 What are you doing can tell you what Jeff? I'm sitting here working on an ad right now for a new Campbell back bridge at BLMA is coming out with This is a low diorama used to get a good sunrise shot in the morning I've also shot a higher photograph of it that you can see right here and Then what these photos are for is this Facebook page and a good advertising campaign for the new product But what you're watching right now, I want to do an introduction for August What's neat this week and in fact this video is a project that I had done for Craig at BLMA It was a cantilever a signal bridge project or I literally built this into the correct type of a scene Did all the scenery and did a photography clinic on how to take a good photo using helicopter focus So there's a lot of neat things in this August. What's neat this week scenery model building what this is is? It's a video off of my website Ken Patterson comm This is one of the downloads that I offered for $5 and it's been suggested to me that I take some of the videos That I have on my website show one or two for free so the folks can see the quality and what they're like And maybe I'd sell more so for this August. What's neat this week? I'm literally showing you a complete video that was made for sale that is Instructional and an intuitive how-to all at once so enjoy this my 20th. What's neat this week for model Where would hobbyist magazine for August? The subject matter today is going to be this BLMA tower this signal tower and what I'm going to essentially do Is I'm going to take This tower and I want this tower set up on a scene where the engine's coming out of the scene and it looks relatively traumatic So to start out my photos usually what I do is I start out a quick pencil drawing and in this scene I've essentially got The tower the light tower and the locomotive coming out at an angle sort of like what I want To pull this off I'm going to do a minimal amount of scenery. I'm going to start out with these a scrap foam I'm going to set up the camera in place in front of this foam and Design the photograph looking through the camera that way. There's no guesswork Everything that I want that's on this piece of paper will be framed out in the camera and laid out on this piece Of scrap foam exactly the way we want it set up Okay, I've got the signal and I've cut off the wire leads to it so that I won't have a problem with any dangling wires This is just a photo prop at this point I've put some clay on the bottom of this so that can stick on the foam so I can easily set this up when I actually Design the scene. I'm going to cut a small block of wood place it on the bottom using the template that came with the signal mass Now I know about where things need to be set up here And when I say we're going to use minimal amounts of scenery on this diorama. I'm not kidding This is going to represent a double-track main line where the signal is telling the engineer where which crossover? Which way he's going to do for crossover here the signals will dictate that well We're going to model this as if the signals were there But from the vantage point of the camera you aren't going to see the track work You aren't going to see the switches none of that stuff is going to be seen as being omitted from the scene You won't notice that it's not there is essentially what I'm trying to say so the main line essentially is going to be four pieces of track I'm going to use this locomotive as a filler and I'm going to get down behind the camera and start setting Orchestrating this shot so that it again represents what I'm after in the in the in the pencil drawing Hey, when you look through the camera now You'll see the scene set up through the viewfinder of what essentially I'm after Actually got the scene laid out now The next four steps are to take the clips that are on this concrete track and paint them only in the areas Where the camera lens is going to see the clips then I'm going to paint the entire scene with some latex house paint Glue the track down with a little bit of liquid nail and then carve some minimal amounts of topography and add The shoulder of ballast that you would see from the camera angle and that would essentially finish this scene where it's ready to Be shot. Okay. I've applied all of our ballast. I've got all of our scenery down. I'm going to spray some woodland scenics glue onto the whole scene Just simply Let it's settle on smooth so it doesn't disturb the ballast And so glue our whole scene together good. Now what I'm doing is I'm spraying a very thin mixture of black paint on the entire scene That's going to kill this white track on all the other details when the sunlight hits it Otherwise everything would look too stark too bright This way it just subtly tones everything down with a fine coat of mist on the entire scene evenly Things been toned down with the black paint that was applied to this You can see how the ties and everything blend more with the scenery nothing jumps out at you right at the last minute with the lens set Up in place. I've been putting down some sill floor tufts These tufts are invaluable you glue them down with a little bit of white glue and you could put them in place when the lens Is set up therefore almost like you're painting your picture So now we're ready to do the shoot This video is not really heavy on scenery What's important is the smoke and mirrors the setup here you've got a mountain in the background It's going to be a very subtle feature in the photograph, but it's going to make the picture I'll be standing here reflecting light when the Sun comes out Onto the locomotives from this side Because the Sun is actually coming down from this angle. I like doing that I like putting the Sun at different angles rather than just having it behind you behind you seems It's just it's not as creative So I'm going to reflect I've got my camera set up in position as we design the scene And I'm going to take four or five pictures and stack these together on the computer so that everything All the way down as it curves out of sight will be in focus Here you see the photo that I'm after and the setup again is extremely simple The only additional scenery that I didn't show making on the video. There's a background hill right here Just to fill in the background just to blend it if you're painting another layer of background in and then I've got the trees And then I move on into this mountain, which again the mountain is very subtle When it's pulled into position, it's it's just a very minute small detail That's going to sort of blend out, but you'll know it's there Okay, I've got the shot lined up just right now. I'm gonna be shooting water second exposures And I'm going to focus through the plane through every focal point of the scene So I'll take about six photos of the same shot and then stack those photos in the computer So everything is in focus. You can't see any blur. You can't tell it's a model at that point The hotter son and here she comes And I put my hand in front of it so I know when to start another set of shots and I'm done I've shot the shot everything's lined up just the way we planned it and that's how you do that