n&w 611 at strasburg

i spent the weekend at the strasburg railroad, on their photo charters featuring the norfolk & western j class #611, and their own #475. photo runby's organized and night lighting by pete lerro of lerro productions. michael was also there, so hopefully he can process and add a couple. below is one of the early am/sunrise runs of 611 at track speed pulling a 10 car mixed feight through the strasburg countryside

 

and # 475 deserves a moment of glory also

 

Awesome!!! Well done @gary! We will see @mSummers stuff in 2021

 

I was aiming for 2022, but will try to get them done before then.

 

and this, this is why i am a steady client of lerro productions, it isn't just the trains, it isn't just that we seem to be in the right locations for the light at the time of day, pete has contacts, now i am going off memory here, so if i get any of this wrong michael will have to correct me. this is rosalyn, and that was her great grandfathers tractor, purchased new in i believe i was told 1943, during the war, when the only way a farmer could get a tractor was if one or more of your draft team died, well one of his did and he was allowed to purchase this, an oliver model 60 row crop tractor, that is an original steering wheel, she is wearing authentic wartime work clothing.they have kept this tractor in the family and she goes to ww2 reenactments with civilian scenes with it. very cool stuff

 

Did you see either of the WDW trains at Strasberg? I think the Roy just got there about 6 months ago and one was almost ready to ship back.
~J

 

Nope. They’re well hidden as prescribed by the Mouse’s legal team.

 

yeah you would think they were nuke subs with the missile silos exposed , they are kept under total blackout, i don't think the shop crew is even allowed to directly acknowledge that a disney locomotive is in the house

 

Yeah, they absolutely deny that there’s anything there just like Mouse Legal says they have to. It’s really kind of silly, but if that’s the price to have real steam trains at the Magic Kingdom I’ll gladly comply and pretend they aren’t there.

 

there was a night session but i did not make it too deep into the night, hopefully michael can pick up the later scenes. i am going to post about 4 photos here, i have tried some different treatments of these, let me know what you think of them

a black & white, i think steam engines at night go b&w extremely well


a different look for me, some light HDR, not a look i do often, but i thought it went well here, to kind of bring attention to the station master, how often he worked in and around live steam



a couple of young ladies, catching the night train, maybe returning to college somewhere, maybe to visit a beau in the service stationed somewhere stateside



working evening shift, maybe this is the last train out for the night and he can wind down awaiting his relief operator

 

All of these shots are gorgeous! The only thing I would consider is cropping off the bottom... let's say 1/4 to 1/3 (depends on the shot) of the brick work in the first and last shot (pictured above) since it is nonessential to the scene.

Doing so would make this more of a panoramic shot, but it would draw the eye into the subject more without the nonessential foreground distraction.

Just my opinion. As I said these shots are GORGEOUS!!
~Joanie

 

Nice work Gary! I haven’t even looked at mine yet.

I agree with Joanie, the first two could be cropped in closer.

 

howzziss followed joanie's advice and cropped out much of the brickwork on first and last shots, of course understand these are more dramatic to my eyes. looking at the shot on a 24 inch 5k monitor will do that for a shot, and for fyi tim, the last 2 shots were taken with the a7R4 body, tripod mounted with the $400 samyang 45mm f1.8 lens hung on it. that lens shoots way above it's price point

 

so i am trying for more dramatic photos, to that end i value the input here, so here is that night shot of the station master hooping up orders, a further cropped in black & white version, and then the HDR version cropped in, what say you my fellow critics, any preference??

 

The treatment of both images is good, however I would suggest cropping them differently. I think 611 is too centered and the image would be better if the locomotive was on the left, seeing a little bit of the station on the right. If you can hit the upper left third point with the headlight and the lower right third point with the lantern that would be even better compositionally. There just isn’t enough going on in the left side of the image as it is currently cropped for me.

 

It’s a bad sketch but try something like this while maintaining the 2:3 aspect ratio of the original shot:

 

ok, here is cropped using the third point intersections in those 2 places, the headlight and the lantern

 

Print it big and hang it on the wall!

 

Ding, ding, Ding, winner, winner, chicken dinner!