A bit of advice on a picture

[Chessie GM50]

I'm not quite sure why these were rejected today from railpictures. They seem good enough.

http://www.railpictures.net/viewreject. ... =999460739

http://www.railpictures.net/viewreject. ... 9161&key=0

I thought that they were fine. What would be the best way to brighten them w/o making them foggy?

[railohio]

Not taking pictures in to the sun to begin with would be advisable.

[MEC407]

The first one is backlit, which is an automatic rejection on RP.

The second one actually isn't bad in terms of brightness, but the sky is gray, which they seem to hate.

I don't think there's anything you can do in software that would convince the screeners to accept them. Next time, make sure the sky is blue and make sure the sun is behind you, not in front of you, and that should boost your chances of RP accepting your photos. Unless, of course, there's some tiny object that might be considered an obstruction... then all bets are off.

[wmmanager]

Nothing you can do to those two photos to lighten them up to the point of acceptance.

The first shot is extremely dark, with no definition between the bottom of the locomotive, and the rail bed. Histogram shows the shot is roughly 3 stops underexposed. Increasing exposure blows out the sky, and doing a H/S adjustment just increases the noise in the shadows.
The second shot has no light on the trucks, and it appears you were following the motion of the train while using a slow shutter. 1/60th isn't good enough to stop a train over 15-20 mph to prevent blur, especially if you're moving the camera. Next time, open the aperture up more, instead of f13, try f8, or even f6 to increase the shutter speed. And don't follow the train, pick your spot, keep the camera steady, and fire off a shot. I generally shoot f8, 1/500th, ISO 100 on sunny days, and on the less than sunny days, I'll tinker around, but I'll always keep the shutter speed above 1/200th, which will freeze head on / wedgie shots of a train going less than 60mph.

Love them, or hate them, RP will help your to become a more technically sound photographer. Good luck in the future!

Loyd L.