"Hot Tracks"

Hikin' Mike

Taken Thursday morning at sunrise. Thanks to a friend of mine who told me about this location and more importantly, spotted for trains as I parked on the tracks to get the shot...


Canon 300D, 100-300 @ 100mm, Hand-held
ISO 400, 1/400 sec, f/6.3

kdog

Extremely cool. Great shot!

Stormdancing

WOW, talk about the sweet light. Un freaking real!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

W.W. Webster

Can the crop be improved?
Mike, I like this a lot. The only way I can suggest improvement would be by changing the crop to ensure each rail strikes the side of the frame exactly the same distance up from the bottom of the picture. To my eye, the geometry of the framing needs to be absolutely precise for this kind of shot. But the lighting and overall effect is superb!

Hikin' Mike

Thanks for looking.


Dub, I actually cropped it already. Any more to the left would expose a tree that was annoying to me. Although I could probably clone it out.

W.W. Webster

I think there's an answer!

Hikin' Mike wrote:

Dub, I actually cropped it already. Any more to the left would expose a tree that was annoying to me.

Mike

I had presumed you had nothing on the left to add back to the picture, and that the solution might be to crop slightly more on the right, as per the example below. This would also pull the vanishing point across to nearly the exact centre of the picture.



If you felt the portrait shape was then too narrow, there would be an opportunity to crop a little off the bottom which isn't adding anything much to the photo at present and may even be detracting from it, as this appears to be a level crossing as there are no sleepers visible.

Does this explain what I had in mind with my original comment? Just my thoughts, but I hope this is helpful. The more I study your photo, the more I like it - it's a cracker!

SteveF

Cool shot. Great light and lines.

As has been mentioned for me the bottom of the frame is merely distracting - I'd crop it.

W.W. Webster

Like this?

SteveF wrote:

Cool shot. Great light and lines.

As has been mentioned for me the bottom of the frame is merely distracting - I'd crop it.

If all the crossing is to be removed, we have a very different shot, but I think it still works.



Unless a bit more comes off the sides to give this -



What say you, Mike?

mereimage

I like this photo-neat capture
Had to play with it a bit:



..............................Mereimage

Hikin' Mike

Thanks everybody! I re-worked the original a bit. The pavement/oil was bothering me, so I copied some tracks and covered it up...

b29

This one is great.





_______________________

Fridrik

W.W. Webster

Good result!

Hikin' Mike wrote:

Thanks everybody! I re-worked the original a bit. The pavement/oil was bothering me, so I copied some tracks and covered it up...

I like it.