I’ve lived in Carlisle, OH my whole life (all 21 years of it) and if any of you are from around here, our whole town it seems is one big railroad crossing.
I’ve been a railfan as long as I can remember, although I did back away from it some during my teen years. I don’t know why. Butfor whatever reason, lately it has come back in full force. So I figured, now that I can go watch trains whenever I feel like it (I was too young to drive and/or head down to the tracks whenever I wanted when I was so in love with them 10 years ago or so), I figured I would start trying to get some pictures every now and then.
CSX has a line that goes directly through Carlisle, I believe it’s the Toledo Subdivision on the former B & O to Lima, OH line from Cincinnati Union Terminal. Depending on where you are in town, Norfolk Southern operates a former Conrail mainline anywhere from a few streets away to nearly right next to CSX’s mainline, they come together to round a foothill before seperating again as they head into Miamisburg.
But long story short, here’s some pictures. They’re my first ever attempts so I know they aren’t gonna be great, but I figured I would share them and I’d love some adivce on how to better position myself to get a good shot, and tips on lighting, contrast, etc.
Here:
I really blew it on the second picture, of the northbound coal train. I wanted to get a picture of it from far off and did, but the camera was still processing by the time I would have
Well, the great thing about digital, is you don’t have to waste a ton of film learning how to take good photos.
On your first photo, you should have stood a bit to the left of the telephone pole, and made sure that was out of the shot. Otherwise, the photo wasn’t too bad. It seemed to lack some sharpness, but that may be due to the lighting, and the camera itself.
Taking distance photos takes a decent zoom. What camera model are you using? You are definitely on the right track as far as composition goes on the first two pictures. The best advice I can give you, is to keep trying. Try different angles, and different times of the day, for the different lighting. The best times for shooting, is when the sun is about 30 degrees or so above the horizon, either mid morning, or mid to late afternoon. During the day, when the sun is high, right around mid-day, it makes for harsh shadows.
Just keep shooting, posting your pictures, and looking at the examples others have posted here (the Trackside Lounge thread is a good place to look)
Thanks for sharing those. You’re off to a good start. You have the great advantage of shooting digital so you can self-critique your shots right away. Shoot a lot and then decide which you like and which you might have done different. Tuck that away and try to focus on the once you liked next time you are in the field. I’ve been doing railfan photos for 20 years and I still learn something just about every time I go out. In my personal experience, I get about 1 shot in 100 that I really, really like. I get 75 that are fine and the rest might as well be deleted because there’s something not right about them. By being willing to cull out those that are below your personal expectation, you improve you average overall. I agree with the comment above about watching out for clutter (poles, wires, etc.) Hard to do. If you compose your shot before the train arrives, you can look for that stuff. Even take a pic ahead of time, before the train gets there, then look at it for junk that will bother you in the final print with the train in it. If there’s stuff like that, shift around to get rid of it.
I kind of think of the shots that I’ve liked over the years and put them into just a few categories.
1- really cool train (maybe new or rare power, special rail move or the like.) You don’t come across these that often, but when you do, its a shot you’ll probably like.
2- really great location (you’re a flat-land midwesterner like me - so often this means traveling, which, given limited time, money, etc, that’s hard to do.) We don’t get to go to Colorado or California every week so the stunning shots of Moffat Tunnel or Cajon Pass are tougher to get. I spend time looking at the Delorme Atlas / Gazetteer for my area, looking for places that might be “interesting.”
just practice practice practice.We are planning a trip to tower A(cincinnati union terminal) soon.The neat thing is the different locations that you can shoot too as you practice.
When taking photos at a grade crossing (like image 1), it is much safer to stand on the side of the crossing towards the train, not on the far side of the crossing. Why? Because if the train hits something at the crossing, you could be directly in the path of the debris.
They’re not bad pics…don’t beat yourself up. I’ve lived in Oshkosh for 28 years and despaired of what I ‘missed’ with the camera: MILW, SOO, CNW, FRVR, WC…be glad you’re near tracks that haven’t been abandoned! [8D]
As was said…practice and practice more. I’ll leave that subject alone with that.
Your ‘blown’ picture? I’ve had worse! Some questions for you:
-what are you using for a camera?
-do you have/know how to use picture editing software?
You can do a lot without having expensive gear.
I took the pic below with a 3MP camera. I thought I blew it but editing (and luck!) helped make it into something decent.
Below was taken with a 5MP camera.
My point in showing those two pics isn’t to say you need an expensive camera, rather use what you have to its fullest. Set the images to their highest resolution, learn about ISO, exposure, and the other settings available to you. If you can get one-use a tripod. They help for zoom shots (which the second one was) in terms of reducing blurs and can help keep night shots clearer. Both were taken on a tripod. It isn’t necessary but it sure can help.
It looks like that first shot of yours faces a slight curve. You can use that to your advantage. Here’s how I used a curve once to get two trains in focus.
Two straight-on shots:
Oncoming train (zoomed a bit):
Stationary train:
I used the curve you could just see from the pic with
FF, Ohio is infested with fans/photographers from what I see on the forums. Hook up with these guys and get around a bit. And (like you’re doing) just plain ASK!!!
Learn a lot to live a lot, my friend.
Doggone Yoga again.
Instamatics were my tools in the '50’s and I’ve just observed ever since.
I really liked your third picture, the nite scene with the road crossing. I know very little about cameras or taking pictures. Just got a new digital and will probably start taking pix shortly. Not much traffic up here though. The critiques you were given were excellent and they will surely help me in my future endeavors. By the way welome to this forum.
Let me echo what’s been said about taking lots of pictures and practice, practice, practice.
Learn to look at the entire picture that you have framed up. That way you don’t end up with misplaced telephone poles (including growing out of people’s heads) and things like that.
When you take pictures, critique them yourself - what do you like about the composition? What doesn’t seem to be working?
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention my favorite topic in pictures - the rule of thirds. Simply divide your picture into thirds horizontally and vertically. Place the horizon on either of the horizontal lines (as appropriate), any significant vertical features on the vertical lines, and the focal point at one of the intersections. If you look at some pictures by others that you like, you may find that they’ve followed the formula. Your first two pictures did.
A key thing about the rule of thirds is that people often tend to put the focal point directly in the middle of the picture. In the case of a person, that’ll be the head, meaning that there’s lots of open sky above their head. I’m sure you’ve seen such pictures. We’ve all taken them at one time or another.
I mentioned looking at pictures by others that you like. Something else you can do is try to emulate (not duplicate) their work.
Take a lot of pictures, and look at all of them with a critical eye. Sometimes things that really appeal to you will jump out at you when you are looking at something you don’t have much hope for.
Take a lot of pictures, I have shot over 5000 photos in the last two years with probably less than 5% something I would be willing to share.
Learn to use an image editing program. If you want digital photos to look their best you need to post process them for lighting, sharpness, cropping, etc., and they need to be resized if you want to post them on the web.
Don’t get frustrated if your results are not what you want right away. Keep trying! You will always improve.
Take a lot of pictures. Enjoy your time trackside.
Most important! Take pictures that YOU enjoy. Don’t let anyone else’s criticism get you down. You are not “working” for anyone. This is a hobby-enjoy it.
One more thing - try not to delete any but the truly bad shots - those that convey no “intelligence” whatsoever. Even that throwaway of a lineside phone shanty might be valuable some day.
As can be seen from Erie Lackawanna’s numerous submissions of his father’s slides, what may seem like a ‘junk’ shot today may be a valued treasure in 30 years. Not that anything he’s shown us has been junk (anything but), but who needs that grainy shot of an everyday locomotive sitting at a station?
Also, (and I we probably all neglect to do this) keep notes on what you shot and where - as mentioned a recent issue of Trains. We can’t write on the slide holder any more, but a text file on the CD may help refresh your memory years hence as you’re looking at the photos. Was that East Podunk, or West Podunk?
CNW 6000,nice night shot (all of them are nice actually)! What settings did you use for that? As for the new guy, I notice those look a bit dark. Most digital cameras today can look at the lighting at certain points and use that to base the brightness off of. Most standard shots like that, that include any amount of skylight, will turn out slightly dark. Most digital cameras have some kind of Exposure Compensation, where you can increase and decrease the brightness of your pictures. Try playing with that a bit. Setting your camera’s settings to check the lighting at center of picture (rather than overall), if it has that feature, can further help. I keep mine at center field, though it can go to a small center spot if I need it.
Another thing from experience, the brightness you see on your LCD is close, but not the same brightness you’ll see on your monitor (and different monitors even have different brightness settings). Learn about how much of a variance there is between these, so you know about how a picture shouldlook on your LCD to know that its brightness is correct. I also use a method where I take 2 pictures if I can, each with a slightly different lighting setting. Usually, one of them will be a bit dark/bright, and the other will be right on. The downside of this is going through memory cards twice as fast, but it can really save you from having to resort to editing. I barely do any editing on most of mine. Only on the older ones where I hadn’t quite learned the difference between my LCD and monitor brightness is where I played with a bit of brightness.
For you night shot, new guy, depending on what you’re shooting/how you’re shooting it, you may want to experiment with higher ISO/slower shutter speeds for some interesting shots. I have an old topic somewhere around here that I’m due to bump with some new pics, where I took a bunch of night shots. If you can fidn it, you
Those are some good photos. I like the nite shot and as an artist would like to comment on the first photo concerning the pole. When shooting photos sometimes having details like that can be good or a distraction. I’d take several shots and choose what I like best, but, as Tree 68 says don’t throw any away. In fact he has a lot of good advise, so I won’t repeat.
