Suggestions or advise please

[ScottoT]

Good day everyone.

Been catching up on reading of guidelines and suggestions for beginners and rather than submitting photo's that will be immediately rejected I wanted to run these two photo's by some of you to see which might be additions to the site.

These are the raw photo's I have not yet made any adjustments using photoshop as of yet.

[ScottoT]

Here I have cropped and adjusted the photo.

[KevinM]

Hi Scott,

Both images are cropped far too tightly at the top, and to some degree, elsewhere. You'll need to leave some space between any major element and any one of the borders of the photo. Hopefully the original images have some room to loosen up the crop.

[Decapod401]

Originally Posted by ScottoT

Attachment 9522

Attachment 9523

Good day everyone.

Been catching up on reading of guidelines and suggestions for beginners and rather than submitting photo's that will be immediately rejected I wanted to run these two photo's by some of you to see which might be additions to the site.

These are the raw photo's I have not yet made any adjustments using photoshop as of yet.

While the lighting is OK, the composition needs work. In both cases, the top of the cab is way too close to the edge of the frame, and in the second one, it is a little close to the left edge. If the examples that you attached represent the full frame that you captured, these won't work. If you can pan up, adding sky while eliminating some of the foreground you may have something to work with.

The first frame may or may not fly on RP, because of being on the shadowed side of the train. With good nose light, getting accepted depends on the mood of the screener. Also, have you read about the rule of thirds (ROT)? This is a fundamental guideline for composition, and well over 90% of the photos on RP conform to the ROT. At your early stage, I would recommend that you absolutely follow the ROT. In the case of these two photos, I would put the ROT point somewhere between the coupler and the pilot sill below the nose. The ROT points should show on your cropping tool in PS (They do in LightRoom, which I use).

Finally, I advise that when you shoot, frame the scene a little "loose", with breathing room all the way around. This allows for cropping, as well as accommodating leveling and distortion correction.

[RobJor]

my 1 or 2 cents-
What I see in some of the samples is you first need better locations. Guessing where you might be located you don't have the luxury of shooting on the Pokey in W VA or the Transcon so you have to work finding a good location. You probably don't have one train after another, you need to get a grasp of when the trains run, there is a Michigan web site with lots of info.

Once you find good locations where a train might run when you want you want to figure where to shoot from. Learn to visualize the train in your scene or take images of the scene to review..

It used to be harder. I just saw an old magazine article about a young lady shooting 4 x 5 format camera where you only got one shot and she would pre-shoot with a Polaroid to check her composition. As the article stated she had more curves than the rail line but that was the 70's magazines!!!

Use google maps, searching the database on RP's for ideas or just drive along your local lines in both directions on a nice day.

One quick way to get a leg up on the photography thing is to take a class at your local Junior College. If you have the time take the credit course. If you look at the bios of lots of the good photographers, there is either a great mentor or some educational background. Sure they are not going to teach you foamer rules or some of the madeup rules but you should come away with knowledge that will help you here.

Bob

Add: take the digital photography class

[Mberry]

On top of what others have said, the first appears to be out of focus, so you would definitely not want to try it on rp.

[Noct Foamer]

Originally Posted by Decapod401

Finally, I advise that when you shoot, frame the scene a little "loose", with breathing room all the way around. This allows for cropping, as well as accommodating leveling and distortion correction.

Absolutely agree. Don't get so focused on only seeing an engine that you don't see other interesting things nearby. Is that a call box by the tracks? If so, cool! I might have made it the subject, and opened up the lens (to f1.4?) to make the engine appear as a blurred background.

Framing things a bit more loosely and not being so focused on just the engine can create a much more interesting photo:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/968260...posted-public/


Kent in SD