CAN YOU CHECK OUT MY PICTURES? I NEED INPUT FROM YOU GUYS HOW TO BETTER MY PICTURE TAKING.
JUST FOLLOW THE LINK UNDER KEEP ON RAILFANING.
well, ill try to help. the first picture is actually pretty good. for that style of picture, the only thing i can say , which is the major thing for both pictures, is if at all possible, try to always be on the sun side. it will make everything look better, it wont be dark from shadows, or as in thesecond pic, it wont be bleached out from too much actual sun in the picture. the second picture, its a good start for a roster shot, which to some people is very importany to them, but get the entire unit in the frame.
if you would like, you are free to flip through some of mine, maybe you can get some ideas from them. but still, one of the most important things, be on the sun side! and good luck with your pictures!
http://todd_l.rrpicturearchives.net/
The first is great, but the second has a little too much light on the top of the engine, and it looks like a glare is coming off of it
Hey Soo,
Is that membership free??
AC6000CW, the first picture looks pretty darn good to me. I do admire the position in which you shot the locomotive emerging from the bushes, that’s neat.
In the second picture I’m guessing the sun got in the way or something. That happens sometimes. If your are trying to get a shot of a locomotive viewing it’s side I would try to catch all of the locomotive. I personally don’t like to do that. I would rather wait for the locomotives to pass then take a shot of sides of the pasing locmotives in the distance, it’s sort of like looking at it from a prespecive view. In this mannor you would capture a good background, the locomotive and part of the rest of the train.
Having been a comercial photographer more than 40 years let me make a few suggestions. # 1. camera stability; when at all possible use a tripod and cable or air release if possible lock the mirror up before exposure to reduce vibration.# 2. sharpness most lenses have a sweat spot as a rule of thumb that is 2 f-stops from wide open you do not need a fast lens; the rules of optics stated the best a lens can be is at f3.5 any faster you have to correct for aberations ,so, a good sharp f 3.5 lens will be at its best at f7.0 or f 8.0 >>>>there is an lens test kit you can buy ,and test all of your lenses; years ago it was for sale in modern photography magazine and came with line resulition test cards you taped to the wall and photographed with your lens at all of its lens F-stop settings and developed the film in fine grain developer and loked at the test patters with a jewelers loop and caculated the lines per milimeter resulation ,for center and edge sharpness at all f-stops.if you would like to know more , e-mail me i 'm glad to help [2c][2c][2c][4:-)]>>>glennbobP.S. I recomend NIKON lenses
I GOT MORE ON THE WAY.
I would have to go with Back light, but i always have the same problem
Those are pretty good, I agree 100% with what glenbob said, and also i have to elaborate more on what FThunder11 said, You have too much backlight. It is almost wasing out your subject below it. Try to avoid taking your pictures into the sun. Also, make sure you try to visualize you picture before you shoot it, visualization is the photographers best friend. If you visualize the shot and you think it will be a great shot and be unique picture, take it.
here the rest of them.
A couple of additional comments.
Use a Grey Scale card. This is a card that is grey in color and will provide a well balanced exposure under nearly all conditions. You hold it in front of the camera and take an exposure reading just as if you were going to take a picture. Save that setting and use it for your photographs. That way, if you are shooting with the sun at any other position than at your back, you will get a good picture (exposure wise).
Another, is that you are getting good silouette shots. There is a “market” for such shots, but in rail photography, nearly all want to see details. Silouette shots don’t do much in that department. If you can’t use a Grey Scale card, take your pictures on cloudy days (soft lighting greatly reduces shadows and evens up the lighting on the subject).
Lastly, you are shooting up into the sky and are using an auto-mode exposure system. This combination is guarenteed to read your exposure off the sky and cause your subject to be in shadow and underexposed. Correct this situation by getting above your subject (even 1 or 2 degrees down angle will do wonders here) or using a Grey Sclae card and manually set your exposure. Doing both will correct most of your problems.
After you get your exposures down (practice, practice, practice), then you can start working on composition. This is not an easy thing for most folks and is a very very subjective thing, so it usually takes lots of work and continual practice. Get the mechanical things down first (like exposure) and then attack the really hard things.
yeah AC, it is a free site
I don’t see any pics at the site…it is the link at the bottom, isn’t it?
Chris, you have to click on November 5 to get to the pics.
Ahhh…gotcha. Thanks Chad.
AC6000CW, couple thoughts:
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Subject matters most in a photo. Some photogs don’t agree, placing light and such first (this is especially true of the crowd over at Photo.net), but I’ve always put highest emphasis on the subject. While you have a good subject for your audience here (trains), be sure to present that subject in the best way possible. Some of the shots almost seem “decapitated” to me. E.g. cutting the front of the locomotive off from the picture seems unnatural.
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Related to #1. Put the subject in it’s environment. Give the trains some room to run into. Show the scenery that they’re residing in. Is it industrial? Residential? Agrarian? Undeveloped? The best train photos link railroads to the places they are running. A shot of a train on Marias Pass and a shot of a train in Clyde Yard are two completely different things, but they are both environments the BNSF runs in.
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The others have covered exposure, and lighting pretty well. If you must shoot train silhouettes, the best time to do so is around sunrise or sunset. The lighting will naturally be much more interesting, and the silhouette won’t be quite so washed out looking. Silhouettes are hard shots to work correctly, but can be quite intriguing if done correctly.
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Have fun and practice a lot. As long as you’re not shooting for a client, there is only one person you ultimately have to please, and that’s yourself. If your pictures make you happy, than that’s all that matters. Do your best to improve yourself, and listen to the advise of others, but take it with a grain of salt, too. For example, I shot this gallery at Yellowstone National Park: http://www.pbase.com/copcarss/2004_yellowstone which I think is one of my best galleries ever. At the same time, it earned this remark in my guestbook:
I don’t really like the lighting in any of them, but 
and 
are pretty nice. I don’t really like the shots of the radiator, though. I prefer pics that show more of the train, and showing the whole engine in most pics would be a big improvement.
and incidentally, please turn off your caps lock.
Matthew
On the fuel tank shot you may can tell what level the fuel is at in the tank.
None of shots are really that great, I assume that your pretty new to railroad photography so the good news you have lots of time to improve. Everybody here is correct about the ligthing, they tend to be a litte out of foucs and not very intresting. Instead of getting five or six bad shots of the same train, set up for one really good shot, I rarely take more that one or two shots of the same train.
When I was first starting out I made many of the same mistake you have, when the train comes you just want to get a picture of it no matter what. After time, however, as you improve your craft, you get some better judgement. Most serious railroad photographers would have passed up on all your shots and waited for a better picture to come along. Try looking throught some old Trains or railroad books to get a feel for what a good, solidly composed shot looks like.
Hey i just pulled a picture from the old file that i had on a disk and it was taken by me on film.
Tell me what you think.
