Digital Photo Gallery of Ted Szukalski
Fine art digital photography, photographic news, reviews, articles and resources.

Solving a crossword

Similarly to this man waiting for his morning train, I too often use the newspaper crosswords or sudoku puzzle to kill the time.

Urban Reflection

I had to travel on a different line than usual. While I was waiting for my train to depart another train pulled along side the train I was in. I have noticed very strong, vivid landscape like reflections in its windows. I took the camera out of my bag run along all windows in my carriage trying to find the best of these reflections. This photograph is the result of this search. I think it is quite cool.

Stranded commuters at Berowra station _MG_1013

Today, yet again, City Rail has failed its customers. The peak hour train to Central Coast has developed a problem and one of the carriages has started to fill in with heavy, chemical smoke. The train stopped at Berowra and commuters left the carriage by themselves. There was no warning over the PA. Worse yet, once the City Rail stuff have found the smoke they still allowed the commuters to return on the train without finding the underlying cause.

Fireman leaving Berowra station _MG_1023

I watched in disbelief the same was repeated upon arrival of the Fire brigade. No communication was issued to hundreds of people sitting on the train. It took another 15 minutes before finally someone decided the further trip was not possible for this train and everyone was asked to leave and wait for the following service.

Stranded commuters at Berowra station _MG_1020

To me this situation demonstrated City Rail is poorly prepared for emergency situations. In case like this where a carriage is filled with choking smoke, everyone should have been asked to leave until the train was declared safe. This time the smoke proved to be the result of a blocked break but next time it may be something more serious.

Passenger

I took this photograph a few days ago as an experiment. Two trains passing each other at hight speed. I was on top deck of one of them and this male passenger was on bottom deck of the passing train. Under normal circumstances there is not enough light to illuminate people on the train through the dirty and dark windows. This time I had a bit of luck as the evening sun shine straight onto this man’s face. For a photo taken through two sets of dirty and scratched windows at close to 100km/h it turned out quite OK. The slant in the windows comes from the perspective of my view.

Burnt Honda at train station carpark

A very chilling sight has welcomed the commuters at my train station this morning: a burnt Honda at train station car park. Someone will return from work to see their car torched. This sight brings unease to all the people who leave their cars there daily and that means more than 100 people. This is vandalism at its worse and I certainly hope all the security cameras installed there captured the event and will help in identifying the offenders.

If you have ever travelled on Sydney’s train early in the morning or during the evening rush hour you would know what it feels like in a can of sardines. Here we have a young, selfish woman making no notice of the fact someone may want to sit down and she is occupying 2 seats. Very inconsiderate.