Wongm's Rail Gallery » About me

About me

I first started taking photographs of trains back in 2005, when I was a student commuting daily from Geelong to Melbourne, and started to take an interest in the trains that were taking me to university daily.

In the years since I have taken over a hundred thousand photos, with tens of thousands of them uploaded to this site - as someone who never knew the limitations of film, I take far too many photos of the same thing and need to cull them down!

My early photographs where taken around Geelong and Melbourne in my downtime between classes, but soon after I branched out into chasing trains across the Victorian countryside in my clapped out Ford Laser.

After a few years on Railpage, I became known as 'the guy who takes lots of train photos around Geelong', but that changed in 2010 when I moved up to Melbourne. With that move came full time work and an end of gallivanting across the state, resulting in trams and suburban trains becoming my usual photography targets.

My philosophy on photography

When I first started out I just took random photos of anything and anything, until I discovered the standard 3/4 shot of a freight train and did that to death for a few years. Nowadays I'm too busy with work to chase freights, and plenty of other railfans are out there are getting coverage of the scene, so I stick to capturing the everyday things that other people skip over.

For me the big thing that drives my photography is noticing something about the railways, getting a good photo that captures the essence of it, and then captioning it so I can share my discovery with others. If I didn't bother with captioning my photos, there isn't much point in bothering to upload them, as no-one will be able to know why I photographed a given widget in the first place!

Camera gear

My first camera was a Canon S50 - a mid-range point and shoot with a full set of manual controls available. After a bit of time with that, I stumped out the cash for my first Digital SLR - a Canon EOS 350D, coupled with the standard EF-S 18-55mm kit lens, and a low end EF 55-200mm f/4.5-5.6 II USM telephoto zoom.

Since then I've upgraded lenses a number of times, picking up a Canon EF-S 17-85mm 1:4-5.6 IS USM lens that I used for a number of years. After a few years of heavy usage my 350D started to play up, and was replaced by a Canon EOS 50D which gave a number of years of good service, before the shutter button on it began to flake out, consigning it to the shelf.

Today I'm using a Canon EOS 7D with a EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM as my everyday lens, along with a EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM that gets a workout when visiting underground railways overseas, and a EF 70-200mm f/4 L that only seems to come out when I'm chasing a freight train.

Social media

To keep up with my latest updates, you can follow me on the following sites:

Wongm's Rail Gallery on Facebook.

@wongmsrailpics on Twitter.

Subscribe to my RSS feed.

aussiewongm on YouTube.

Other projects

Rail Geelong is my other major railway themed website, detailing the history of the railways of Geelong and District. As well as the content, there are many photo galleries of the railway infrastructure around the area.

Waking up in Geelong is my main blog, where I often write about trains, trams and public transport.

Checkerboard Hill is another blog of mine, with "An Aussie's view of Hong Kong" with a focus on trains and other modes of transport.

Euro Gunzel is another spin off blog, this time transport related bits and pieces from Europe.

Flickr is where I host my general photography site, as well as where where my overseas railway photographs.

Drop me a line!

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