Poster tree68 still stands out as the most solution minded responder, with the submitting to TRAINS of a re-composed .JEP to one’s liking AND an unalterable RAW photo. That makes the most sense. But NOWHERE, at least that I’ve yet seen, does TRAINS say or imply such wisdom is what they want.
As far as I know, the great TRAINS editor Jim Wrinn is not a photographer, and has little mental comprehension of a photographer, which is not bad in itself because everyone has a gift of sorts that they excel in. Some on staff do have great photographic skill, but most are not of the caliber of Adams and Steinheimer. But, yet those are the ones judging what photos TRAINS readers will see. Perhaps that is why (“why”) the policy is as it is, because the editors for the most part have no comprehensive comprehension of photo composition.
Thus, anyone with strong composition skill would be turned off (and thus would NOT submit photos to TRAINS) by a policy that favors unskilled photo croppers that would destroy their reputation as a photographer. What TRAINS is saying by implication is all great photographers need not apply, and that they should go elsewhere with their photos. In essence, they say: We only want photos that we can highlight what WE want to highlight in, even if it breaks all p
A lot. Once slides faded from use, I gave up the hobby. I still have my collection, and add to it through eBay now and then, but I don’t take pictures of trains anymore. I always considered myself a photographer, and have no interest in the graphic artist’s digitally altered concoctions that are so often seen today.
My answer to all this is that I enjoy reading Trains and Classic Trains far too much to worry about all of this. Even my problems with the moderator and the edit button are tiny compared the joy I get in reading the magazine. The photos that they publish are just icing on the cake. That Krebs article on unscrambling Texas was the highlight of the day I read it. I figure that if they NEED some particular photo from me, they will ask for it, and will do my best to provide eactly want they want when they want it. Meanwhile, I will enjoy YOUR submissions – in peace.
I, too, had given up on slides after digital came out, although the reasons were different. Like you, I loved the image quality that I got from slides–the richness of color, the spledid contrast, the challenge of getting a proper exposure within the limits of the narrow latitude of slides. However, I got tired of the slides coming back from processing with scratches and chemical drips, and I definitely got tired of the cost. With digital, it is all under my control.
To me, most digital images, especially early (pre-2010) digital are, compared to slides, drab and lifeless. They are ok for portraits as well as greyscale, but for landscapes and clouds and sky and trains, slides totally ruled. I remember telling people that when digital gets to 20MP per image, then perhaps I would give up slides. Then I discovered the miracle of post-processing software, and I could at least start to get an approximation of the IQ of slides, even from some of my 12MP images.
I began to learn about composition, light theory, and how to “see outside the box”. I also learned that sometimes
I still take pictures with my Leia M3. I take them to keep friends, mostly in the USA, up-to-date on transit and railroad matters in Israel. Perhaps soon this will include Jordan as well. I use either Kodacolor or Fuji, which ever my one friendly photo store has at the time. i am rarely as satisfied with the original image on the CD that the photostore give me, but I find that usually the automatic balanc feature of Microsoft Photo Editor immediately gives me good contrast and color balance. Of course unless I save the original, and usually I don’t, this removes any consideration for submitting to a Kalmbach publication. If I consder that possibilty, then I would submit both. About one-in-five times I find the automatic balance does not give the desired results, and I need to use all the balance features of Photo Editor and sometimes Paint in addition to get what I want. Occasionally there have been scratches, not recently, but Paint and careful work eliminated them.
Well, the otherside of that is that the JPEG format utilizes a “lossy” compression method that places artifacts, i.e. degradation, into every image converted into that format. So it begs the question “why would trains want to encourage people to submit degraded photos for inclusion in their magazine?”
So by your own rationale, it makes little sense to include photos that have issues built in.
Personally, I prefer to use the *.png image format on my personal collections, the file size is notably larger but the image quality is noticeably better, especially after being copyied and saved multiple times.
The new tech is great but in many ways leaves much to be desired. I can hear consideable difference between music on my old phonograph records and the very same songs in the *.mp3 format. There is less “umph” and less presence in recordings made into MP3s…no small margin, either. I have all the “cool” toys, and enjoy them, portability being a big plus of the new tech. For instance I sure wouldn’t care to strap a phonograph onto my bicycle for a trip through the park, but I recognize that the benefit of a small MP3 player comes with built in limitations. I see the magazine’s requirement as a recognition of that reality, and not the oppressive gesture you seem to see. (FWIW)
It occurs to me that the most useful ‘metric’ for this situation could likely be easily provided, by Kalmbach, with little or no breach-of-privacy concern: what percentage of ‘accepted’ photos were JPEG compressed submissions?
A slightly more expanded view would be whether JPEGs are relatively more accepted in some categories, or if ‘stylistic’ modifications or other darkroom-post-style manipulations get special attention … pro or con … in the assessment-for-publication process.
The existing guidelines are, or might as well be, silent on these points, but should not be.
I see the photo today (Friday 3/23) is the same photo again. Perhaps Trains has run out of photos to use.
Regarding the comments from Convicted one regarding the artifacts in a JPG image (to which I agree), I wonder if photos in the TIFF format would be acceptable; it is lossless, but the file size can become some rather large.