Playing with the camera again

I'm wondering where life would have taken me had all of this technology been available way back when. For that matter, where would folks like Thomas Edison or Alexander Graham Bell be if they could have accessed everything we have literally at our fingertips today.  I'll leave the speculation on those fellas to some Hollywood producer for a future cinematic endeavor. But for me, I'm pretty sure I'd have taken a different path. Retrospect is a weird thing. I know that had I not been a smoker all my adult life I'd be some $80 thousand richer given some rather casual calculating. (And wouldn't get winded walking up the hill from the harbor.) As long as thinking about "what if's" doesn't get to be a preoccupation, I suppose it's OK but as I get older, it seems I do it more often than I used to. Perhaps it's a subconscious realization that there's way more time used up behind me than there is ahead. I do recognize that very few of the more important choices I've made would be different if it were possible to know what I know now.  I certainly wouldn't have wanted to go through this life without my wife and kids. All that said brings me to what captures my interest today. One of my fascinations today focuses on this hobby of course. And without a doubt, the ability to capture what we do in pictures has become a particularly enjoyable effort. Not much in the way of new models this posting but a few photos that I thought made for some realistic images. Of course given the era many of the photos would have been taken, most are black and white.

When I made the change into the new computer last winter, I needed to update a lot of the software I had in order for it to work. Much of it had the expected improvements and doodads that weren't on the older versions. My graphics program is rather rudimentary by the standards I see offered by much on the market today but was inexpensive and actually does a lot more than I even know how to use.  Now in addition to not knowing what the settings on the camera do,  I don't know what the photo editing software does either. So what I present to you was achieved by sheer luck and repeated attempts.

Making a model appear like the real thing is, as I have repeatedly said before, what model building is all about, for me at least. Presenting a miniature rendition of real life is the goal.  This manipulation of photographs is a terrific technique to help us to get to the goal.  I don't want to hide anything that would belay the fact that something is a model. But more, I want to enhance those things that fool the eye into thinking a piece is real. Oh, there's always that speck of dust that sticks out like a cherry on a cream pie in this scale. I will often remove the speck and take another photo. But sometimes it's just as easy to wipe it from the memory of the image.

Then there's that serendipitous occasion when something quite unexpected happens as in the case of the photo of the Ford Model TT grain truck. It appears that I have a resident spider that put his web in my barn interior.  The web here is so small and delicate that I didn't see it when taking the photo and was really quite delighted to see it when I began to crop the photos on the computer screen. How many old barns have I seen this in over the years?

OK, I do have one new model at least to show. This is an addition to the fleet of Mack quarry trucks I've done for a customer. As with the rest of them, it comes from Ratcliffe Models. The tractor is the M65, slightly modified from the kit. The large capacity belly dump trailer is a limited edition resin piece. It now is the largest 1/87 scale model I've ever built.

As the weather warms, I expect a little drop off on production here but we'll still be working on models. In fact I have a project that may prove to be very interesting in the works. I have been approached by a prominent 1/87 kit manufacturer to do a video. I have no idea how this will turn out. I usually let the models speak for themselves. Will need a haircut before filming. Take time to reach out to your loved ones and have a good one!