That...

... is pretty darned impressive!

George

A True...

...Masterpiece! It looks amazing. Thanks for sharing it. Wow.

Photo Backdrop

That looks really good.

NIce!

Great planning and good photography are evident there James! Looks really nice!

Back Drop at Clive

Looks outstanding, great creativity and planning followed by very good execution.

Nice Scene

At the risk of piling on the attaboys - the backdrop and scene turned out quite well.  Good to see you pulled it off!

Thanks

Thank you everyone for the compliments. Attaboys feel good from time to time!

Without trying to sound arrogant but hopefully serve as a small source of motivation... it wasn't that hard. Photo backdrops are a quick and effective way to extend a scene realistically. Even if it's just a grove of trees you'll be amazed what they add.

I had never done anything remotely close to photo work for a backdrop before starting this layout. Now I can't imagine not having them available. Give it a try. You'll be amazed.

James

good stuff...

James,

I quickly glanced at the photos and wondered "how does he get the sunlight on his buildings like that"...  Have you shared you photography technique on a blog somewhere?  If so, I'll search out the information.

thanks,

-bill

I'm in awe...

I've been following your layout build, and wondered if you have a web site that shows the whole project from the start? Also, I'd love to see a tutorial on making photo backdrops like yours- they're amazing! i know the idea of a background it be be just that- a background- but the eyes are drawn to yours so effectively that it seems more like you've used a shrink ray and brought the 1:1 world into your home! Thanks!

Al

PIMP

Grimes is PIMP

Another attaboy!

Very nice looking!

Techniques

Again, thanks everyone for the kind comments. Let me see if I can answer some questions.

Hi Bill,

If you're talking about the shadows that appear on Reams Foods, then they were there when I took the photo. I know that best practice says that you should shoot photo backdrops at a time of day that minimizes shadows to avoid "anomalies in direction due to light falling opposite of the viewing perspective" or something like that but whatever. It works and I'm okay with it.

No blog entry on my photography technique other than I use a 50mm lens and try to film buildings at an angle so that perspective issues are somewhat negated. You're never going to make photo backdrops work from all angles, especially when dealing with roads, so I get close and proclaim "good enough". The individual photos are then stitched together in Photoshop to produce a panoramic photo using techniques covered on this and other sites.

Hi Al,

Again no blog showing the whole project but I'm pretty well documented in my blog on MRH. I also keep an album on the Unofficial IAIS Railfans website that serves as a photo tour of the entire layout. I'll be happy to answer any questions about technique as well.

James

James, how did you...

print out the pictures? After you stitched each one together, did you print on multiple 8 1/2x11 photo paper? Or did you use a custom print shop to print a solid banner?

Steven

Spliced Together

Hi Steven,

I did print out multiple sheets and butted them together. A friend offered to have it printed out as one continuous sheet but I was concerned that I'd have difficulties trimming a sheet that large as well as mounting it on the backdrop. If I damaged one sheet I would just need to reprint the one part, not the entire thing.

And it's regular paper... not photo paper. I don't see the need to spend the extra money on photo paper. The regular paper is thinner, blends into the backdrop better and doesn't print as vivid. That's a plus when depicting a backdrop.

James

Very nice!

James,

Your backdrop looks great!

Hidden Entrance

Two more photos I'll share.

The entrance to the modeled portion of the layout from the staging/fiddle area is thru a rather unglamorous hole in the backdrop. To help hide it and ease the transition I extended the photo backdrop with a generic grove of trees over the hole.

 
Before

 
After

I'll add some additional scenic materials to help blend it into the foreground scene but it's a great improvement over the "hole to the unknown" I used to have.

James

Unofficial web site

Hi, James-

I visited the 'unofficial' web site, and I'm impressed! I loved your layout design- now that I've seen it in its entirety- and it really is a thought-provoking design.

It gives me pause to reconsider my current design for my future layout, as it made me realize I didn't need to compress thirty miles of trackage into a similar sized space such as yours; instead, I'll rethink just a portion of my planned Tuscola & Saginaw Bay layout to concentrate on just a few industries and miles of track. Scenery is going to be a major focal point in my design, and your scenery techniques and results also are very inspirational for my plans. Thanks for sharing, and please continue to share more!

Al 

Agree with Al (tsby_fan)

James

I also visited your site and couldn't agree more with Al.  I am instantly attracted to layouts that have a low ratio of track to scenery/structures - just as in real life.    I have enjoyed your posts and pictures and look forward to more.

How?

Did you stitch photos together using some type of panorama software?

Photoshop

Hi wilkenw,

The individual photos were combined into one long panorama using Photoshop. A lot of the shots were blended by hand to correct for perspective issues.

James

Panos

If you don't have Photoshop you can also use Microsoft Photo Gallery. It is no Photoshop but it is free and has an automatic photo stitching panorama function.

http://windows.microsoft.com/is-IS/windows-live/photo-gallery-get-started?T1=t4

Photoshop

Also, keep in mind that you don't need the full-blown Photoshop for what we typically do with model railroad backdrops.  Photoshop Elements (PSE) works just fine.  Keep an eye out for used copies on Amazon.  I got an old (v 2.0) copy of PSE there for $3 and change, and it still runs on my new laptop running Windows 8.

Even PSE probably has far more functionality than we'll ever use for photo backdrops.  I'll bet I didn't use more than about 5-10% of the available functions in creating my backdrops to date.

Tools in Use

Joe's right... Photoshop Elements is more than powerful to do everything you would need on a model railroad. I used Photoshop since I already had it as part of my job. Do not spend the $400.00 needed for Photoshop when the $99.00 elements is just as good. If you can find it cheaper, find it.

The tool set is what you want and what you're paying for. The 3 tools I used for the backdrop were the clone stamp, the background eraser and the auto-blend tool.

The clone stamp allows you to retouch photos by copying one part of an area to another. I used it to remove power poles, sidewalks, street signs, cars and clean up parts of buildings. I'll add trees and bushes from one part to another to cover things I don't want seen in the backdrop. The clone stamp tool is worth whatever cost PSE or Photoshop is.

Second is the back ground eraser. It removes the background, or specific colors in an area, without removing other colors. Excellent for removing a sky from a picture without removing the details, say street lights or tree branches. The background eraser is how I remove the painted backdrop in my WPF photos so I can add the photo sky back in.

Final one is the auto-blend. After I'm finished aligning and retouching the photos I blend the layers together, allowing Photoshop to do its thing to make different photos match. Excellent for blending roads and trees from different shots together.

It's not perfect, but the combination of those tools work well for creating 99 percent of my photo backdrops.

This has been fun everyone. I should be writing an article for MRH on this topic.

James

So Cool!!!!

James.

Your backdrop at Clive is so cool!!!  Well done my friend.  I think about your railroad a lot when I'm operating my railroad because of them being so similar in style and philosophy.  It's just so nice knowing that someone else enjoys the same type of operation and modeling that I do.  

Tom