Hudson Steam Locomotive
My health has been quite lousy the past few days... I clearly overdid it this past weekend... and even my spine is painfully inflamed so I've been doing very little. I have, however, managed to spend a little time each day with a camera in my hand and that has been nice.
This morning, I had intended to work on a different project but some trains from the long weekend with Lukey and Kenzie were in my way. As I was thinking about whether or not to use up the precious energy needed to put away these trains, I decided to shoot some photos of this particular set of trains instead (mostly, the locomotive interested me). It seemed like this option would use less energy than my original plan and, besides, this is another project I have been wanting to accomplish for quite some time anyway.
So, here we have an O scale Hudson steam locomotive... with real smoke coming out of the boiler... and, I must say, this was a difficult shot to capture and it was a time consuming little project!
My first issue was that the background was cluttered with all sorts of things I did not want in the photo... so I pulled out a piece of black foamcore poster board to use as a background. I also moved the loop of track slightly to minimize clutter and get the correct shooting angle.
Then I realized that I had far too much light spilling in through the two windows on one wall. Typically, sunlight shining through a window is great light but this is not the type of light I wanted for this project so I grabbed two blankets from the living room couch and covered each of the windows.
Okay... now the room was pitch black but I needed some sort of soft light on the locomotive. Now I began a search for a small flashlight... found one but it was not working... hunted around for batteries... inserted batteries... now the flashlight was good to go.
I manually focused my camera... grabbed my small flashlight... and guessed at my exposure. I chose a long shutter speed of 12 seconds so I would have time to "paint" the locomotive in light from the flashlight while the shutter was open.
My next problem is that I wanted smoke... I fired up the locomotive and cranked up the throttle to create smoke (in complete darkness)... then quickly went back to the camera and my little flashlight... pressed the shutter release button (the camera was flat on the floor)... then I had 12 seconds to paint light onto the smoke and the locomotive while my camera's shutter was open... the real trick was trying to illuminate the smoke and the locomotive without lighting up things in the background.
By this point, I had my best shot yet but I still felt it wasn't right... it was too static. I loved the nice shiny reflection created by our new ebony wood floor but the scene was still too static. I wanted to somehow capture motion without blurring the entire locomotive. I played some more doing different things with light... different things with camera settings... shot about a dozen more photos trying different things... broke out in a sweat... loosened up my spinal pain a bit (which was great)... and finally figured out a way to add some visual interest to this still image.
Then, I spent a few hours over the course of the day dodging and burning the RAW image... selective sharpening... selective levels adjustments... softening some edges... adding a mild texture... toning the image... and wah-lah! (PS... I know that 'wah-lah' is supposed to be spelled as 'voila'... I just can't bring myself to spell it that way when I am writing in English because I have an Aunt Viola and it is just too close to her name which sounds nothing like the French word!)
Anyway, I like this image!
This morning, I had intended to work on a different project but some trains from the long weekend with Lukey and Kenzie were in my way. As I was thinking about whether or not to use up the precious energy needed to put away these trains, I decided to shoot some photos of this particular set of trains instead (mostly, the locomotive interested me). It seemed like this option would use less energy than my original plan and, besides, this is another project I have been wanting to accomplish for quite some time anyway.
So, here we have an O scale Hudson steam locomotive... with real smoke coming out of the boiler... and, I must say, this was a difficult shot to capture and it was a time consuming little project!
My first issue was that the background was cluttered with all sorts of things I did not want in the photo... so I pulled out a piece of black foamcore poster board to use as a background. I also moved the loop of track slightly to minimize clutter and get the correct shooting angle.
Then I realized that I had far too much light spilling in through the two windows on one wall. Typically, sunlight shining through a window is great light but this is not the type of light I wanted for this project so I grabbed two blankets from the living room couch and covered each of the windows.
Okay... now the room was pitch black but I needed some sort of soft light on the locomotive. Now I began a search for a small flashlight... found one but it was not working... hunted around for batteries... inserted batteries... now the flashlight was good to go.
I manually focused my camera... grabbed my small flashlight... and guessed at my exposure. I chose a long shutter speed of 12 seconds so I would have time to "paint" the locomotive in light from the flashlight while the shutter was open.
My next problem is that I wanted smoke... I fired up the locomotive and cranked up the throttle to create smoke (in complete darkness)... then quickly went back to the camera and my little flashlight... pressed the shutter release button (the camera was flat on the floor)... then I had 12 seconds to paint light onto the smoke and the locomotive while my camera's shutter was open... the real trick was trying to illuminate the smoke and the locomotive without lighting up things in the background.
By this point, I had my best shot yet but I still felt it wasn't right... it was too static. I loved the nice shiny reflection created by our new ebony wood floor but the scene was still too static. I wanted to somehow capture motion without blurring the entire locomotive. I played some more doing different things with light... different things with camera settings... shot about a dozen more photos trying different things... broke out in a sweat... loosened up my spinal pain a bit (which was great)... and finally figured out a way to add some visual interest to this still image.
Then, I spent a few hours over the course of the day dodging and burning the RAW image... selective sharpening... selective levels adjustments... softening some edges... adding a mild texture... toning the image... and wah-lah! (PS... I know that 'wah-lah' is supposed to be spelled as 'voila'... I just can't bring myself to spell it that way when I am writing in English because I have an Aunt Viola and it is just too close to her name which sounds nothing like the French word!)
Anyway, I like this image!
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