Black clouds over Banaz

Our tour departed from Usak in late afternoon (around 3.30pm) after the final members of the party had arrived on the express from Izmir. The first leg of our tour was to take us a relatively short distance, from Usak to Banaz, in the hope of getting some good sunset shots.

Steaming beautifully

It all started well enough with a couple of good stops in full sun, before the black clouds rolled in – bringing with them thunder and lightning. It would have been possible, with a bit of luck, to get lightning in the background of a shot though I certainly didn’t manage this. Nevertheless, we still managed four or five runpasts before the rain really kicked in at 5.15pm.

Needless to say, there was no glorious sunset to be photographed. If the resulting shots were far from stunning, it was nevertheless a good taster for the tour and got me in the right frame of mind for the photography that lay ahead. I have a habit of taking some really rubbish shots at the start of any tour, so I was relieved to have gotten my rusty moments out of the way!

Steam en route to Banaz

Banaz station is not exactly a busy place during daylight – it sees just four passenger trains a day and all of these arrive between midnight and 4am! This left us plenty of time to play with for a night shoot, but first we sought out some food. A restaurant in town somehow managed to cope with an invasion of photographers and served up some pretty tasty lamb/cheese pide with a soft drink (a bargain at 15 Turkish lira apiece) before we returned.

Black clouds over Banaz

I wasn’t feeling particularly inspired, so opted to sit this night shoot out and enjoyed the spectacle from a distance. Once the last shots had been fired we boarded a couple of buses for the short run back to Uşak, reaching our hotel at 10pm.