Thinking of Submitting One to RP

[tq-07fan]

I have never sent a picture to railpictures.net. On Thursday June 4th 2009 my friend and I happend to be on the Indiana Toll Road and see a slow moving train led by EJ&E SD 38s. I went to the next exit turned around and drove down Cline Ave to Griffith Tower. Basically, I figured we had a fifty / fifty chance, we would either see it or not see it, but definetly a result would occure. After a few minutes we started hearing a horn we had never heard and it seemed to be coming from the north. We set up across the street and got what I think are some of my most RP worthy shots to date. Here are the pictures and a few questions.

I'm sorry these aren't NS but I figured this was the place to ask.

1) Since I've been to Chicago so little I have no idea what EJ&E's frequency is, therefore I have no idea what the train ID is, is that an issue.

2) If you look closely picture 1 has no shadow, picture 2 has a shadow of a telephone cable across the class lights and right before the cab, picture 3, which shows the former Grand Trunk going east has the shadow running from just behind the cab down.

3) I don't make notes of what the camera settings are, infact this was done in automatic mode with a Nikon D40.

4) Also was there anything else I should know or consider about RP or anything wrong with the pictures I'm not seeing?

I have seen some great pictures here on jreb photo critic that were rejected and some great advice on what Railpicts wants and look for.

Perfect pictures are not something I strive for because I don't really care, to be honest. I'm easily satisified.

Thank You

Jim

[JCagle]

I would say they will consider them a high sun shot. The trucks are covered by shadows and there is some shadowing below the radiator flares. If the sun were a bit lower they would have less of an argument that it is high sun. I would say they would reject any of them for that reason. If it had been an hour later you would have been golden.

It would need to be cropped and resized to fit their size restrictions. I would say crop this one using the rule of thirds and leaving some of the space on the left out.

All in all you did a good job. I don't feel that high sun ruins a shot but rp does. It may be worth a try since its not a Class I RR and there aren't a ton of pics of it on there, just know if they knock it for high sun there is little chance of winning an appeal on it.

You don't have to worry about recording the  camera settings. The settings for each shot are recorded in what is called EXIF data. You should be able to see the exif data by right clicking on the icon or thumbnail for the shot and going to the properties tab and then advanced. Firefox also has an add on that will decode the exif data for shots on the web.

Hope this helps!

[Gage O'Dell]

Personally I like them. But in Pic 1 i see the shadow of the pole in the far bottom right corner. And the Road at the bottom might be a factor. Im not sure, but that might help

[JCagle]

I thought about an important thing I left out last night reguarding the high sun rejection. I forgot to mention the accepted policy on high sun. They want to see good light on almost everything on the side. They tend to use the trucks as a litmus test. If they are good and lit with little shadow then they don't see it as high sun. They also use the plow on the front. They mention the times of 11 to 3 but saying this shot was at 3:05 won't win the argument with them. The time guidelines aren't concrete. Go with what you see in the shot and not the time of day.

[Batman]

if you are an elite member it would get accepted , otherwise its a high sun reject.

[tq-07fan]

I finally submitted one of these. It was rejected for undersharpened (soft) image. Basic question, how do I sharpen this or any other image? Would this require getting a program like Photoshop? I am using a Nikon D40 and it did come with it's own program called Picture Project. I found that Picture Project has a sharpening option for compressed images but it doesn't look like it did much.

Here is what I sent. After seven days I guess I will edit this with the actual picture.

http://www.railpictures.net/viewreject.php?id=726083&key=792772283

Here is the sharpened image.



Jim

[JCagle]

You will need some sort of image editing software. You could go with photoshop but there are also many image editing programs out there that will do the basics for a relativly low price. In the past I have used several programs. If you are interested in photoshop you may want to look into Photoshop Elements. It has everything you'll need for routine editing outside your raw program, and is a lot cheaper than the full blown Photoshop.