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A lot of years back (probably sometime in the 80's) I can recall making a special stop over in a major US city, to veiw a large club layout that had been a feature article in the Model Railroader magazine. What I actually saw was a far cry from the exciting photos in the magazine. So yes in that case I would definately say that there was some excellent professional photography manipulation of some sort as I was very dissapointed leaving the building.
It would be very difficult for me to believe that the layout had deteriorated so much within a few months between the published magazine and my visit.
Willis
Photoshop existed for many years before digital cameras became prevalent. And before photoshop, a truly good photographer was also skilled in darkroom processing or had a good lab that could process images through dodging, burning, stacking negatives, etc.
Many of professional photographers would say that getting the image they want is what matters, not how you got it. It isn't always possible to do everything by just pressing the shutter release.
Plus, every print was slightly different than the previous print. When burning and dodging took place, no two prints were exactly alike. After digital manipulation every print copy will be like the last.
I've already seen it done and regarded it as not worth a second look. What, in fact, is the hobbyist's point for doing such a thing? Just because he CAN do it? Certainly, it is of no credit to the fella as a modeler, but be assure, more than one has tried it.
Taken to a similar extreme, what's to prevent someone with Photoshop these days from employing a published scene from someone famous' layout and just adding in a small image of their own engine? I once agrued in MR's letters to the editor column that the ultimate Photo Contest fake would be a shot of a sweeping scene of one of John Allen's towering, canyon-spanning, bridges, atop which sat a paste-in of just the submitting entrant's Bachmann handcar...being pumped by a tiny figure with the face of John Allen, himself, added in!
I played around with adding model elements to photos of real locations, see attached. On the city view, the Lesters' Lobsters building is my HO scale model. The other photo should be obvious!
I think your application is interesting. Especially the old photo. If you want to know if your model is realistic or not, key it into a real photo. If it seems to blend in, belong and fool the eye of the 'casual observer', it's a good model.
Nice photos! I did NOT notice that the house in the first photo was a model until Charles noted that he saw it, but how well it blended in. If you had done a little more work on blending in the base, I doubt I would have picked it out -- other than your model being a foreground object.
As for Southside Towing -- where's the snowplow blade they used to clear your driveway? But you also did a nice job in creating the "shadow" your vehicle cast.
Now this is the way we should be photographing our trains.
Its called Elgin Park http://theawesomer.com/elgin-park/96501/
Click on the Picture to the left above the Elgin Park title.
There is a set of 6 pictures.
Picture number 6 says it all.
I wish I had 1/10th of his photo skills.
The ultimate layout!
