Happy Holidays from a Railroad Photographer

Orgnoi1 · Dec 5, 2006

I havent noticed too many Christmas(y) posts up yet... so I just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas in my own railroading way... =)

December 2nd at the Berkshire Scenic Railroad Holiday Run

and a couple from chasing the CP Rail Holiday Train from Saratoga, NY to Ticonderoga, NY...

gladiator · Dec 5, 2006

Merry X'mas to everybody.

Pirate · Dec 5, 2006

These are absolutely cool. Should be someones Christmas Cards.

neea · Dec 5, 2006

Wow. I've never seen a train with lights like that before.
That's incredible.
The first one with Santa would make a great Christmas Card for my Uncle. He LOVES trains and collects everything there is to collect about trains.

GrfxGuru · Dec 6, 2006

Cool! Simply just Cool!

LaFoto · Dec 6, 2006

Oh wow. These are nice!
We have a special Christmas thread in the Photo Themes but I am sure there will be more threads on the subject outside the Photo Themes any time soon now, too.

GoM · Dec 6, 2006

thanks for showing these

drkuba · Dec 6, 2006

Hey, a newbie question here -

How did oyu manage to take that photo without blurring the graphics too much? I assume the train was moving... right? And you didn't pan since the background isn't blurred either. Share with me your secrets:mrgreen:

Hoppy · Dec 6, 2006

Hey Orgnoi1 I live in Berkshire and we certainly don't get trains as good as that coming through here....... Oh well. thanks for sharing

Orgnoi1 · Dec 6, 2006

drkuba said:
Hey, a newbie question here -

How did oyu manage to take that photo without blurring the graphics too much? I assume the train was moving... right? And you didn't pan since the background isn't blurred either. Share with me your secrets:mrgreen:

well its a 50/50 deal...

the first 50:
You have to have a camera that is capable of reproducing a clean shot at high ISO... and a lens thats capable of getting a REAL large aperture...

The specs for the last shot:
Canon 5D, Canon 35/1.4L
ISO1600, 1/50sec, f/1.4, lots of timing luck

the other 50:
is practice practice practice at processing... half of photography is the post processing... if you can take a great picture but you cannot process it then you just have an ok picture... because a camera is not like a human eye you must make up for its shortcomings.

My "normal" process runs like this (I use both PSP8 and PS CS):

1. Levels Adjust in PS
2. Shadows and Highlights in PS
3. Save at Level 10
4. USM in PSP8 (I like how it acts better than PS... my opinion only)
5. Resize and or Crop in PSP8
6. Signature and Border

Obviously there is a lot more specifics to it... but those are the basics... for the late night stuff you will need to run noise reduction software either in camera... or in processing...