Model Railroad Blog

Choosing Sky Background Photos

Cropping in a photo of an actual sky can create stunning results in terms of the appearance of the photos we take of our models….that is if you understand what your end game is going in. It’s easy to loose sight of that. I know I have in the past. With model photography we are trying to highlight the models themselves. They should be the focus, not the sky image. You don’t want to pick sky photos that work against that. Specifically, you don’t want images that are so dramatic your eye is drawn to the sky and not your work and you don’t want images that are so flat that everything dissolves into a pastel blob.

The shot above has the characteristics you should be looking for in a sky background. First, it has some clouds but they are whispy and not overly dramatic. The top of the image is a deep sapphire blue which gives good contrast. Moving top to bottom the color gradient very gradually shifts from deep blue to a paler tone. Although you won’t need it for every situation having a very low tree line can be useful in some cases.

Let’s look at some of my mistakes over the years so you can avoid them.

White puffy clouds. This is the most common error. Do you want people looking at your shot and thinking, “What cool clouds! That one in the middle looks sort of like an elephant playing a violin”. Puffy cloud photos are very distracting and tend to look “model railroady”.

I liked this shot when I first took it, and used it for awhile. Ultimately I got away from it. The sky is almost too clear and too vibrant. The contrast with the model tends to be startling.

This image has the opposite problem, the colors are too faint and everything is too diffuse. It’s so washed out that when cropped into a model photo everything just melds into sort of a sea of gray nothingness.

I took this shot in Manhattan a number of years ago. Can you believe that’s really how it looked? No photoshop. Dramatic sunset shots pull your attention away from the model and also look “model railroady”.

You don’t need that many background images. Once you get a good one you can photo shop mirror image versions and slightly different cloud patterns. Keep your eye on the sky and your camera ready!

F & R Scaffolds

Back in 2010 I was walking down 22nd Street when I came across F&R Scaffolds next to Proveedora Jiron. I was drawn in by the faint ghost lettering of a previous business, Lobster Factory, barely noticeable under the paint. In this image I continue to try to work 1/87 human figures into the shot without their production deficiencies being too distracting. (same strategy as before: paint them dark gray, place them in the distance, back to the camera).

Here’s the prototype as it looked in 2010.

Industrial Park Grade Crossing Signage

Grade crossing signs within the confines of a private industrial park sometimes take on looks other than the tradition crossbucks. Shown above is one such example at the NEPW Logistics campus in Portland, ME which I’m currently modeling for a commercial customer.

Here’s the artwork for those interested in making your own. I print the image out on glossy photo paper at a height of .28 inches. Paint the back of the sheet silver and give the front a coat of Dullcote. The sign poles are two inches in diameter so use .20 inch spring wire for those.

A-1 Farmers Choice

A-1 Farmers Choice and International Freight was located on the far west end of the switchback. At the time I started rail fanning the line in ’06 it was still receiving cars on a fairly consistent basis. That tapered off and eventually dried up several years later. A decade ago I shot a similar version of this image but it was lacking in a few areas. In cases like this I’ve been slowly doubling back and doing re-shoots.

11th Ave. Facing West

Some photo shoots fall together in an hour and give you the perfect ten as far as images go. Then there are those like the one above that you have to really fight with to get something even remotely useable. The problem with this shot was getting the lighting in position which, in the end, I was never able to do. I I had to use the room’s overhead fluorescents and a lot of photo editing. The two Trujillo tanks to the right are tight against the wall so I couldn’t light the white warehouse from that side with photo floods which is what the shot needed. Then there was the low ceiling and a benchwork footprint in this area that made it hard to get lights into the necessary position.

Some interesting things came out of the shoot though. I used my new iPhone 13 with the triple lens configuration. Note the depth of field without using Helicon Focus. This camera gets really “jittery” with shots such as this and the camera height won’t lock at the closer-to-the-ground shots I could get with the iPhone 6. I found though that if I point the 13 down at the ground it locks the focus tight on that. If you then tilt the camera up into position up it will hold the low level lens position for a second or two before “hopping” to a higher angle shot. Weird.