Most Realistic Photos

Not my work, and it's HO but well worth the look see. Take a look here.

Sometimes, it's just plain old dumb luck and a little elbow grease in MS Paint.  I literally just plopped my camera down and snapped this picture.  There was absolutely no planning.  Shot with a Fuji FinePix point and shoot camera:

I liked the angle and thought I might have something.  After a couple of hours in MS Paint and a little tweaking with HP Photosmart, this fell out of my PC:

Rusty

as Rusty demonstrated in the photo above, it may not have been a lot of planning, but getting the camera down to a natural eye level (5-6 scale feet above ground level) is the best start to a natural looking picture.  alternately, looking at a prototype photo taken from an overpass or other high perspective, often gives a scene the look of a model.

Really nice! Wonder how the effect would translate over to 3 rail?

Some people tell me many of the 7500 photos on the link below look real to them.

I just point n shoot...

As others have shown and said, low camera angles to the track are a must.  Also be sure that the background is filled by items or scenery on your layout or your layout's scenic backdrop.  Display shelves, photo frames, etc. hanging on the wall will ruin a realistic photo.

a grab and shoot caboose / cabin car shot

Keep them coming guys, my photo efforts are poor at best and I need all the input I can get.

Another trick is to take maximum advantage of the depth of field that your camera can use.  A wider angle lens creates a greater effective depth of field.  Also using the smallest aperture will increase depth of field.  I shoot most of my photos using F22 on my 16mm DSLR lens.  Since I don't really have much of a layout, I use a lot of props too.

Some old photos:

Railking GG-1

post processing with Photoshop can also add some simple artistic touches...

What others have said: low angle, watch your background, and keep everything in focus my maximizing depth field.  I also like to make it less "posed" and keep it uncluttered. 

Here are a few (all shot with my Samsung Galaxy III Smartphone and not retouched):

OK. This one's marginal because of the unfinished area on the right, but you gotta love the trees. 

Wow!  Spectacular modeling for sure!

Not having designed my layout for photography. I find it best to use the scenery or structures to frame the scene and place the camera trackside on a block of wood. These are some older shots.

Take a look at this post. You really have to study it to see if it is real or not!

Hostess Post here on O gauge forum

Dave

One of Alco's most beautiful PAs, the handsome D&H No 19 pulls into a rural station in upstate NY...

I found these from our friend Jeb from Megasteam smoke fluid. These are awesome!      Click on the link below for the slide show.

http://smokingtrains.com/

This has been one of my favorites lately.

Nice detail even without the clouds, I especially like the crew.

although i cannot fault the composition setup here, the original question asked about techniques to offer realism and these two photos demonstrate two of the flaws that were first mentioned in this string.  1)  the perspective is much too high.  the camera seems to be at a very unlikely position for a railfan to capture these scenes unless they brought a 20' step ladder with them and 2) the very shallow depth of field could not be duplicated in a natural setting.  any railfan's camera would show the complete scene in focus as anything more than ~10 scale feet away from the lens would be at infinity.  every modeling picture i take needs to be tripod steadied as i use aperture priority exclusively (f32) which normally calls for 20-30 second exposures to get the entire scene in focus.

again, sorry to pick on these particular photos as there are definitely other examples that have been posted.  just thought the string was straying off the original topic.

Here is another.

A couple of my favorites.

M hometown is Logansport, Indiana, and the first time I ran across those photos I was impressed by how well small town Indiana was depicted (the trackwork modeled is a bit neat compared to the real deal ).  Logansport was a major area of activity for the Pennsy through the Penn Central era.  Conrail pretty much wiped Logansport out as far as former PRR lines were concerned.  Today, NS (former Wabash) provides plenty of action, and the TP&W moves some traffic as well.

Ok now THAT is cool.  Great photo.

Lots of nice work.  Here is a quick pic of a weathered car on the micro layout.