and further back, and to the right of the picture, you can see a long way along Ballinteer Road, down as far as the junction of Ballinteer Avenue. In fact, at times I could see the buses turning from one to the other, so in theory it would be possible to have both a 14 and a 114 in the same shot, despite the fact that the two routes never meet!

Here the bus is just pulling away from the terminus to come up to me, and I’ve included this shot because the red lorry above it nicely illustrates the position of the M50 motorway.

Sometimes it just happens that no matter how long you wait, or how much you plan, something will ruin your shot. There had been no traffic for 10 minutes, but just as the bus hove into view, I could hear a car coming up behind me, and I knew that unless I went early, it would block the picture at exactly the wrong moment.

I had wanted the bus to be further towards me, just a little past the stop, so I would get both the city and the bay in the background. But I had to shoot early, and hope I could rescue the picture by cropping it in, which is what I did in the end, to produce the top shot of this page. Bit of a compromise though, as when you are cropping in to a more distant object, it is not as clear, and it also wasn’t quite where I wanted it to be.

Never mind, I shall come again one day and get a better picture, and if I’m lucky enough with sunlight I can use a faster exposure and have a slightly sharper image too.

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