Strasburg Railroad - Derelict Equipment, HDR, B&W

Hello,

This is my first post on BPN, and I'm hoping I have selected the right forum for this image. As you will see, I am definitely not bird photographer :S3: (unfortunately I don't do well with things that move fast and 'randomly'). In any event, I am a landscape photographer, and have just recently become interested in B&W. I am also enjoying HDR/tonemapping, especially as input to the B&W conversion process. This image is based on a 3 image bracket, tonemapped in Photomatix and then converted in Silver Efex Pro.

I hope you enjoy the image, and please let me have your comments.

Best,

David

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3204/...a18fb376_b.jpg
_MG_5694_5_6_tonemapped by David in PA, on Flickr

Welcome David, and this is the right forum. I like the overall image, and subject matter. The tonemapping on the train stuff looks pretty good, but the dark banding around the clouds is distracting, as is the aircraft con-trail. Generally to keep the sky from banding, you will need to tonemap the image of the sky that looks the best (probably the underexposed one in this case), then stack them as layers in PS and brush in the sky using a layer mask.

Also, I want to crop a little off the top and bottom for some reason?

Great subject matter for B&W, and really like the perspective and overall composition on this, David. Patrick makes some great suggestions to make it a stronger image.

Welcome David. I love the look and the subject matter, especially the curved tracks just laying there. The detail is wonderful. The clouds look OK to me but I am not much of a cloud person.

I do agree with Patrick's excellent cropping suggestions and added a crop from the left as well. I did need to replace the end of one of the ties in the LL with a Quick Mask from the original image. I also punched up the Blacks and the Neutrals just a tad.

Hi David, welcome to OOTB and what an outstanding image to get started! There is not much I can add beyond what Patrick and Artie has already said. The sky is one of the highlight and love the details. cropping this to a pano is certainly an alternative option. Thanks for sharing and looking forward to more of your images.