Shooting with bare trees and shadows

Hi all,

I have a question that someone may be able to help with. I was taking photos of a section of railroad track recently. The day was sunny, but the tracks were in the trees. Being as it is almost winter, there are no leaves on the trees. This leaves zebra-like stripes of sun and shadow on the tracks.

What is the best way to shoot this? Seems like you either blow out the highlights, or you underexpose the shadows. Is there some kind of happy medium?

Keep in mind, that I'm not trained at all in photography. I'm learning as I go, and I am shooting with a Minolta 5D DSLR. Lens is a Sigma 24-105 f2.8-4.5 traveling lens.

Thanks.

Easiest and best solution: find a better location.

I second what Mike said; sometimes, you just can't make a situation work, and it's going to be much easier to just find a different spot than to try to make a bad one work.

If you're determined to make this spot work, the only suggestion I have would be to try shooting in RAW mode instead of JPEG. You'll end up with much larger files, and you'll have to convert them to JPEG eventually if you want to upload them anywhere, but the RAW formats usually capture more information, so with the right Photoshop tricks, you might be able to make something of it.

I apologize for not being as clear as I should have

The point of the shot was to document that particular segment of track... not to take a train photo. Which is good, because there are no trains on that track (yet!).


I did shoot RAW, and did some post-processing, but I didn't know if there were any other tricks. I guess I could just wait for an overcast day, eh?

Thanks.

gp80mac wrote:I apologize for not being as clear as I should have

The point of the shot was to document that particular segment of track... not to take a train photo. Which is good, because there are no trains on that track (yet!).

That changes things a little. How much of the segment of track are you trying to photograph (i.e, just a short stretch of a few feet, or from a certain point off into the distance)? If the stretch is short enough, you might be able to provide some lighting of your own to eliminate the shadow sections. This doesn't really work for long distances, though.

My other thought would be to try to take the photograph on a cloudy day, particularly one that's overcast but still on the bright side. That way, you wouldn't have most of the shadows over the tracks. You'd probably lose some vibrance in colors, though.

Really, the best course of action depends on why you're taking the picture: if you're just trying to document the current state of the track, you could probably get away with a shot on a cloudy day.

pgengler wrote:
My other thought would be to try to take the photograph on a cloudy day, particularly one that's overcast but still on the bright side. That way, you wouldn't have most of the shadows over the tracks. You'd probably lose some vibrance in colors, though.

Really, the best course of action depends on why you're taking the picture: if you're just trying to document the current state of the track, you could probably get away with a shot on a cloudy day.

It strictly to document its current state. Looks like I'll head back on a cloudy day.

Thanks again.

gp80mac wrote: I did shoot RAW, and did some post-processing, but I didn't know if there were any other tricks. I guess I could just wait for an overcast day, eh?

Take a look at this article, see if it helps your situation or not. Let me know!