One of the 5"/ft-scale (15-inch track) steam locomotives operated by the Redwood Valley Railroad Co. in Tilden Regional Park, on the border between Berkeley and Oakland.
I like old steam trains, but it's hard to get a good shot of them in the low-light conditions of this redwood-filled valley. I've tried shooting this engine once before, I think for a "Smoke" challenge.
-Noise-reduction with PictureCooler
-Created mask for area behind engine (trees and ground)
-Blurred masked background
-RGB Curve
-Resize for DPC
-Crop/rotate
-USM at 16%/64 dia/TH = 0
-USM at 88%/0.8 dia/TH = 5
-SaveAs JPEG at quality 7/10 = 140kb
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Place: 62 out of 196 Avg (all users): 5.8670 Avg (commenters): 7.5833 Avg (participants): 5.7379 Avg (non-participants): 5.9826 Views since voting: 1655 Views during voting: 347 Votes: 218 Comments: 14 Favorites: 2 (view)
I say it should be Old #9. It would be Old #10, except that the focus is a little too complex for my taste. ;)
You seem to be the only one to notice the blurred background ... good eye! : )
FWIW on the print image I have tried to make the effect a little less pronounced, and added matching blurring through the windows and out the back of the cab, which I didn't bother with for the entry.
I am especially happy with (and surprised by) all the comments on the sharpness and clarity, as this was a handheld shot at an extremely slow 1/6-second shutter speed, and I have a disk full of slightly blurry train shots to show that that this was perhaps as much luck as skill.
Thanks for all the comments and my best score in a while!
I like the detail on this shot. The cropping seems a bit tight, but I don't know that it affects the overall impact. Even though this is "Old No. 7" I think I may need to give it an 8.
I like the way you've worked to begin to isolate the subject. I feel, however, that there's too much going on in the image as a whole for me to know where to focus my attention. Several ideas yank my eyes around, the "7," the fire, the light on the cab, and then the lovely "S" curve of the pipes emerges...
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