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Model Railroad Photography By Paul Garrison Soft Cover 1981 First edition
Model Railroad Photography By Paul Garrison Soft Cover 1981 First edition first printing 176 Pages Everything you need to know about shooting first rate model railroad layout photographs...with all the flavor, looks and style of the real thing. INDEXED
Model railroaders come in many stripes. Some like to build huge complicated layouts on which two, three or more trains can be operated simultaneously according to carefully prepared schedules. Others like to play with electronic problems, often resulting in fully automated operation, with the moving train setting its own switches, activating signal lights and the like. Still others may prefer to spend their time building engines and rolling stock from scratch or modifying and super detailing commercially available kits. And then there are those to whom the realism of the miniature landscape is more important than the running of trains.
No matter what the modeler's individual preference might be, sooner or later he is likely to find that he would like to produce a photographic record of his work, either to simply own such photographs as a permanent record of his accomplishment, or possibly in order to illustrate a story which he may want to submit to one of the model railroad magazines.
Probably the most famous among model railroaders who successfully combined photography and model railroading was the late John Allen, whose Gorre & Daphetid railroad layout was the subject of a great many articles in the Model Railroader and the Railroad Model Craftsman. John was a photographer to start with and, as a result, whatever he built he did so with an eye toward effective photography. The fact that his was a very large and complicated operating layout simply meant that his overriding interest in photography did not prevent him from also wanting a layout which actually worked.
The fact is that, unless the problems associated with being able to take exciting pictures are taken into consideration from the very beginning, it often proves difficult if not actually impossible to end up with anything more exciting than a series of rather dull snapshots.
When we talk about photographs of model railroads they must necessarily fall into several different categories. There are long shots of the entire layout in which it is virtually always quite obvious that we are looking at a model rather than the real thing. The point of view, more often than not, resembles an aerial photograph, and the value of such a picture is primarily that it shows the work as a whole. When intelligently lit, such images need not necessarily be dull, but their impact is usually restricted to showing the size and intricacy of the model.
Another category consists of close-ups of a particular subject, such as a building, an engine, one or several cars, or an intricate piece of landscaping. Here we are concerned with showing every bit of detail as clearly as possible to impress the viewer with the amount of expert workmanship which went into the construction of the model. Such photographs are often best taken not on the actual layout, but either against a plain background, or in a small setting created specifically for the purpose of obtaining the desired result.
The third, and, to me, the most exciting type of photograph is the scene which makes a small portion of the layout appear as if it was photographed outdoors on an actual railroad setting. Here individual details are less important than the overall effect, and camera angle and lighting play an important part.
The camera angle is so important that we'll look at its effect in considerable detail in several chapters in this book. Quite obviously, the camera lens should be in a position which coincides with a place where a person could logically be expected to be standing in order to take that picture, if the subject were the real thing rather than a model. And cameras, even 35-mm cameras, are bulky and clumsy in relation to the subject being photographed, making it frequently difficult to find the right place to put them.
Lighting also plays an important part. Are we looking for a midday effect when the light is relatively flat and there are few shadows, or would we prefer the scene to look like early morning or dusk? Virtually all actual railroad scenes are outdoors, meaning that the light is produced by a single source, the sun. Thus, our lighting should also give the impression that it emanates from a single source, with all shadows falling in the same direction.
It might be said here that a modeler, whose primary interest is to create great photographic images of his work, may find that he never gets around to actually building a working layout. What he may end up with is a multitude of small scenes in which the railroad is a major or minor part of the landscape and, unless he feels otherwise inclined, he may never actually electrify the rails for operation.
Most of the photographs in this book were taken on several different layouts which I have built over the years in a series of apartments and houses in which I have lived. All of these layouts were in N-gauge. N-gauge means that the scale is 160:1. In other words, something that measures 13 feet 4.3 inches in real life will measure one inch in N-gauge. Photographing models built in such a small scale results in greater physical difficulties than would be encountered if the models were in a larger scale, such as HO (87:1), S (64:1) or 0-gauge (48:1). But since I like my layouts to actually work, and since space has always been at a premium, I decided to opt for the smaller scale and accept the added difficulties involved in getting good pictures.
I might state right here that I don't consider myself to be an expert modeler, on par with those who habitually walk away with prizes at the annual convention of the National Model Railroad Association (NMRA). My model work is designed to please me and nobody else. Therefore, in examining the illustrations in this book, you will find that I have used many commercially available kit-built structures, though most have been modified in one way or another. Also, all the rolling stock was purchased off the shelf. I am pointing this out because what I was after were the photographic effects rather than to prove some sort of great talent in making the most perfect possible models.
So, now let's get down to business.
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