Last night I spent about an hour going through photos on Flickr tagged with 'skytrain'. (At some point I'll move on to another obsession, but until then... ) Not to be mistaken with photos of the elevated light rail in Bangkok with the similar title "Skytrain" (note the miniscule 't'), only ever having taken the Vancouver system, I had gone through the photos wondering which were the best ones. The ones I liked the most fit into two categories: photos of tracks and photos of blurry trains and/or tracks as the trains were in motion, using long exposures as well as a copule of photos of empty SkyTrain cars. Here are the highlights, with people I know personally disclosed.
Blurry or Long Exposure
- SkyTrain streak from hudrednorth
- CeeBee's "SkyTrain Vancouver
- "skytrain front seat (retreating)"
- Bill Stillwell's b&w photo
- Eldon Whalen's "G-Force"
- Terry Forrest's motion blur series
- if SMeaLLuM wins the award for coolest blurry SkyTrain tracks photo, who has a just as cool underground shot and another above ground he also wins the award for most annoying capitalization
- Will Pate's "Skytrain Under the City" wins the "Hey I Know That Guy" award (Roland, easily with the most photos tagged with 'skytrain', comes in a close second
- PoYang wins best use of stationary object (in this case, a human) of a train whizzing by
- Christopher Chen's "Bombardier SkyTrain" makes the train look like a white glob
- Eastbound train at an empty-looking Main Street Station, with a westbound train at the same station
- also at Main Street-Science World is "Expedited Parallels", with Pacific Central in the background
Tracks/Guideways
- "Commercial looking up..."
- "Tracking Over" in New Westminster
- "SkyTrain Tracks" (taken near where I took the elevated guideways shot)
- hundrednorth wins the "Hey I Know That Girl" award with what looks like a tree between the tracks (the photo appears to the right as well)
- Roland's in July 2004, one of the earliest posted to Flickr, of tracks near Gilmore Station
- a photo that makes the tracks seem higher than they are
- Travis Smith's photo of a train over Commercial Drive Station got entered in the "Hey I Know That Guy" category (he didn't win)
- Jonathan Schwartz posted multiple photos of tracks as did Stephanie (she wins the award in the "Person Other Than Me Or Roland to Have Photos Tagged With 'skyte'" category)
- two photos (1, 2) with sky between the tracks
- two more from Zoomlens (see the "Expedited Parallels" photo linked above), both involving a shopping cart: one with it as a central figure, another with it off to the side
Empty
The award for most interesting thing done on SkyTrain (other than kissing, of course) has to be playing board games (from another perspective).
Are there any photos, posted on Flickr, that I might have missed?
Photos I missed, including photos submitted to Flickr after I originally posted this:
- after seeing Dave Elton looking at a blurry SkyTrain, I check out his other photos tagged with 'skytrain', which includes a blurry SkyTrain in November 2005 near Stadium Station, and another colourful blurry train. More time passes, and he posts, on May 20th, 2006, a blurry SkyTrain near Quebec St. and another.
- Some great photos of SkyTrain arriving at Commercial Station: original and b&w version.
- A photo below the tracks, blurry, heading towards Main Street station.
- Brassy 1 posts the blurry lights of a passing SkyTrain
