A Week With No Posts

[finescalerr]

It's been dead here. I've been playing with my iPhone camera and photo software. What have you guys been doing? -- Russ

[Bill Gill]

Russ, modeling here time has been as rare as bikini clad beauties in Antarctica.
I also fiddled a little with a quick snapshot on my layout just to see if the angle might be a good one. I think it could be. The distant background was GIMPed in.

[Ray Dunakin]

Wow, that looks terrific, Russ!

Losing Cris has really taken the wind out of my sails. I'll get back into the railroad again eventually but for now I just don't have any enthusiasm for it, or much of anything.

[nk]

The director of my art gallery is retiring so I have been making a gift for her to take with her to Wisconsin. No photos yet but its coming along nicely.

[Rail and Tie]

Hi Russ,

great photo and great clean modeling. One thing that always make me chuckle is that we as model railroaders tend to weather a structure to look like it is 100 years old even though it was likely built in the past 5 or 10 years.

[finescalerr]

I've was fooling around with photography this week and dug out the handful of HO structures I used to employ as props along with whatever locos and rolling stock I found at the front of my storage cabinet. (The foreground structure was a built-up and weathered gift from American Model Builders/LaserKits.) Think of this nonsense as two dimensional modeling. At least it's something to look at. -- Russ

[Ray Dunakin]

I like it!

[Stuart]

Pretty cool for just a throw together photo shoot!

[finescalerr]

Another week has passed without a post so here's a photo of our new inflatable house and luxury vehicle. I built them in 1:48 scale and pumped them up to full size before we moved in.

What have you guys been doing?

Russ

[shropshire lad]

I take it you  brought your inflatable ladies along as well ?

  I have been doing some modelling but I haven't taken any photos yet . I will try and remember tomorrow .

  Nick

[Ray Dunakin]

That looks great, Russ!

[Peter_T1958]

The old house catches the eye despite - or perhaps because of its plainness. It does not take much more! And it fits perfectly into the background photo!

[Stuart]

Another great shot Russ.  I know you have explained your photo methods in the past but I am curious about your scenic setup.  Is the foreground (the grass and weed area) something you created with static grass?  It looks very realistic.  And the back ground scene, is that something Photoshopped in or is it a scenic panorama or photograph placed behind the model? 

Even though this appears as a simple photo, I am familiar enough with photography to know that some time and effort went into your arrangement here.

Stuart

[finescalerr]

From about 1997 until about 2001 I had to build and shoot pictures on temporary dioramas for each issue of Finescale Railroader, then clean up the mess until the next issue. A cover, spread, and one or two additional photos required a strenuous day of at least 12 hours for setup, lighting, photography, and clean up. Locomotives, structures, ground cover, trees, and foliage were part of the original exposure and, in the beginning, I'd use seamless background paper, a hot light, and colored gels to create a sky background.

As computers and Photoshop evolved it became feasible to erase the background and insert a photo of the sky or other scenery as long as the lighting was consistent with that of the original photo.

Computers have improved a lot and Adobe vastly overcharges for Photoshop so today I have a Mac laptop and Affinity Photo. For our purposes it is equal to Photoshop and, in some ways, better; also about 5% of the price.

A few weeks ago I decided to try using photos for everything except models and structures. I shot the scenes with a single high intensity lamp on an 18 inch deep by 3 foot wide shelf in my 10x10 foot workshop. I used an iPhone for some images, a 35mm SLR for those where the iPhone needed more light. The HO track in some scenes is actually 1980s era Atlas Snap Track but I buried most of it in photos of natural foreground scenery.

None of the three photos above has scenic materials except for part of a tree on the left edge of the second image. Instead, the scenery consists of layers of edited photographs I blended into a simple model shot.

The best way to illustrate what I've written is with some photos and explanations of how I created them. Most of us are far less interested in photography than in model building so I'll start a new thread only if a lot of you want me to.

In my case, I suspect the digital photos will long outlive the models. Besides, they take up no shelf space, are infinitely less delicate, and vastly more portable.

Russ

[Stuart]

If the day ever comes that I finish my my gas station model I want to spend some time photographing it in an appropriate environment.  I have contemplated using a green or blue screen and then editing in scenic elements as you have done here.  Any pointers you want to throw out in the form of a thread will certainly be welcome to me at least. 

Stuart