Silohette
I've often seen photographs of trains in silohette with the sun setting behind them.
In various magazines I have also seen photos of models with nice sunsets in the background. The only problem is the that model is also well lit. In reality of course the model should be in silohette as the light is coming from the sunset / sunrise which is on the opposite side from the camera location. I decided to try recreating a silohette shot in model form. I have photoshop on my computer and enjoy playing around with model photos to try and add reality. To aid in this I also keep a collection of sky and scenery shots I and friends have taken.
To start with I set up the two Athearn locomotives on a section of track with a sheet of white styrene behind them. Then I shone a light on the white background which threw the locos into shadow. I took several photos and when I had one I liked I imported it into Photoshop and removed the white background and inserted the sunset photo from my files.
The result is below.
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Comments
Love that shot!
At first glance, I wondered if it was a model at all. Keep playing and posting, I say!
Dave
Working on the chainsaw
Very Nice
Great work! That's a keeper!
Kevin Klettke CEO, Washington Northern Railroad wnrr@comcast.net
http://wnrr.net
Love that shot! You have mad
Love that shot! You have mad skills. Photography is not my strong suit, so it's even more impressive to me. The best part about the photo is that they are SP locos, IMO!
Mike Lozensky
Moder RailroaderRailroad ModelerLight through the windows
Hi Michael,
Thank you for your comments. With regard to light through the windows the initial photo did have that but on looking at a number of protoype silohette shots it doesn't show through that much if at all so I blanked it out. An example is here and here. I think this could be put down to the number of obstructions in the cab or perhaps the angle. Anyway it is something to experiment with in future photos.
All the best
Michael (steamfan1211)
Silohette
Steamfan,
WOW! Very nice photo & great technique. Thanks for sharing!
Rick
http://richlawnrailroad.com/?page_id=497
The Richlawn Railroad - Featuring the L&N
Camera, etc
Hi Michael,
I use a Canon EOS 400D. The picture was taken at ISO 160 with F/5.6 at 150th of a second. In this particular case I let the camera do it thing on automatic as I wasn't worried about depth of field. Normally I set the camera to manual and set the F stop to as high as I can usually between F/29 and F/32. As with the photo below.
I don't have a cable release for the camera so I set the camera on a tripod and use the self timing function so I am not touching the camera when the shutter operates. This removes the chance of camera shake.
Depth of Field
Hi Michael,
I think the camera you have does have a close up mode. Have you tried that? I suspect it isn't really designed for this sort of photography. You could try backing up from the subject and using the telephoto option. Keep the subject side on to the camera and try not to have too much depth in the photo.
As far as the photo of the UP Switcher is concerned I took that on the workbench with the loco sitting on a piece of ballasted track and a plain white background. Then I used Photoshop to put the industry in the background. I don't have any photostacking software although I believe it works well and would be great for photographing very deep scenes on a layout.
Michael (Steamfan1211)