This is how I feel: if it isn't a feature of your railroad, it doesn't belong in a photo. If it is a feature of your railroad, it belongs in a photo. Rick's special moving backgrounds arrangement is a feature of his railroad. For some reason it was important to him to have, and it appears to have been a creative solution to some problem. Therefore, it deserves a place in photos of his layout! It's just my opinion. That and a couple of dollars will get you a cup of coffee. :cup:
Thanks for your opinion; it matters. And, about the coffee... you're right, it's nearly two bucks for me each morning as I head out on my (1.25-hr) commute. I really need to start making my own at home--it adds up!
Since I'm the guy who initiated this most interesting and rapidly expanding thread, I'll voice my own opinion on the subject at this point. As someone who has participated in model railroad photography over many years, my outlook on the subject has always been if everything you see in the image was also visible through the viewfinder at the time the shot was taken, then it is legit. Anything else added or subtracted following the exposure makes it a falsehood. The more manipulation that is done, the less interested I am in the image. The only exception I've really made to this hard and fast rule, beyond simple tweaking of brightness, contrast, etc., has been in the introduction, post exposure, of "smoke and steam" for (in particular steam-era) locomotives. Smoke and steam are evidence of life in such locomotives and without them the scene typically becomes static and lifeless, in my opinion. Like some of the other posters on this thread, my true interests in looking at model photos is in seeing examples of the actual modeling talents and abilities that the poster/author has to show. I have little interest in evaluating how accomplished he or she is at playing with Photoshop. That said, I think that, sadly, with the ever increasing talents of many hobbyists at the keyboard, in conjunction with the decline in model building skills among the majority of hobby participants today, the hobby itself is changing direction. I think it would not be at all surprising to see, in the not too distant future, many if not most folks posting photo-threads, having websites and authoring magazine articles, that present more or less virtual examples of their layouts...and doing so without commenting on to what extent they are real. NYW&B
NYW&B, Thanks for starting this thread--one of the best in years! There have been lots of questions raised and discussed, and much information shared. I do have one question that's been lingering in my mind for a long time: should most steam loco photos be presented in black & white? If you are modeling the transition era, should most of your photos be in B & W? The reason I ask is that most color photos seem to have come at the very end of the steam era. So, do I take a color photo of a steamer, and digitally manipulate it to B & W?
Some of the best modeling I've ever seen has been created in the last 5 years. Not in pictures, in real life. The following musings are not directed at any person, but something I have noticed in my observations of several large clubs and national organizations. At what point does the quest for purity turn to the dark side? Is it really purity, or an effort to stop others from attaining the skills which define one's own self esteem? Has there been an effort to keep new people from eclipsing the accomplishments of those who went before? Just musings, as I try and figure out the currents of my own life experiences... :teeth:
I think not. I've never run into anyone unwilling to share. I'm a better ship modeler than railroad buff. But everyone shares in either pursuit.
Very good question. When I approached MR with an article idea that would involve black and white photographs (some enhanced with sepiatone), they flat out rejected it. "We don't publish anything but color," was their reply. Well, one more strike against MR was all that became. And I went on to publish everything online exactly the way I planned. One of the images I wanted to present was an ancient (~1975) Polaroid. It was in pretty dreadful condition, but when I converted it into a sepia tone image, it took on the appearance (at least in my eye) of a very old print that had sustained damage over the hundred years or so since it was taken... The problem with converting color digital images into black and white is that the conversion does not produce the same tonal qualities (response to color hue) as real black and white film. This minor technical quibble aside, I tend to think that some earlier steam model images might work better in black and white. I also think it might be fun to take transition-era model images and apply grain and color-shifting/fading effects to simulate early color film. Just thinking aloud, mind you...
Just having some fun. I didn't have any suitable steam images lying around, so an old RS-1 will have to do. Original slide (~2000): Very early color effect: Black and white:
If you work in Photoshop, start making these adjustments using CURVES. When I was working on setting up a black and white digital inkjet system, we used the CURVES function because it allowed us to fine tune various tonal areas of the prints. It is something you will have to play with...and always work on a COPY of the source file. The nice thing is if you find yourself making the same general corrections, you can save the curve and then just apply it to any file. On the old film note, remember before the 20's most film was orthochromatic and did not record blue (hence, no sky's in those old shots) and recorded some yellows dark. Yes, I am being a rivet counter for film
Yes, hard-core photoshoppers can compensate to a degree for the tonal response. Edit: As a simple cheat, just use the RGB green channel for a quick and dirty approximation of black and white film response. That's what I did for the conversion previously in this thread. As for film, even early "panchromatic" had its quirks. Because it was generally red-blind (which is why safelights didn't fog it), red-toned objects went very dark, but greens and blues went lighter. Ah, those were the days...
Concurrent post with others: You're right, David. My conversions to B & W or even sepia-toned images just don't work. I go back to the "ortho" period of B & W, where certain colors were rendered differently (usually red? or was it blue?) I got royally chewed out in 1972 for using color slide film on a shoot instead of Plus-X. Am I correct that B & W film, back in those days, just had more dynamic range? I just don't recall the arguments pro and con, as I haven't shot B & W for almost 40 years. BTW, I posted the wrong photo, "aan" from the old Railimages site, taken in 2005, and the foreground was indeed Photoshopped. My bad. I retook the photo later with the foreground extension in place. In the transition from the old Railimages to the new Railimages, my versions got totally screwed up. Again, my bad. Now I just have to find the real photo. Sorry to all for the unnecessary screw-up on my part. We were looking at different images.
Tony, that's been my experience with all large organizations, whether they are local hobby clubs, the National Association of Underwater Basket Weavers, magazine publishers, or political systems. The problem is in the essence of an organization itself. Standards are set--which is natural if you want to stand for something--and rules are made to enforce the standards. Over a period of time, this process reaches the point of the absurd--and locks in the absurdities, punishing creativity. You can't preserve a forest in a museum, or can a perfect day. The way I see it, the members who remain in these organizations aren't really aware of what is going on--how their forest is getting stale--because they are inside the process. Speaking of political parties and corporations only, the ones in power couldn't care less because their needs--gaining more power--are getting met. :money: (my 2 euros)
I think that's a terrific idea. I love black & white. The only thing is, to me it's only really black & white if it's shot with the appropriate camera and filters on black & white film. Nothing else looks quite "right" to me. <shrug>
Talking about Black & White, but not models. With all the technology now is there any way to take a old B&W photo and convert it to color? I don't mean to have it colorized, I mean something like a program that can scan the various tones and figure out what color they really were. Is it possible? When I have asked this before I get that it is just different shades of Gray, but I think if something is White and something is Yellow they would end up 2 different shades of Gray. I ask because ~85% of all prototype reference I have for my railroad is in B&W. For instance what color is this: http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/el/loco/erie-s355abd.jpg ?
Well, what people are saying is right. Black and white film cannot capture any color information. It may respond to different hues differently, but it is encoded no differently than any other shade of plain gray. There is no inherent difference between what was originally white and yellow to monochrome film than, say, white and a slightly dimmer white area. Or, as another example, a pale red might render as exactly the same shade of gray as a deep blue. There's no computer process, then, that can decipher what any given tone of gray means. It takes a human to evaluate the image and make judgment calls. Recently a small group of sofware engineers have been working on a process that converts the grayscale to a pseudo-chroma scale, which is in contrast to most existing technology (used mainly for colorizing monochrome movies and TV shows) that more or less just overlays a color tint (no different than tinting photographs from over a century ago, just done with software). However, this new approach is still not extracting color information from a monochrome image; it's only rendering the colors more realistically.
Interesting perspective, Joe Daddy. You've got only a few years on me, but maybe that's enough. Besides excursions, I saw personally only two steamers when I was a little tyke: an Atlantic westbound through Framingham, MA, and something bigger, probably a Pacific, in Worcester, MA. Mostly I remember big black Alcos? Diesels in the transition era made a lot of black smoke. If we're Photoshopping in smoke and steam, should we add black exhaust for the diesels? When I was about 12, I used to canoe the length of Lake Cochituate, south to the railroad tracks. What a dirty place! The ballast was black and sooty. You didn't want to touch anything! Which leads me to another question. Growing up around Boston, I remember ballast as black and sooty. I modeled that for years. Black ballast photographs poorly. Gray ballast photographs much better. Should I change my ballast color from gray to black?
I like how cinders look: http://picasaweb.google.com/ErieChris333/Models/photo#5076403815172450002 http://picasaweb.google.com/ErieChris333/Models/photo#5076371602917729938
