I have been enjoying the hobby

Erik,

Some great pictures, artistic illusion. Sometimes seen just before sleep.

K

Awesome!!!!👍👍

Very cool!

Thanks guys, glad it lifted your spirits today 👍🙂

Outstanding, as usual from Erik.

Erik, absolutely fantastic as always!

Great photos as usual Eric.  I always look forward to your postings and yes, they do brighten my day!

Thank you for sharing,

Don

Eric, i love your 1950s photos, and I love it when your kids are in the photos too!

Thanks fellas

Exactly why I follow you.

Love the smoke!

Wow, amazing trains, amazing scenes, Super photography…. Thanks for allowing us OGR Forum members to see your work.

Fantastic artistic work...I was asking myself are these real train shots...and then the last picture revealed the secret.

Terrific artistry and imagination. Thanks for sharing.

grass and landscaping is fantastic.........

Farm House makes me wonder how soon Ma’s gonna be ringing the triangle to get everybody in for lunch!

Thanks fellas,

Not a whole lot of post edit work on these.

The set ups are a few hours of fun.

varied weather and light will really go a long way to nailing the realism

Spotted some issues, quick adjustments

props everywhere

testing angles for proper forced perspective with the background, I don’t like sky replacements and fake backgrounds unless it’s a hot water heater in your basement and you must; most of the fellas doing it fail to get the light and color temps right and blow it; if possible for what I am doing it must be done in the same frame and if any adjustments are made with the background it must match the same photo shoot; I can’t shoot a background in May on a partly cloudy day in mid morning and combine the model shoot done in October evening light, = totally bonkers.. if you need to because of the pesky hot water heater in the background.

forced perspective is the key to this.. heck, I load em up and haul my Rio Grande stuff up the Moffat and shoot in its native habitat! Now that’s ‘Deep Fake’ ! ….adding steam and exhaust is not crucial but for me a steam locomotive that isn’t breathing is stuffed and mounted. Not interested in that, and no “photoshop airbrushing tool” smoke, absolutely not that’s pure cheesy about as bad as cotton-balls stuck out of the stack. Use the real deal from a 1:1 shot and get the light and shadow, color temperature right and it’s pay dirt!

not a whole lot of post, and some simulation of old film tweaking the colors, a neat little term called “ anachronistic “ photography.

this one was a little more work, but wanted the sun to line up right so I needed to remove the neighbors cars and did some cloning of the module over them. It’s a model not real, so why not use my tools to make this work

I am happy with the results and enjoy making, building, and photography of my models, if someone doesn’t like it, well let’s just write here you can’t make everyone happy.

on a side note, I have made some guys really mad at me on other forums such as MRH and have received several hate direct messages for doing as they put it, “fraudulent photography”, That’s right, yeah! No, Seriously, fraud! Like there is some kind of railfan-police-force on the ‘straight from the camera’ miniature model railroading photography. It’s a 1/48 scale toy train for heavens sake, this is not photo journalism! And yes, of course it’s deep fake, they are toys! Good grief.

Furthermore I’ve had guys spitting nails, mad at me for as they put it, I “fooled them, same as being lied to”, “where does the reality end and the fake begin?”, “I’ve seen top modeling that doesn’t need cheap-shot photoshop to cover up your bad modeling, stop sharing this crap, only (*censored) can do this right and you can’t”. Nice stuff like that.

Like I wrote you can’t please everybody, but you sure can make some of them mad! I don’t care, I guess I’ll break the railfan-model-railroading-photo-police force laws and make these deep fake poorly carried out shots of my bad models. I want them to look at real as possible; it’s what I want and that’s all that matters. This is how I enjoy our hobby.

Man, those are some impressive photos. I could have sworn that the D&RGW passenger train was real! It's just a model. Keep up the good work.

Erik, you just go ahead and "break the railfan-model-railroading-photo-police force laws" to your hearts content. Thank you for showing what can be done!

Dan Weinhold

I don't believe you need to worry about "the railfan-model-railroading-photo-police force" around here.  There are more here that enjoy your talents than any that may ask “where does the reality end and the fake begin?”.  Some of us play with trains and some are serious modelers and what your photos depict is exactly what serious modelers aspire to, realism.  Me I play trains and my attempts at modelling are feeble at best that's why I am awed by your talents and your patience, "The set ups are a few hours of fun."

I always wondered how you added smoke.  Now that you let us in on it shots like this are even more incredible to me.

I thought what you meant was you replaced the sky with the 1:1 smoke filled sky but with the exception of the smoke the above black and white sky is the exact same sky below.

So you pulling the smoke from a 1:1 picture and overlaying it, for lack of the proper term. onto to photo of your model?

That farm house pic is unbelievably cool!

These are beautiful models and superb photography. I just can't imagine why anyone would be angry or upset by the spectacular results you are able to achieve ...

Many thanks guys.

CB&Q coaling stop north of Denver Union Station will have to do for this Grande move after a run down from Longmont on the C&S.

A build made a decade ago to every NBW casting and scale lumber, CB&Q coaling and water towers from Denver

.

One word: spectacular.

Bravo! Like the lad in the photo says: Thumbs up!

ECI

I'm out of superlatives right now so all I can do is like that post.  I'll have to hit the dictionary or thesaurus to come up with some more adjectives and synonyms for great.

I like the colors in this one better but:

I believe this is what a picture from that time period would look like.

@SANTIAGOP23 posted:

One word: spectacular.

Thank you Santiago

Wow ERIC I am impressed….you have it going on and would really fool a bunch o people…me included.  Thank you for showing us your talents.

Fantastic work, Erik! 👍

Thanks Vern!

Thanks Laz 👍

Like your black & white work.

Dick

Model railroading is a large tent and has room for folks to show excellent work in many different areas. Some scratch build, some are fantastic photographers and some of us just like to watch or fantasy schemes run in circles. It's what makes our hobby great.

That's great modeling and fantastic photography Eric !   I especially like the shot holding the weathered tractor with the '' dirt and mud '' caught in the treads !  

Thanks guys have a great weekend 😀

Erik, I want you to know your passions for this hobby and photography is phenomenal. Thank you for sharing the rewards of your talent with us.