Tag Archives: #cropping

Announcements, photography, Rail transit marathon, Tips and Technique

& Hummelstown

Yesterday’s post featured the Middletown & Hummelstown, a classic shortline that connects its namesake Pennsylvania towns.

Over the last 18 years, I’ve paid more than a dozen visits to Middletown. However until last Sunday I hadn’t visited Hummelstown.

[That’s not precisely accurate. Back in 1992, I traveled through Hummelstown by rail on the way to Pittsburgh. I recall passing the nearby Hershey plant.]

Kris had suggested that we take a drive to see if we could find a train on the move.

As we drove into Hummelstown for our first visit, we heard a distant horn sounding for a crossing. We made our way to the tracks, arriving in time to spot the headlights of an eastward Norfolk Southern double-stack container freight. Evening sun made for a nicely glinting silhoette. Talk about lucky!

I reached for my Nikon Z6 with 70-200mm zoom and exposed a series of photos.

In post-processing, I cropped the distant image. Below are three versions of the distant view plus a closer image.

Full-frame without cropping.
Same image as above cropped to emphasize horizontal elements. The M&H track is at the left.
This is the same file with a few adjustements to contrast and exposure, plus cropping to emphasize vertical elements.
Closer view of the same train at Hummelstown.

Tracking the Light Posts Daily!

Announcements, photography, Rail transit marathon, Tips and Technique

Sunset and a Clear aspect at Greenfield

The days are getting shorter. You can see it in the evening sky.

Yet, the sunsets are vivid.

I’ve been looking for ways to better feature the color position light signal at milepost 64.5 near Greenfield in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

I made this view with my Nikon Z7-II and Nikkor Z-series 70-200mm lens of Amtrak Keystone train 653 racing west by the signal. This train had Amtrak’s ACS-64 electrics at both ends; locomotive 621 was leading westbound; and 668 was at the back.

I’d guess that something was amiss with the former Metroliner cab car at the westend of the train.

In this instance because the signal is the subject, I picked a trailing angle and selected a slower ISO setting and comparatively slow shutter speed to allow the train a little bit of motion blur, while keeping the signal sharp.

When I try this again, I may zoom in tighter on the signal.

ISO 200, f3.5 at 1/160th second. 70-200mm lens set to 98mm.
ISO 200, f3.5 at 1/320th second. 70-200mm lens set to 98mm.

This is just a cropped and adjusted view of the photo at center above. However, it approximates how large I’d like to frame the signal in a future image.

Tracking the Light Posts Daily!

Tips and Technique

Oops at Arth-Goldau—Lets Crop!

2 Comments

I’m not a fan of cropping.

In general, I object to cropping, especially when executed by someone other than the photographer.

I accept that in the realm of publishing it is a necessary evil, and that with the internet, Facebook and other imaging venues embrace cropping without consequence of how it affects photographs.

Yet, occasionally I find necessary to crop one of my photos.

Last I month I made an image of an Italian ETR 610 Pendolino from the south-end of the station platform at Arth-Goldau, Switzerland. While focused on the impressive looking train, I inadvertently included a portion of a mast on the platform that appears as an out of focus blob at the left of the image.

While I often like to work with selective focus, in my opinion this accident in no way enhanced the photo. Furthermore once playing with the cropping feature in Lightroom, I found that cropping other elements of the line side infrastructure materially improved my photo.

Below are some examples. What do you think?

This is the uncropped Jpg file. Notice the fuzzy gray area on the left. This is the side of a mast on the platform. In no way does this make for a more interesting photo.

Lightroom and other post-processing software make cropping alarmingly easy. I’ve cut away the the objectionable fuzzy gray area from the image.

Once I had the cropping tool in hand, I decided to try my hand at eliminating more infrastructural clutter. In this view I’ve cut the catenary support that ran across the top of the image area and tightened the composition of the Pendolino. Is this a more effective image?

 

Tracking the Light is Daily!