A simple and immediate method for viewing your scene in a critical way is to look at it in a mirror. For some reason this gives one more objectivity and sorts out at least the glaring mistakes. It is a trick I learned in landscape graphics class in 1970. We didn’t have digital cameras then.
The obvious difference that hasn’t been mentioned yet in photos of layouts or seeing them in person is movement or animation. Models of running streams or waves on the water can look really great in a photo - especially in the “how-to” articles. But when you see the same scene in person, it’s not so great. Why? Because your eye expects the ripples on the water to move. Because the way the light reflects off the water is constantly changing.
Cars, figures, and trackside industries are other obvious examples. When I drive by the local concrete plant in Oakland (served by rail and truck), it’s a noisy, dusty place with something or somebody always on the move. Very few autos are seen on the streets perpetually standing still. So when we visit a layout, our eye expects this constant movement and senses something is not quite right with a silent, static scene. But it looks great in a photo which is an instant in time. Meanwhile, our brains are trained to make sense of movement brought to us through eyes, nose, ears, etc. Our middle ear detects changes in velocity, not position.
These reasons favor photography over in-person visits. Static models and scenes are easier to model, hence the movement to layouts that photograph well.
I’ve dreamed about trying to recreate a total scene at my Oregon dog hole port dock. Using a fog machine with salt-air scented fog so that the train actually does pop out of the scene from the fog. Pulleys squeaking and spars groaning as loads are actually shifted into and out of the schooner’s hold. The sound portion is achievable by using under-the-layout speakers driven by programming so that sounds are changing, and changing location. Still haven’t got any idea on how to make the waves lap against the rocks - but I can at least add the sound. Nor can I animate the little people yet. But I can add their voices on the sound tracks.&
This is a fascinating thread! I found myself thinking along these lines the other day while trying to photograph some scratchbuilt seedum “trees”. My layout doesn’t have a painted backdrop yet, so while the trees looked great in person, all of the photos clearly showed an artificial white background where sky should be. I started thinking, maybe if I just build a steep hillside behind those trees, and populate it with foam ball foliage, it would make the seedum trees look better in the pictures. And it hit me, that’s a strange way of building a layout, but I understand the reasoning.
Regarding what fwright wrote, I totally agree that it’s the lack of movement that makes a layout look lifeless. In front of my layout I left some vacant space where my kids can play cars. My little boy was playing with a pullback VW bug and the movement caught my eye. I grabbed another car, pulled it back a bit, then placed it on my main street, and let it run slowly down the pavement. Eureka! It made the whole scene come alive! I thought, I’ve got to make a video of this, with a train running in the foreground, and a couple of pullback cars going in opposite directions.
Fooling the eye is what’s about and that brings me to my next observation: the detailed trains and scenery on a layout can easily fool the eye into thinking a scene is real. But add just one static, scale figure and for me, the scene just dies. You see this phenomenom in digitally animated movies for kids. While the viewer can be tricked into thinking the animated creature on the screen is real, humans have such a nuanced and complicated way of looking at other humans, that trying to mimic one convincingly is almost impossible. To me, even the highest quality, best painted figures on a layout absolutely fail in their ability to depict real humans. Imagine if locomotives had brains and eyes and could look at your train layout. They would probably think, wow, that little engineer looks pretty darn realistic, but that GG-1 ju
I model 100% for the eye. If it looks good to me, it works. I can then choose camera angles that will work.
This approach also means there are numerous minor flaws that the eye doesn’t easily pick up on but would be apparent in a photograph. I can live with that. I’m a believer in the 3 foot standard. If it looks good from 3 feet, it’s good enough. An observer tends to take in the scene as a whole and might overlook a flaw but a photograph focuses the eye on a much smaller area so flaws will stand out more in a photo than when observed by the naked eye.
fw:
GREAT point. I see this very thing mentioned repeatedly in old issues of MR (not so much recently). I think Westcott kept it as a pet windmill for jousting purposes. 
It was always suggested that figures and cars be put in plausible resting or semi-resting poses - action poses were acknowledged to look great in photos, but subtly “off” in real life for the reasons you mention.
People standing and talking, men playing checkers on a barrel, Huck Finn fishing, dogs sniffing around a hydrant…not stuff that necessarily never moves, but stuff that stays put long enough to be plausible while the eye is caught, briefly held, and moves on…these were suggested.
The “worldwide pause” effect this could cause was acknowledged, but in fact was not so much a risk as we might think, at least for less busy areas. Think of a street of rowhouses during the day.
I build for the eye, but after, I take some test shots, and then by analizing the pics I go and clean up certain “cluttered” aspects, or add to scenes that look barren on film, I use the pics to better my scenes, I find a balance between the two.
I have used photography to tweek my layout, sometimes the camera will show us things that our “Panavision” misses.
I build for both my own eye and for my own enjoyment of photographs. If I don’t like it in person, AND on film, it isn’t done yet. I have yet to run into any conflict between the two.
Something not yet introduced here is what you model in addition to how you do it. I consciously decided to model only things and places I like. Places I want to go to or places I’ve already been and want to return to. Here’s a nice quiet mountain valley, and here’s an armed robbery at a fast food joint. Which am I likely to go out of my way to see, and which am I likely to avoid like the plague? That’s the standard used on our layout. If it isn’t some place I’d pay money to go see, then it doesn’t get included.
Of course, I LIKE complicated machinery, old woodwork, and dusty old junkyards full of forgotten technicalogical treasures. That goes to personal preference but if anyone is at all concerned about how others remember their layouts, I think you’d do better to model the log cabin, and leave out the outhouse out back. Just my opinion…
For those who want to bring their layouts to life with sound, I’ll repeat this. The earlier you get a personal computer into the audio chain, the more versatile your sound canvas will become. A computer will generate and play back more sounds than any ten thousand dedicated layout sound devices you can buy or even imagine. In mono or stereo, up to CD quality, even an old 486 will do wonders for your layouts aural aura, and most anything you put into that PC will not be wasted. All of your programming and most of your extra hardware will transfer to a new PC if and when you upgrade. Of course, 7.1 surround or better than CD quality requires more horsepower than the old 486 can deliver, but not by too much. Digital video and 3D simulations are real power drains on a PC, audio, not nearly as much.
Model railroading is creating an illusion. The professionals in that business, movie and TV makers, audio enginee
Well, first of all, I don’t consider myself a very good photographer, nor am I particularly interested in becoming one because at my age, it’s taking time away from the layout. So I’m certainly not building my MR with the camera in mind. However, I AM building it with my eyes in mind and with the hope that I’m doing a convincing enough job to at least duplicate to a reasonable degree what excited me about model railroading in the first place–in my case, big steam in big mountains.
If one of my photos happens to turn out well (purely by accident), then I’m happy. If not–oh well–I’m still working on the layout.
Tom [:I]
What about play? When construction is done (or in progress) it’s time to run trains. But in response, Eye. Who cares if it sucks for photographs. If it looks good to one in person, does it really matter what pics look like?
Having given this topic some thought, the question comes to mind - what could one do to build for the camera but not the eye? In other words, what would inspire “Ah ha! This will look good in a photo, even though it will look terrible to the eye?”
Frankly I can’t imagine what that would be, except for the camera’s ability to a crop scene and vary apparent depth.
Harry–
AHAH! Well said. No WONDER you guys won at Agincourt, LOL!
Tom [bow]
I agree. Any suggestions on how to get started in this area?
[quote user=“fwright”]
The obvious difference that hasn’t been mentioned yet in photos of layouts or seeing them in person is movement or animation. Models of running streams or waves on the water can look really great in a photo - especially in the “how-to” articles. But when you see the same scene in person, it’s not so great. Why? Because your eye expects the ripples on the water to move. Because the way the light reflects off the water is constantly changing.
Cars, figures, and trackside industries are other obvious examples. When I drive by the local concrete plant in Oakland (served by rail and truck), it’s a noisy, dusty place with something or somebody always on the move. Very few autos are seen on the streets perpetually standing still. So when we visit a layout, our eye expects this constant movement and senses something is not quite right with a silent, static scene. But it looks great in a photo which is an instant in time. Meanwhile, our brains are trained to make sense of movement brought to us through eyes, nose, ears, etc. Our middle ear detects changes in velocity, not position.
These reasons favor photography over in-person visits. Static models and scenes are easier to model, hence the movement to layouts that photograph well.
I’ve dreamed about trying to recreate a total scene at my Oregon dog hole port dock. Using a fog machine with salt-air scented fog so that the train actually does pop out of the scene from the fog. Pulleys squeaking and spars groaning as loads are actually shifted into and out of the schooner’s hold. The sound portion is achievable by using under-the-layout speakers driven by programming so that sounds are changing, and changing location. Still haven’t got any idea on how to make the waves lap against the rocks - but I can at least add the sound. Nor can I animate the little people yet. But I can add their voices
The Airhorn software looks promising. It can address four soundcards in one PC. I tried the demo with one soundcard and it seemed to work ok.
Harry Hotspur wrote:
Having given this topic some thought, the question comes to mind - what could one do to >build for the camera but not the eye? In other words, what would inspire “Ah ha! This will look >good in a photo, even though it will look terrible to the eye?”
Frankly I can’t imagine what that would be, except for the camera’s ability to a crop scene >and vary apparent depth.
HH:
That’s what we’ve been discussing in this thread. Cf. above.
Of course the posts tended to be long.
(I am starting to think that 90% of everything below line 5 is missed)
I started this because I, like a lot of us, tend to assume that the camera is the ultimate judge. Assumptions are made to be questioned, are they not? Often we find, in other areas, that a photograph and a firsthand viewing give totally different impressions, particularly a photo taken with some degree of artistry…but we even see this in simple snapshots.
I design and build for both.
But the point no one has brought up is the audience for the photos. Most of us don’t have a lot of people coming in and out of our basement and we want to show the work we are proud of. So we post photos here. This is our support community and this is how we show off, get comments, get kudos, and learn how to do better.