Brand New Jigsaw Puzzle Design of The Flying Scotsman Locomotive Train.
Over the past few days I’ve been getting lots of messages from customers that know about my jigsaw puzzle making, that all knew of The Flying Scotsman and that it would be traveling through Hinckley, my home town.
They all told me about it and probably was secretly hoping that I would go and get a photograph to make in to a Jigsaw Puzzle.
How could I refuse such a unique opportunity?
Of course, I couldn’t and now I have a great photograph that i will make in to a jigsaw puzzle of The Flying Scotsman!
Yes it’s exciting isn’t it?
I know!
Here it is…..
The Flying Scotsman passing through Hinckley Railway Station in Leicestershire.
So the plan is to now get stuck in to creating a new design for the packaging over the Christmas period and create a point of sale for you to place your orders.
Once again I’ll be offering pre-orders at a discounted rate while the puzzle is in production.
So make sure you sign up for my emails to stay in touch and find out when it’s ready should you wish to get one for yourself or a loved one.
Here’s a little bit of information around how I made it…
After receiving lots of tip offs, I dropped my daughter at school on the Wednesday morning of the 13th of December 2023 and headed to my studio to sort out my equipment and then drove to Hinckley Railway Station. Upon arrival I sat in my van because I was about 10 minutes early. I wanted to stay in the warm because it was a bit chilly and sat scrolling through my Facebook feed and to my horror, I came across a post that said The Flying Scotsman had made a flying stop at Humberstone Gate in Leicester and was therefore going to go through Hinckley station 10 minutes early. I grabbed my camera and ran to the station to find there was already approximately a hundred people on the bridge and lining both platforms.
I made my way to the end of the platform because I knew it would work best if I went to the back and zoomed in to the composition I wanted so it would compress the image and include more details in the frame, which always works well for a jigsaw puzzle.
I took my position and then looked around and spotted some of the other professional photographers that I knew on the other side of the platform, to which we had some banter across the tracks. It did actually raise a concern to me over whether I’d picked the right side of the platform though.
I wanted to have the station visible in the background and get the people on the bridge.
Then an Intercity came whizzing through and I noted the speed, considering that The Flying Scotsman would emulate that speed as it wasn’t stopping. This meant to me that I would have to increase the shutter speed to make sure I could have a sharp image.
The settings I used was 1/800th of a second at f6.3 with an ISO of 3200.
In post production I performed a post crop to 7:5 in order to be the right size for a jigsaw puzzle. I altered the exposure to look as it did when I was there, sharpened it a little and had to do Denoise because of the amount of ISO I had to use to get the fast shutter speed.
I then prefocused the shot on the station and when she came flying through I just kept hitting the shutter button and managed about 6 photographs to get to choose this single one.
That’s how I made this photograph, so if you would now like to express an interest in buying this puzzle when it’s ready, please enter your email address below and I’ll be in touch when it’s ready.