Backscenes from your own pictures

[The Bigbee Line]

I have been experimenting with home produced backscenes.  I first down loaded images from the internet to join together to get printed as a banner.  My first efforts were trial printed onto glossy photo paper and came out OK, but they were very much 'sunny day'...

 

This is a Georgia Pine Forest, very neat, very sunny...

 

 

So I decided to take some pictures and see if they could be used.  Unfortunately I've been out quite late in the day and started to lose the light.  A little quandary was, do I expose for the land or the sky..

 

Here is an exposed for the sky...

 

 

Compared to an exposed for the land..

 

 

I think I might need to print both and see how they compare.  Has anyone else tried this?

[dhjgreen]

The contrast would be lower with the sun over your shoulder (if possible) and/or use something like this

https://www.gimp.org

to get what you want.

Edited February 10, 2018 by dhjgreen

[Ouroborus]

Blend the images in lightroom.  Bracket your camera so you take 3 or 5 images, under and overexposed and then blend them using PS or LR.  It should give you nicely exposed foreground and sky

[PaulRhB]

I've used the panorama function on my phone to create a backscene and then printed on self adhesive vinyl. Not cheap for a small one but it gets quite reasonable if you are doing 20 odd feet. The prices are less VAT and it's £8 courier but the backscene is wipe clean and UV stable so ideal for locations where paper backscenes bubble, get damp or covered in spider droppings  I use the custom size and set it to the dimensions by the pixels.

 

Edited February 10, 2018 by PaulRhB

[The Bigbee Line]

The contrast would be lower with the sun over your shoulder (if possible) and/or use something like this

https://www.gimp.org

to get what you want.

Thanks for the tip.  What is the learning curve requirement for this software? 

[Kris]

When I printed the back scene for my previous layout "Avonwick" I made sure that I muted the colours. This stopped the back scene over powering the layout. 

[dhjgreen]

Thanks for the tip.  What is the learning curve requirement for this software?

 

There is a guide on line, simple contrast changes should be straighforward for most people. It does have many of the capabilities of photoshop (a notable exception is no proper focus stacking).

 

If you go this way and need help, just ask.

[Kris]

I just had a very quick play with your images in photoshop.

 

[Nick G]

My back scene was produced by photographing the real location around 50 photos which where whittled down to 19 and stitched together in Photoshop. I then took the image on a memory stick to a professional printer and had it printed onto 3mm Foamex. The back scene is about 7ft long.

[The Bigbee Line]

Good evening

 

Here is a panorama shot taking this afternoon.  Just after 16h30.  Must try to get out earlier when the light is better..

 

[The Johnster]

Interesting thread; I am intending to ultimately do something like this for Cwmdimbath, but there are other priorities.  For Mac users, the sort of post editing shown here from Photoshop or Lightroom can be done in 'Photos' (I hate Apple's assumption that they alone own the concepts of such things as Photos, or 'Music'; they don't even include the 'i' prefix anymore).  Also useful is the Bracketing facility if your camera has it.

 

I would suggest angling the camera upwards a little if hilly or mountainous scenery is being photographed; many of the commercially available backscenes of this sort are unsuitable for my purposes as the hills/mountains are a mile or two away and the foreground has to be accounted for in some way.  Usually the solution is to imagine a vale between the railway and the backscene (Black Country Blues shows this very well), but my location is the top end of a narrow South Wales valley, think Glyncorrwg or Abergwynfi, and the mountain rises directly behind the platform about 1,600 feet to a plateau nearly 1,800 above sea level; it needs to look oppressive and overbearing.  The idea is to have scenic mat for the first (actual, not scale) foot or so and another 2 feet or more of backscene; trial and error to give the right look.

[dhjgreen]

Good evening

 

Here is a panorama shot taking this afternoon.  Just after 16h30.  Must try to get out earlier when the light is better..

 

panorama xx.jpg

Actually for modelling purposes, that black foreground looks very good. Much could be hidden with layout detail.

[Satan's Goldfish]

 

Good evening

 

Here is a panorama shot taking this afternoon.  Just after 16h30.  Must try to get out earlier when the light is better..

 

panorama xx.jpg

 

 

Not going for a shot with a certain water tower in?

 

This is useful info, one of my projects I would like to add a backscene made up of pictures from the prototype location so I'm interested to see how you get on.

[Classsix T]

Aim for a satin finish on the printed article chaps, gloss will reflect all sorts of things and show every piece of dust off behind it if self adhesive applied to a rear board.

 

C6T.

[Kylestrome]

Quick tip: shooting panorama photos in 'portrait' format (vertically) will give you just that bit more resolution in the final composite picture.