The Winter Cumbrian Mountain Express.

[John 2]

A steam special was due to come down the Settle to Carlisle (Yorkshire Dales) line late afternoon Yesterday. That meant that the sun would be over to the west, ideal for a south bound train. So I risked going up to Dent Station despite the fairly heavy snow falls. At 1150ft, Dent Station is the highest Railway Station in the UK. Unusually, the special was a two engine double header with 61306 Mayflower leading 35018 the British India Line. Disappointingly, I couldn't find a viewpoint that would show both engines fully as well as provide a decent comp. so I opted for the latter. Two colour and one mono just for variety. The conditions were changing fast as the sun went down and the train was 30mins late and so I was constantly changing exposure before it arrived. I failed to set a slow enough shutter speed as a result and so not much blur on the wheels etc.

1. You can just see the second loco.


2.


3. The Old Station House which I think is now a holiday cottage.

[Shadowman]

Looks like the trip was well worth it, nice captures.

[shreds]

The B&W is the better of the two of the train as it avoids the strong sunlight cast between the buildings landing on the forward locomotive and also the strong glint reflection on the second locomotive windscreen.

The station shot….the driveway leads the eye in but sort of past the building. Nice record shot so typical of winter conditions in that area.

Hope you didn't get stuck in the snow!

[Manfred M]

The snow scapes are wonderful. I personally prefer the two colour shots; you have captured the magic of snow in both.

The B&W image does not work as well for me as the snow looks a bit muddy. When I look at the histogram, that image looks a bit underexposed and I suspect moving the white point to the left will fix that. Snow is white and there is no true white in that shot.

[John 2]

Thanks for the comments.

Ian, I saw that glint and meant to do something about it. I've toned it down in the mono but forgot the colour version. The station house shot was only meant as a scene setter.

Manfred, your right. It's actually as it was because you will see from the colour image, the platforms were being shaded by the station house to the left but that's not to say I couldn't have lifted the whites in the snow a little.

[Manfred M]

Manfred, your right. It's actually as it was because you will see from the colour image, the platforms were being shaded by the station house to the left but that's not to say I couldn't have lifted the whites in the snow a little.

I suspected that was the case John.

Something I was taught many years ago (decades ago, to be honest), when I first got into photography was that any B&W image should have values from complete white to complete black. This "rule" was re-enforced about 5 years ago when taking a college course in colour correction. These "rules" come from the printing industry and represent requirements to reproduce a B&W image on an offset press.

The more modern view is that a B&W JPEG image has a maximum of 256 shades of gray that can be reproduced. You should show them all.

The "rule" is not 100% accurate, as scenes shot on a foggy day will not have a full range of values that run from pure black to pure white. A sunny day like you were shooting in definitely do.

[DanK]

As a start, I would select everything but the sky and smoke and adjust tonality with levels and curves. That alone would make a big difference.

[John 2]

Dan, thanks for the comment. I understand what you are suggesting but I'm not sure what end point you had in mind. I agree it needs something though. If you feel you would like to have a go yourself, feel free and let me know what adjustment you have made so that I can understand how you have arrived at the end result.

[Tri Danimal]

IM really enjoying staring at image #2, the black and white image.

[DanK]

John,

This is REALLY quick and dirty, so it isn't a very good edit, but it will show you the directions I was thinking of.

Here's the image. I'll put a screenshot and explanation of the edits below.



Here's what I did:



Starting from the bottom:

-- I did a very rough selection of the sky and smoke. I didn't properly clean it up. I then made the selection a mask on the next layer, which is a levels adjustment.

--I inverted the selection so that I would only change everything else. I then moved the white point down a little and the midpoint down more in order to lighten the image.

--I added a curves adjustment and copied the mask to it. I then boosted the contrast a little.

--On the next layer, I dodged the bottom left to lighten it. (I used Manfred's method for this and the next step: I created a curve with a black mask, and then pained on the mask with a white brush with a relatively low flow.)

--on the top layer, I burned the roof of the shed and the side of the locomotive to tone down the brightening there.

This is really crude; if I were to work on it seriously, I'm make more careful adjustments and add more local ones. However, teh basic idea is to protect areas that are already nearly pure white, and then increase the tonal range in the rest.

I hope this helps.

Dan

[John 2]

Thanks Dan. I tried to do the same by purely pulling down the center of the curves adjustment but it wasn't as effective as your approach. What I was trying to do and you have succeeded in doing, is to correct for the imbalance caused when I originally lifted the shadows selectively thrown by the train being part in and part out behind the building out of shot on the left.