Steam & Excursion > Leaving town on a steam train

I think the greatest highlight on my recent trip to the Nevada Northern in Ely came in the late morning on Sunday when we left town for the Hi-Line behind both steam engines in charge of several box cars and ore cars. I had managed to get myself into the cupola of the caboose on the sunny side of the train, where I could hold my camera out the window to record the view a brakeman may have had "back in the day". As the tracks curve to the south leaving town, the view in this image came into view. It took a little judicious burning in the "print" to hide some of the more obvious "modern" elements. Hopefully my sense of amazement at experiencing such a thing as this comes through in the image.

Be safe out there -

- Kit

Kit Courter
Menefee, CA
LunarLight Photography

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WOW Very nicely done. You really captured the feel of 1937 or whenever. Thanks for sharing with us. Would love to see the original just to see how you changed it.

Nice and really back in time. That was my interest---what did the original look like in order to see what had to be altered.
Brian Stevens

Awesome. Very nice.

Victor A. Baird
http://www.erstwhilepublications.com

I'll post a copy of the original this evening, but I can list the major mods
1) the chain link fence on the right was a mid-tone element against brighter ground including blonde grass. I burned that down to dark charcoal so that it became a nearly black object against dark gray
2) there was a white billboard right above left side of the near engine cab. I tightly selected that and burned it down to middle gray and collapsed the contrast so that it does not attract the eye.
3) there is a bright red semi truck and bright white trailer in the left midground. In the conversion to gray scale, that got made more uniform in tone so as to become less of an attraction to the eye. It then got blurred as well.

Those were the major "fixes". Beyond that, there was a lot of local contrast expansion in small areas to bring out detail, especially in the steam plume and dark shadow under the cab roof of the near engine.

- k

Kit Courter
Menefee, CA
LunarLight Photography



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/27/15 09:28 by CimaScrambler.

kit, what's the difference between toning them down and zapping them all together with photoshop?? just curious. dave, out.

davebb71 Wrote:
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> kit, what's the difference between toning them
> down and zapping them all together with
> photoshop?? just curious. dave, out.

I have a long history of darkroom work. Most of what I do to images in Photoshop is just a digital version of the same sorts of things I used to do under the enlarger using a hole in a card or a dodging tool. So the terms I use are from my darkroom past.

Toning something down makes it darker. Under the enlarger, you would use a card with a hole in it to place more exposure on the paper in only certain areas. In Photoshop, you get a similar effect by selecting an area of the image and then using one of several available tools to darken that area. Photoshop is the more powerful tool since you can select any shape area, feather the edges by a little or a lot, or select just the highlights within an area, or the gray tones, or the dark tones, and adjust them within that area. You can use the same Photoshop methods to lighten dark areas, or lighten only some tones within an area. It sounds complicated, and it can be, but it is part of the skill one can gain in photoshop through a dozen years of experimentation and practice.

By "zapping them all together" I assume you mean replacing part of the image with something else, like using the Photoshop "clone stamp tool". I chose not to do that in this image, and so relied only on darkroom-like tonal adjustments. That is not to say I don't use the clone stamp on other images from time to time. It is a very handy tool to remove trash from a scene, among other things.

Kit Courter
Menefee, CA
LunarLight Photography

It's a great shot, Kit. My kind, from the train.

What a nice image ... thank you for the post!
Ya done good!!!

Odyssey
Evergreen, CO

Here is the original color version for comparison. It was straightened and cropped from what came right out of the camera, and was processed for tonality, sharpness and color the RAW file converter, but is otherwise unaltered.

Kit Courter
Menefee, CA
LunarLight Photography

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.....And it illustrates very well the subtle changes you made to produce a great black and white version. Nice work, Kit.

Wow!

Steve Mitchell
http://www.yardgoatimages.com