Example 5: Rejected setting Let's not get too far afield (nor astream?:teeth. Here's an undoctored photo that just didn't make it, in my view. The composition is poor, to begin with. It does show the garage that I built my railroad in. I haven't bothered to fix the sky--that's what it really looks like. Let's look at some of the modeling problems: The poor guard tower in left center really got bent in the move. I never saw it until this photo. The antenna on the munitions shack is bent (far left), and the building isn't planted. The track isn't well ballasted and the switch is not painted. There's a suspension rod in the right center. The back drop at top center is burnt-out and has a shadow of the garage door track. How would I have fixed these problems if I liked the photo? I would have fixed the tower and munitions shed, and ballasted and painted the track--all of which I did, after seeing this test shot. That was a few hours of work, and not a big deal. I'd adjust the lighting. I'm not concerned with the flourescents burning out, just the back drop. I think I'd just remove a bulb or two in the back, or throw more light in the foreground with a compact flourescent in a $10 reflector. Probably the latter. I'd raise the camera a bit so I wouldn't have so much of the garage door mechanisms visible, but keeping the full height of the guard tower. I'd Photoshop out the supporting rod I could prop the deck up from underneath, and remove the rod for photography, but why bother? This was shot blind, with the camera resting on the tracks in a place where I couldn't see the viewfinder. I imagined it much differently than it came out! It also shows the depth of field possible at 12mm at f/22 on a DSLR.
Example 6: The Photo I Submitted Example 5 obviously didn't work! So I rethought what I was trying to show, and submitted this image instead: Caption: These munition sheds, behind the locos, were quick and easy projects from my scrap box. The delapitated buildings behind the sheds are from the old layout, and are ready to collapse. Toward the left is a !-1/2 diameter PVC pipe wrapped with paper. At the far left is a building, scratch-build, for an old mine. No Photoshopping here. There are some mysterious bands to the right of the water tower, and the munitions sheds aren't quite planted still. The ballast on the yard tracks is better, and the switch has been painted with a black Sharpie. This was shot at 24mm, probably f/11 at 0.25 seconds at ISO 200. Questions: Should I Photoshop out the oversized switch stand? Nah from me, but who know what an art director will do?
Why? Won't the "reader" of whatever article this appears in want to know that you use these particular switchstands? Or have questions about why you seem to use no switchstands? Or wonder whether his own oversized switchstands are somehow out of favor? Isn't it an integral part of your model? Shouldn't we all get to know what kinds of switchstands everyone uses? So yeah, nah from me, too. But I don't have a clue anymore what magazines are up to with peoples' photos. I think that's sad.
I think the question here is more, "What's that switchstand doing out in the middle of nowhere?" You can't see, in this photo, that it's controlling a switch, unless I explain it in text, which nobody reads. I know that few people really read the text. When I was younger, I put some real red herrings into my text. The brochures would sail through approvals until I brought up the problem. I'm famous in the computer industry for a brochure. On the cover was a dart in the center of a dartboard. I wrote the caption: "Good darts have three separate parts: the point, the shaft, and the feathers. We give you all three parts. Other companies give you only the shaft." No one read the caption! It was my joke to senior marketing guys that they should be awake! I stopped it before publication.
Example 7: Yes or No? Caption: Past Williamstown, we get into the the suburbs. These are ceramic houses that I bought for about $1.00 each on eBay. They are about the right scale, and an easy way to populate a village. Some of them are rather garish, others just right. I did one thing with this photo: remove the garage door track in the center top. You can see it's cropped to be severely horizontal, which takes out the overhead lights. Yes, no, or indifferent?
Another Question After Alaska 2006, my Nikon D70 developed an imager flaw, probably from moisture. Upon my return, servicing it at a Nikon repair shop removed the flaw, called an artifact. Am I allowed to remove that artifact from my photos? I couldn't see it in the viewfinder (different optical path), nor the back panel display (too little resolution). Am I, as a photographer, just stuck with the artifact? This happens all the time with miniature photography, which is model railroad photography in this case. The mysterious white spots, for example, are known artifacts, flaws in the pixel by pixel processing that occurs in camera. So, is eliminating artifacts ethical?
Photo 1: The Original This thread fascinates me! So I did a little tutorial. I started with a small jpeg image: I could have started with the original 17 Mbyte Tiffs, and had much better results, but then I'd have to downsize everything to post. Just remember--the more pixels you have to play with, the better (and more undetectable) the results. So here's a reduced jpeg, right out of the camera: Not too shabby. That's a black-blue card that I fixed to the layout in the lower right to hide the underneath clutter. The problems that I'd like to correct the perspective control, the one visible seam in the backdrop, and the white spot at top left center. That is a coved corner, by the way. Because I'm being interrupted, I'm going to do this as a series of posts, rather than one big one. With a little work I could have physically removed the seam--paper curls even in dry desert air--and fixed the white spot. That's the two flaws I see in this photo.
Photo 2: Correcting Perspective I used to do this all the time with the enlarger in my darkroom. Tp me this is not a big deal. We see things as rectalinear; a camera doesn't. So I think this isn't photo manipulation at all. It's just correcting the lenses visual problems. Many of us wear glasses, right?
Photo 3: Crop and Fix the Seam So I crop square. And I fix the seam with Photoshop. Yes, I could do it with a wallpaper seam roller for the sake of the photograph, but that might permanently damage the back drop for those who see it in person, because it would dent the foam core on which the photo is mounted. I'd rather take my time and fix it correctly in real life than damage the photo. So I face an ethical choice: spend some time fixing it temporarily, spend more time fixing it permanently, or just get on with it in Photoshop? I chose the third, although I did fix it later.
Photo 4: Fill in the Coved Corner Here's where we start the real Photoshopping. For this tutorial I've just copied a part of the mountain photo back drop. I considered printing a new back drop for the cove (in reverse), and then physcially mixing and matching things. That's what I eventually did in the final photo. For this tutorial, however--which I did from scratch, just to be illustrative--let's look at what's happenning. There's not an exact match here. And my selection here ain't the greatest. I could easily expand it, but the left and right physical are OK by me. So, I didn't have time to paste a back drop into the white space!
Do I trust what I see in any photographs anymore? Heck No Photography used to be the art form....Now Photo manipulation is the art form
Photo 5: Blending In So here I blend in the new seams. It's still a little fakey looking. So I do a little more blending: And that's it. I'm just trying to make a good photo in the limits of my garage. I hope this brief tutorial was helpful, especailly for others with limited photo resources.
I happened to check in while you were in the middle of building the tutorial, and I thought, hey, have a little fun. So I took a couple minutes off and did some tinkering. I finished it off in between your third and fourth posts.
Ok, so which image better represents my layout as it existed in 2005? This image: Or this image: I've physically corrected all the flaws in the first photo: should I go back and re-shoot?
Granted to a certain extent you have to know how a camera and lens works to take a decent picture..but add the heilcon DOF program,add the photoshopped results, add images, remove images in the final process the photo is doctored, bottom line the art is no longer how to use your camera combine with angles ,lighting, and lens but shear manipulation by computer after the fact reduces pure photography as an art form.
Modeling "Pure" photography Photo manipulation All are art forms, it just depends on which one (or ones) you wish to employ, and to what purpose. Those wishing to enter a model into a contest employ only the first, Thosw wishing to document the entry might add the second, Those wishing to produce the most realistic scene for a photograph might use all three. Is impressionist art "art"? A lot of folks didn't used to think so. How 'bout Andy Warhol's stuff? Not my cup o' tea, but who's to say? Heck, even photography wasn't considered "art" back in the day. For a layout construction article, I want to see all the door tracks, paint cans and tools on the tracks (and maybe even a cat in the tunnel). For a magazine spread on a layout, I have no problem with photo tricks, so long as there is some actual modeling at the core. Which takes back to the top of this thread! <Aaaaarrrgggghhhhh!>
I manipulate as much as I can until the images starts to look fake (to me that is) then I stop and 9 times out of ten the edited image is trashed and I start over again. A good eye can usually tell when an image has been over manipulated. Steve
Especially if you were working with the original images rather than a coarse JPEG! I think folks have gotten my point; It doesn't take much to eliminate a distracting background! I thought this one wasn't worth the effort. Although you did cut out the Insane Asylum and the Hotel.:angel: Yes, with a little more effort, you could easily have kept them!:teeth: And you could have made the ballast less regular!:teeth:
