Unca Roggie gets PLASTERED!

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
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Having gone for six decades, merely collecting model railroad stuff, but never getting started on an actual LAYOUT, meant I had no good place to pose rolling stock and vehicles, for photos.

It was time to get my feet wet. (Or, as what turned out, my face and hands covered in plaster of paris and acrylic paints.)

Here is a photo I took of a boxcar lettered for the giant layout that has flourished in my MIND for many years…the slogan of the railroad, given the only passenger service is pulled by an ABA lash of F7’s, is: “In Aquandary? Take a flying F, daily…to Ferrago, and all points east!”

Even a cheap digital camera can take a nice shot, helpful for noticing such things as the shine on the SP Daylight Orange door, looking as if I need to model a little h.o. scale guy standing there aiming a pressure washer at it. This shot, viewed on a 30 inch monitor, is quite something. But I just HAD to get a decent “stage” built, to pose such equipment on.

I’ve only done one other project: a Sunkist Fruit Warehouse, where I took it past simple assembly (from an ancient SUYDAM kit)–and that was so long ago, I’d forgotten even the basic rules, such as adding the plaster of paris, to water, and not the other way around.

Forging ahead, damning any torpedoes like that, I banged some wood together, stapled on some screening, and glued down the used “Reddi Trak” or whatever that stuff is, that I’d found (I didn’t think the photos would show the track, so didn’t care…but I thought having a RERAILER was a stroke of genius, as I’d be changing models I was photographing, quicker than Hugh Hefner does.)

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I thought this looked pretty cool, and considered having it be a SNOW scene, for a whole ten seconds. Also during that time of standing there, admiring it, I realized I should have collected the rocks and sand I wanted to add next, BEFORE the plaster dried.

After running to a craft store to buy spray adhesive, and poking around on a dirt road, for usable bits of gravel and sand, I finally added the “texture.” About 60% of it, stayed put…partially because I sprayed a mixture of whatever “MATTE MEDIUM” is, watered down, over it all (which also took the sheen off everything, thankfully).

My wife also had some GLOSS MEDIUM, which I thought may turn out looking like some small sewage or something, was flowing out of the ball point pen part, used as the “culvert.”

I took the thing outside, to see what it would look like in natural sunlight, thinking it wasn’t too bad.

Unfortunately, when viewed from the angle I’d be taking the photos, I realized I’d made it too small (or at least, too THIN.

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Back to the drawing board. I thought I’d try something I’d read in Model Railroader, and use foam pieces to bulk up my new foreground area, instead of the lousy screening material that had left me with a myriad of tiny lacerations.

And, THIS time I had the rocks and dirt READY to add onto the new plaster, before it set.

At this point, my wife became interested in what I was doing in the garage all this time, and grabbed the paint brush, to do the finishing touches (I had it all too grey and moonscape-like.)

Okay, now it was ready for some foilage and other junk.

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I stood the thing on a pair of sawhorses in the driveway, with the area I’d gathered the rocks and sand and weed pieces from, in the background, and tried a shot.

Next day I tried it again, from the back deck, which overlooks a forest and a pretty horse pasture. I was quite pleased with the result. I can now take shots of all my equipment, and view them both on the computer monitor, or the bigscreen television (burned to a cd). And, of course, be able to share them with YOU GUYS.

This really inspired me to try to steal some time away from all that silly waste of my life called “working,” to do more of this kind of thing. I’ve got the next project taking shape in my head, already: a diorama that has space to put some of the STRUCTURES I’ve built over the years, with an elevated track behind them, so I can still do photos of the rolling stock.

Stay tuned.

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HOLY CRAP![bow]Those are some GREAT shots!!![:O] Really nice composition.

6

Very nice work. Setting up your shots outdoors adds to the realism. The track you used looks like steel rail Bachmann EZ-Track.

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you had me worried with the first couple of pics , but WOW that turned out really nice !

ernie

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Great work! It turned out really nice.

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Great work! Now that’s what I call a photo backdrop! [swg]

Wayne

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Great photo !! Uncle Roggie needs to get plastered more often!!!

Thos final pics should be posted in Weekend Photo Fun.

Very very nice U.R. [tup]

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Nothing beats the great outdoors for producing spectacular photos![tup] Charlie Comstock (“BCSJ”) did an article in MR not too long ago, describing how to do this. I’d like to try it myself sometime, except there are way too many tall trees on my property to photograph them at a believable distance.

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Unca Roggie:

Holy Moley and Shazam, my friend–those shots are FANTASTIC! For a minute I thought I was back in Truckee! Take a bow. In fact, take a whole BUNCH of bow’s. [:P]

Tom [:D]

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Whoa! That’s some pretty head-enlarging praise, coming from the likes of YOU guys…thanks.

When my wife’s brother took that Sunkist building outdoors to shoot it with one of those phallic symbol type cameras, back in about 1976, I noticed then, that miniatures look WAY better photographed in real sunlight.

His photo was SO good, I took it to an insurance company, to ask them to give me a rate to do a fire policy for it…and the underwriter didn’t catch on, until he asked if the construction was stucco over frame, and I said, “Oh, no…its CARDBOARD.” (He nearly fainted.) I went to the car and brought the building INTO HIS OFFICE to see it…which was of course, a first, for him.

Anyway, that’s why I felt the urge to do the outdoor shots on my collected items.

I think it’d be good to show off a model of something, even WITHOUT a nice backdrop…hoisting the subject up high enough, so you can aim at it, eye level, could mean even not having much of anything BEHIND the model, would still make for a dandy photo.

Here’s another one I took, this time with the “stage” down on the ground level, behind the house:

So, even if I’d cropped out the tree, it’d still show off the equipment nicely, right? Boy, does it ever let you know that you need to WEATHER stuff before you aim cameras at it.

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It just occurred to me, that I could possibly pass on some good INFO on this thread.

While the LAST thing I intended it to be, was any sort of “how to” (I thought, if anything, you experienced modellers would get a good belly laugh out of my bumbling efforts to put the little diorama together)–there is a COMPUTER hint I can pass on.

We forget that not everyone has found all the little helpful things a computer can do. Its only recently that someone let me know you can push “cntl” and the key for the PLUS sign, at the same time, and make everything on the screen LARGER. I could finally toss out my INSPECTOR GADGET ™ magnifying glass I kept handy to the keyboard.

But how are we supposed to KNOW such things? Nobody ever supplies a booklet with your new computer (at least one a normal earthling can UNDERSTAND.)

In any event, here’s the “RAW” version of one of the photos I took, using a cheapo Kodak digcam, bought at Wallymart for sixty bucks…

From THAT unpromising shot, I sent it to a free download program called PICASSA. Any of you who have figured out how to wrangle a photograph in here, using Photobucket or some other program, should have NO trouble figuring out all the cool stuff you can do to a photo, with the Picassa application.

The main use of course, is to be able to CROP out everything you don’t want showing…but there are lots of “tweaks” you can use…I found “WARMIFY” a helpful one, to take the garish colours down to where things looked a bit more realistic.

Many of you no doubt already know about “ctrl+” and Picassa…but for anyone who doesn’t, there you go!

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Those are some GREAT shots, unca roggie!

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Please indulge me while I post a couple more of the pix I am able to take of my rolling stock and vehicles, on the little diorama I made…

first, one I captioned as: TRUCKER’S NIGHTMARE (to find two cars spotted too close to the highway crossing)

Then: last night, a big ol’ fat orange MOON popped up on the horizon I had the set up aimed toward…so my wife came running, telling me I had to try getting a shot of that big orb, framed so that it showed nicely behind the scene. I guess I had to expect there were LIMITS to what all a $60 Kodak digcam can DO. I did learn of a setting called “NIGHT” (the icon being a head with a star next to it…makes sense) which obviously lets more light through the camera’s “eye” by keeping the shutter open longer. It also means you can’t hold the thing in your HAND to take a shot, however…as I got only blurred images.

I also realized that the FLASH was producing a very crummy result…so found I could kill that, pressing a button with no discernable icon, but that did the trick. Only, what I got was JUST the moon. Anyway, we tried everything, to no avail. So, the best “artsy fartsy” shot I think I’m going to get with THIS camera, is this one, where the shade has covered the diorama…caption: THE LONELY CABOOSE

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Great use of the natural backgrounds! I’ve tried it,. but I don’t have an open field to shoot across, so the trees are too close and look a bit odd…

I used to use Picasa, but I reached the limit of what it can do a long time ago so now I use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom… Picasa is very good for a free program however!

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A relative put his (LEGAL) program of something with a name like “Photoshop Eight Thousand” or whatever, onto my computer…telling me there’d be some getting used to it.

What an understatement.

There is nothing to clik on, with a word like “Brighten” or any word used on this planet. He told me he could superimpose a photo of a gorilla, with one of his daughter, and slowly “wash” it away to get a gorilla that looked freakishly like his daughter (which you’d THINK she would have appreciated…but: NOOOOOO)

Anyway, along with starting a real LAYOUT, that’s one of those “Round Tuitt” items in the giant pile of stuff I have saved up, to get to. I let the whole computer thing intimidate me for years, and finally wrestled it into submission–but it takes time and patience.

I can just imagine what nasty little tricks you could pull off, with model railroad photos, if you really knew how to wrangle one of those super-programs. One thing that comes to mind right OFF, is how you could replace a garage wall with a natural scene like the one I’m able to have, only due to how the thing I’m taking a picture of, is something I can carry in one hand, to the outside deck.

Ooooo, or having a picture of your own SELF showing, in the cab of the SD35 I recently got (with the help of someone in here, by the way.) Or hanging a B A out the window of a caboose.

Alright, I think I’m convinced of moving that job of teaching myself how to do photoshopping, to the forefront.

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I have Photoshop 6.0 installed too, but it’s a different program. Lightroom is a photo editing software much like Picasa, it just happens to have the word Photoshop in it, as it’s made my the same company. I’ve never succeded in messing around with model photos either, it’s not just you…

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Speaking of how “its not just me…”

I used to think I was the ONLY guy who moved so much, and had so little time to devote to the more “industrial” side of our hobby (benchwork/tracklaying/wiring/scenicking/tweaking, etc.)–not to mention how whenever a new home was set up, the space eyed to be for a layout, always disappearing to be used as something else—that merely assembling and weathering rolling stock and structures, was all that was ever accomplished.

Not long ago I saw the results of some sort of “POLL” done about model railroaders, and it appears I’m in the MAJORITY, stifled like that.

That’s why I thought of putting my story of making a photo diorama, in here. Not that it was a good “how to” (more of a PARODY of one you’d see in Model Railroader Magazine.)

But because the result was so good, even from the haphazard construction “learn as you go” routine I went through, picking plaster bits from my hair for days afterward.

I thought it just MIGHT inspire some of the folks out there, who know BETTER about such things as adding plaster TO water, and so forth, to tackle this kind of a project, which is a great practice run at trying your hand at some of those industrial, artistic aspects.

I know it has ME all fired up to do another, better, larger one, on which I can have some of those STRUCTURES I built as far back as 1959, which have yet to see the light of day, from their packing boxes.