Janie, I could use a cup of hot chocolate and a small bowl of Black and Tan Ice Cream right now… Please and Thank You Ma’am…
OK… I need your help guys. I am selecting some photos to enter in an NMRA Regional Convention in early May. Need to make my selections now and get the large size prints made. Then I will take them down to a professional photographer friend of mine to have them matted for presentation at the Convention. So, I am putting up 3 photos of the same basic subject here and wo0uld like comments on what you see. Particularly any things that just don’t look right (Prototypical, etc) and which of the 3 you like the best. This will go in the "non-photoshopped catagory so I can’t use the computer to do more than crop, change exposure, contrast, etc. Basically I can only do what you can reasonably do in a film darkroom. So i can’t add smoke, steam, remove trees, add trees… Stuff like that. Have fun and you can be brutal this one time… LOL
Thanks,
73
Oh, BTW… This one will be going into the Prototype Class:
Ray … The third photo would be my choice because the engine is closer. … I like the protype bridge photo also.
JohnBoy … I’m wondering about Ulrich. Glad you are trying to reach him. He should not have been personally offended because Steven was talking to everybody about being careful not to digress into politics or religion. I always thought Ulrich liked his friends here enough so he would not suddenly decide to leave us. If you reach Ulrich, tell him hello and we look forward to his next visit in the Diner. … Meanwhile we’ll continue talking with each other in the Diner.
Ray I would like to see the engine closer too, but since that isn’t one of the options, I would crop out about 2/3 of the blue sky on the top left and just above the weed on top the wall on the bottom left. My reasoning is your eye gets sucked up to that blue sky then down into the foreground track. Do not make it a square picture or the engine will be in the center.
Have you considered turning the locomotive around and just showing the front portion of the locomotive as it heads away from you and proceeds under the bridge and into the tunnel? I’m suggesting just showing enough of the locomotive so that you can see the smoke stack and the cylinders, and maybe a bit of the valve gear. Getting everything in focus might be a challenge. Adding some steam from the cylinders and some smoke as well as blurring the valve gear might suggest some action.
I have cooled off sufficiently to come in and sit a spell at the RC. Things are more than rough at this end - some of you have received an email from me explaining the situation Petra and I face here.
Ray - there is something wrong with all of the pictures. The guy who shot the photo must have been over 10ft tall or standing on something of that height. I wonder how he managed to escape from being overrun by the train when it came closer. Seriously, the pictures would improve dramatically if you could get the lens closer to the ground.
A friend of mine from Switzerland sent a surprise gift, which was in todays mail.
It´s a 1960´s Saurer bus operated by the Swiss PTT, a highly detailed metal diecast HO scale model. Quite an expensive gift at about $ 50! He didn´t like my “wrong” Daimler-Benz bus, as the Swiss PTT never owned and operated one of those. The top half of that bus comes off, so I´ll be able to populate it with a driver and a few passengers.
Looks nice!
My friend Lothar will be coming over to our place tomorrow to enjoy a slice of Petra´s Easter cake and to help me install the backdrop. This will be the last big item to get done on the layout for a while, as I have to feed the piggy bank with any extra change befor I can buy the stuff I need for the catenary.
Whew, these nights out listening to music are tiring. I was out listening to music last Saturday, and didn’t get home until 1 AM. Tuesday was both that dental work and then hockey at night. (I’ve had stitches on hockey day before, but not before the game.) Last night was music again, fortunately not so late, and I’m going to see bands I like the next two nights. Besides that, I need to go to the gym for a workout every day. With this medication, if I don’t get a workout I don’t feel very good the next day.
I’m modeling the Cincinnati, Lebanon & Northern, a narrow-gauge short line in southwestern Ohio that was bought out by the Pennsylvania RR shortly after it was converted to standard gauge. I’m modeling it in 1906, a few years after the purchase and merger of the Middletown & Cincinnati, but might backdate it to 1903 to model the road at the peak of passenger traffic before competition from the interurbans cut into business. I’m modeling it in HO scale. You can see bits of it in the various Layout Progress Tour videos we’ve posted over the years, but I haven’t done much on it lately because my modeling energies are all occupied at work.
When I was in my early teens, I sold my Lionels and went shopping for some HO trains. For whatever reason, I bought an Athearn train set with a Milwaukee Road GP9 with rubber-band drive. I have been with the Milwaukee ever since. There wasn’t a lot of selection at the LHS. I liked the colors and the look of a GP9, so that was basically my decision-making process.
That engine now runs as a sound dummy on my layout, paired with a GP9m. I numbered it so that the old engine was the one they re-built as the new engine.
Zoe, I’ll have a bowl of Vanilla Almond Crunch Cereal and a large pot of Marrakesh Express Dark Roast coffee to keep my R&GV RR Mug filled for the rest of the morning… Please and Thank You Ma’am!
[color=red]Ulrich[/color], good to have you back! You know we all worry about you!
Thanks for the comments on the photos gents! Some good ideas for me (and a few that just can’t be done…) I will do another round of shots pulling the 2-6-6-2 Mallét up close to the bridge. The photos started out as just some documentation for the Girder Bridge to be used for the evaluation for a Merit Award towards my Structures Certificate in the NMRA Acheivement Program. That will happen some time this Summer, I hope. I seems now to have taken on a life of it’s own.
[color=red]Dave[/color], if I turn the loco around and have it proceeding under the bridge, there will be no place to put the camera… This is shot with my Canon Digital Rebel SXi using an 18/135 lense and Aperature Priority mode, allowing me to do a 25sec exposure getting an f22 aperature (pin hole) on it. This gives a great depth of field. Realise the lense is only about 3/4" from the closest track shown. I also can’t use any “Photoshopping” (except for normal Dark Room work that can be done) on the photo, so smoke and steam are out for this to be entered. If you look at the photo below, the camera lens sits right next to the stone wall in the bottom left corner. The camera body just fits slightly propped up on the tracks just beyond that. There is no room to move the camera at all. From the front of the photo to the Tunnel is over 3’ I’ll try to get a shot of the set up with my old Digital Rebel to show the problem… (I hopefully still works. Haven’t used it in a couple years now.) For me too act
Ray - I hope you are not offended by my rather undiplomatic statement about your pictures. I know how difficult it is to get realistic looking shots on a layout. Even larger layouts usually have only a couple of places where that is possible - unless one has one of those spy cameras that you can place on the track.
Pouring gas into the fire - I don´t think the pictures do justice to the excellent job you did in scratchbuilding the bridge. Is there a different way of capturing this scene?
Well afternoon all. My old tablet decided to die last night, so I decided to take the plunge and buy an ipad mini- I LOVE IT! I also purchased ink during that trip for my printer, so I have printed out a set of decals for a Wheeling and Lake Erie car project, and am waiting on the test decal to dry to see how the print turned out. It’s warm here, so as soon as my iPad downloads a game, I’m going to go wash my car and get “winter” off my car. Hope you all have a good day.
No offense taken at all, my friend! I welcome your thoughts on this… Once the second bridge and a lot more scenery is done, there should be several different angles that should indeed capture the bridge itself better. Those photos may be ready by next years convention, but not even close to being doable now. Trouble with the “Spy” cameras is generally the lack of control of f/Stop, ISO, and other items for good photos. I have no use for cell phone pictures done on my layout. My son from chicago did a bunch. He thought they were great! I ended up just deleting the whole batch. He is very bright, but is not at all trained in photography. I only talk on my cell phone. I don’t talk on my camera… [:-^][(-D] Cell phone cameras are great for some things, but not for what I want to do with photography…
As I mentioned earlier, this started out just being an attempt to document a view that can’t be seen from the layout (there is no way you can get your head down in there to see the inside of the stonework…) for the Merit Award. I liked what I ended up with and decided it might make a good photo to enter in the contest.
Will play more with later today or tomorrow after my babysitting duties are over…
Ulrich … I like that bus. I bet JohnBoy will like it too.
Steven … Thanks for the explanation of your layout. . I would be interested in see the layout progress videos. … I did model the 1900 era for a few years, but the layout did not survive several moves. It was a freelance railroad and a bit on the whimsical side. It served the towns of Hither, Thither, and Yon. If I can dig up old photos I will post them … I do have family connections which include Cincinnati and Lebanon.
Everyone - Thank you very much for your input about the whys and wherefores of your railroads. I really appreciate the effort. I see a lot of studying in my future. [8-|]
Howmus - If I may be so bold… Why don’t you try it the other way around? Polish that handheld mirror so that it doesn’t have any fingerprints or fluff on it. Put it on the tracks in place of the camera. Now you use a tripod to aim the camera from the top into the mirror and get a way lower angle. Frame the image correctly so you don’t get the mirror’s edges and ta-da! Low angle shot in a tight spot.
Hey all, it is ME GALAXY. NOTE THE MONIKER CHANGE IN NAME!!!
I am PO’D at this site now…
I HAD to create a NEW screenname…WHY, you Ask>?
BECAUSE, MY EMAIL WAS LOST IN THE TRANSLATION TO THE NEW PASSWORD RESETTING THINGY!!!
I will PROBABLY get “Suspended” for this little rant as new “on probation” client!!!
I went to sign in, it said the info was “INVALID”… I dutiully changed my password when our estemed MR> OTTE said to. I LOOKED IT UP where I wrote it down and I HAD IT CORRECT,
BUT WHEN I ASKED IT TO “REMIND” ME OF MY PASSWORD {JUST IN CSE I WROTE IT DOWN WRONG}> and I entered my EMAIL address, IT SAID INVALID EMAIL!!!
CONFUSED< I WENT TO THAT PARTICULAR BLOODY EMAIL, AND SHURE 'NUFF< they HAD JUST SENT ME A bloody “BUY OUR MAG NOW” email not a but a few minutes BEFORE< SO I KNOW MY EMAIL ADDY IS CORRECT!!! NOT “INVALID”…
SO< OUR esteemed MR> OTTE, WHEN I COOL DOWN,
WILL GET A NICE, but NOT-so-PLEASANT PM FROM ME!!
NOW< staring OVER< I HAVE LOST all my SAVED PMs!!!
NOW< I HAVE TO START ALL OVER.
THEY LOST MY EMAIL!!! BUT ARE STILL SENDING ME bloody “BUY ME” emails TO THAT EMAIL!!!
Been a busy last two days between Dr’s apoinments and needed running.
Health Front Went to see my VA Dr and IMay Have Early Sighns Of A Heart Problem. More that likely it is nothing, but rather safe than sorry. Get some what of a odd feeling in my left arm pit. Can not call it pain, but feels a little odd. No sweating, chest pains, hard time breathing or weakness. Will be going in for a stress test in the next few weeks. Boy I am looking forward to that! [banghead]
YGW You have a PM. While I was at K-10 trains I did spot a box of Bowser 3 bay coal hoppers with data only, no road names. They are black and are $5.95 each if you are intrested.
Ray I got to ask, why is the engine headlight not on? [:-^] I am with Ulrich about the photo would look better from a lower point of view.
Galaxy I hope you are just busy with the new house. Are you ever going to share any pictures?
Train Front They are running well. Time to get some more rolling stock off the RIP track.
Because in 1925 locos did not run in daytime under most rules with the headlight on… [:-^][swg]
Daytime headlights didn’t become a rule until the early 1950’s and seldom prior to that would a freight locomotive waste steam to generate electric power for a headlamp when they could see just fine without it… Not ony that lightbulbs didn’t last long so the RRs would not be happy with some engineer being that wasteful! Night time was when they needed and used them.
