The structure itself, including the overhead crane and the platform, existed a year before I added the hot metal scene. IIRC, it took me a week’s worth of evenings to mold and paint the clay funnel, plus a few more evenings to install the aluminum foil light shields and spray-paint the interior.
I hear ya! I don’t have any clouds on my backdrops - only a hazy blue sky. Not only for the reason that I don’t trust my ability to paint decent-looking clouds, but because I may want to shoot multiple photos of different locos at the same location. In the real world, you won’t the see same cloud pattern in the same position after a dozen or more trains have passed that spot.
A “bad” back drop can spoil an otherwise well done layout. I have seen many a layout with a back drop, which overwhelmed the entire layout, moving the background into the viewer´s focus, either by too bright colors or being too sharp and crisp. Objects we view in a distance are usually a little blurred and hazy - this is exactly what creates the distance we´d like to achieve.
So far, I have seen only one commercially made back ground which achieves this effect. They are made by Busch, unfortunately, they depict a more German than American scenery.
This picture of my former layout demonstrates, what I mean:
Lighting also plays an important role - try to avoid, that objects cast a shadow on the background.
My favorite art is impressionism, my favorite poetry is Haiku. This leads me to model with a more being less and less being more philosophy. I think that at one point in his modeling Sellios began to ponder these points and decided that he may have been overwhelming his scenes with too much detail and began to back off a bit. There are many curious effects that the brain creates when data is processed from our five senses and this is especially true when we expect our modeling work to mimic the prototype. One example is the ratio of the forces of nature in the real world can not always be scaled in the model. I think that the movie special effects people picked up on this when they use a scale model to simulate a real train falling off a trestle that has been blown up. They usually change the speed of the film to make it more realistic. When we film our trains in operation our eye always picks up on this when we couple up cars and start up. We can never seem to go slow enough. The biggest effect in my opinion is color and lighting. There was one thread where it was maintained that black real locomo
Yes, I have that “problem” (issue) with George’s railroad also. Its gorgeous and breathtaking and simply swimming with detail-- I love looking at it. Everywhere you turn your head there is so much to see. And lots of little humorous bits too, especially ones that you don’t always get at first glance. But that said, when I see it, I am visually overwhelmed by the level of detail. Which may say more about me than about George or his layout. I’m not saying its not nice though, because it most certainly is-- stunning is perhaps the best adjective to describe it.
Thanks for writing that-- you are really making me think, in a good way. I think you may have something there. It seems like it makes some sense in any case. I’m gonna have to stick that in the back of my brain and ponder on it awhile.
Your photos are great. You have an excellent eye for blending color and details. Do you have any other photos, or a website you could point us to?
Speaking of George, and what the mind sees, back in 1986 ( I think it was 86) I was attending an NMRA convention in Boston and got to tour his layout. We all got off the bus with our camera’s and were told we had X amount of time before the tour bus was leaving. This sent everyone into a frenzy snapping pictures all over the place. Fortunately, I stopped for a moment and thought, gee, there are so many published picture by professionals of this great layout, why am I dong this? So I p
In my previous life we had a name for people who weren’t perceptive, and attentive to their surroundings. We called them casualties, and returned the unlucky ones to their next-of-kin in coffins.
Why do clouds on backdrops spoil the illusion? Real clouds move.
Many years ago, there was a Model Railroader article about a model railroad (The Great North Road, IIRC) which was striking, not so much for its detailed modeling as for the overall effect of the creator’s use of artistic techniques. Ptarmigan Summit LOOKED colder than the lee hinge of a cryogenic freezer, even though you knew the room was maintained at ordinary temperatures. The trains were rather plain, but ‘detailed’ with paint and an artist’s eye. The artist was F. Lee Jaques, one of the best at rendering believable natural scenes, who was responsible for many of the fine scenes at New York’s Museum of Natural History.
In my own modeling I am relatively tolerant of my own incomplete work - because I’m aware that it IS incomplete. Ditto for the work of others that is obviously a work in progress. If something is supposed to be ‘finished,’ I open my ‘critical’ eye.
We have to be aware that the eye and the camera see differently. The eyeball’s view can’t be cropped or ‘digitally enhanced’ to hide or de-emphasize the less-than-perfect. OTOH, the modeler has a mental photo shop program that may add in things that aren’t really there. Unfortunately, that photo shop only works for the individual’s own work…
Chuck [Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with (for the moment) virtual scenery]
I just had the pleasure of visiting a couple of layouts that perfectly capture the essence of their prototypes without going over the top with detail. Some of the images are posted in WPF, but I’ll put them here as well…
Both of these layouts are totally tuned in to what the areas represented looks like, and they achieve much of it through colors and textures. Even the town scene is impressionistic and simple. It does include details, but it doesn’t get all fussy about where the road begins and ends, or other things that would detract from the railroad’s starring role in the scene.
Thank you very much for posting these pictures. All of them are gorgeous and well-modeled and well-photographed too. But this one is especially so. If there were an example to illustrate the point of my post, this would be an excellent one. And also, for that matter, it beautifully illustrates the point of my previous post about a sense of place. This scene does both very well.
I have no idea where this scene is supposed to be set, but when I look at it I am reminded of the area I grew up in southwestern Virginia. Even though there are definite differences, it strongly evokes in me memories of a place called Damascus Virginia. The resemblance is likely to be only in my mind’s eye since as I think and consider the actual place, I can’t think of anywhere that actually does look like that-- but something about it reminds me of the place.
Anyway, the interesting thing about the scene is when you look at it closely you can really see that the detail included, for the most part, is minimal, but overall it is very well done. The use of color and placement of the structures, and (mis)direction-- it all comes together to make a very believable scene. And when I half-squint, it comes together even more. And its so easy to forget for a moment that its a model and not a real place where I’ve been before.
Thank you Lee for finding and posting this image-- it is remarkable and illustrates my point very well!
That is absolutely right. Thanks for making the point. I often use my camera to show me what I’m missing when I’m working on something-- no matter what the project. I find that I often overlook things with my ‘real-time’ vision that I pick up on quickly and easily when I see it ‘frozen’ in a photograph-- or even a video for that matter, but not as acutely. There’s something about looking at a photograph that forces us to see it in a different manner. Perhaps the fact that it is static is the main thing. Also I suspect that simply seeing it from a different perspective-- and perhaps out of context (ie. the original setting)-- are also factors. Plus you can compose and shoot your pictures from any perspective you wish-- high, low, right angles, inverted, whatever-- and that helps to force you into thinking differently also.
One of the things that I hope people are taking away from this particular Philosophy Friday post is not that details are a bad thing, because they’re not and that’s not my point. Rather that color and texture, when used skillfully can (I think-- my opinion) add more to a scene than details can. You still need the right details and the right level of details to go with it, but my main point is that so much of what we see and perceive in the world comes to us through our peripheral vision and not through our foveal vision. In other words, we really do see the forest differently than we see the trees. When you’re paying attention to the one you’re examining it with your foveal vision and getting the other aspect peripherally, and vice-versa.
And I really liked Peter’s point from earlier about things “fitting together better”-- a whole scene, foreground, background, etc-- when one modeler does it all. Not accounting for technical prowess which might affect the rendition, in general I think its a very interesting observation and I will be looking out for it when I look at scenes from now on to see if I notice it.
