Nice work Kevin
Hello and Happy Weekend to all my Model Railroader forum friends.
My WPF contribution this week is about the April Fools joke article in the new copy of Model Railroader. If you do not want to see it... STOP READING NOW.
My share is the original photograph I made to accompany the April Fool article that I submitted. The Kalmbach Media graphics art crew edited the photograph to better meet what they needed, more on that later. I put a lot of work into that picture, and this weekend I am going to share what went into creating it.
This is the photograph as it was submitted:
The story involves my ficticious need to bridge a gap in front of a door into the layout room.
I used the right side of my layout test segment to "play the part" of my layout in the photograph.
The layout test segment had been built in my garage. Unfortunately, it could not be posed in front of the door that goes into the house from the garage because the wall corner was on the worng side of the door. Also, it was too large to fit into the house.
The picture needed to be taken indoors, so the layout test segment was cut down to a small piece that I could bring inside.
A fair amount of repair was needed after cutting it down to only 20 inches wide, but it was completed in just a couple of days
The small section of the layout was positioned in front of the door that goes from the dining room to the spare bedroom. This was not the ideal location to use, but with all the remodel work going on, it was the only possible photo-shoot location that had a door.
I added the cabinet above the layout to make it appear more built-in, but it did not show up in the final print.
To represent the nitrogen particle beam I made two pieces of plexiglass that were spray painted on the back side with different colorful splotches.
The bridge beams were held in gauge by clamps spaced by gaming tiles. The assembly was supported on a 2 by 4 stand.
I orginally made the bridge 24 inches long, but it was too flimsy, and there was too much of a chance that a locomotive might fall to the floor.
Then I needed a cast of characters for my scene. It was a no-brainer to use my beloved Athearn Trainmaster as the star. I looked through my collection of freight cars and decided to use the boxcars inspired by Star Trek The Original Series and Rick & Morty Vindicators 3. A normal SGRR PS1 boxcar was the third unit in the consist.
With everything set up, I took the first test picture of the train leaving the layout and moving onto the particle beam.
Even being shortened, the plexiglass bridge was too flimsy to support the entire locomotive. One truck had to stay on the layout section.
The image was shot with the aperture set to f22, ISO to 100, and a 4 second shutter opening. The scene was lit by a single soft-box photo flood with a 2,000 watt natural daylight bulb. The light source was 72 inches from the scene directly behind the camera.
The erratic lighting effect on the particle beam was created by shining a very bright single-light LED flashlight onto the plexiglass. The flashlight was moved around during the exposure in different patterns to try to get an effect that looked good.
I took over 200 pictures trying to get one that was great. Digital cameras are awesome. Back in the Fuji-Film days I would never make 1/10 of that many shots of a single scene.
Somtimes the light would hit the locomotive or come off the plexiglass and hit the door. Both of these made the shot no good. Only about 1 out of every 15 attempts looked kind-of good.
After I submitted the article to the Model Railroader editorial staff, I was contacted and said they needed the picture to be a little different for publication. They wanted the whole locomotive and one boxcar in the partical beam, and they wanted to see more of the layout.
Unfortunately there were problems with this request. I already knew I could not make the bridge any longer due to stability issues, and the layout had been cut up and hauled to the landfill. Plus, pretty much every bit of the layout that had remained was in the picture already.
Also, there was no layout on the other side of the bridge, just a solid wall.
Fortunately their graphic arts department was able to modify the orginal image and make it suitable for the format and space available in the magazine.
That is my share for the week, sorry it was so long. I am hoping for another glorious edition of Weekend Photo Fun.
Please share anything model railroad related with us this weekend. I am hoping for all kinds of good projects, works in progress, layout photos, or anything else.
-Kevin
Living the dream.