Madison Indiana Railroad Trail

[J.Duffy]

I finally got around to doing the railroad trail. I can't wait to go back when the Redbud Trees are blooming. For anyone concerned this is an adandoned railroad, owned by the city and opened for pedestrian use.

• ILCE-7RM3
• E 28-200mm F2.8-5.6 A071
• 28.0 mm
• ƒ/2.8
• 1/250 sec
• ISO 100

 

[FowlersFreeTime]

I always appreciate the leading lines of a railway. Am I picking up on a dark and moody edit applied to all photos in this series? If so, do you do this in Lightroom or photoshop?

 

[J.Duffy]

Yeah, I went dark and moody since we still don't have leaves on the trees yet. It was also very overcast with the threat of rain looming. I edited them in Lightroom on my iPad pro. It was really weird trying to straighten my horizons. Obviously where I was standing wasn't very level all the time, so in some depending what I was trying to straighten, it would really throw the perspective off. Do I level the tracks or do I level the bridge, or the sides of the canyon?

 

[FowlersFreeTime]

I like your edits
My problem is I always use Photoshop and only ever do one shot at a time, so they don't have a uniform look & feel like you accomplished here.
As for the leveling, the bridge is the only easy one I see here to level I like the uneven tracks photo and the canyons would be difficult without a horizon, so don't sweat it!

 

[J.Duffy]

When I edited one of the photos in lightroom and liked it I copy those settings and then pasted them to the next photo so I could get a uniform edit. I actually was trying different edits for different photos but I ended up liking that one edit so I applied it to the others.

 

[FowlersFreeTime]

A thought occurred to me Jessica; were you using a tripod/monopod or hand-held?
The twisted railroad is my favorite shot in the series, but I was pixel peeping and noticed its not as sharp as it could be, I was wondering if that was because of f2.8, or hand-held camera, or just the down-sampling when uploading to this site?

 

[J.Duffy]

Yes, it was shot handheld. I'm lazy and will never use a tripod unless I'm at home, lol. Also, I noticed when editing in Lightroom, I had my camera in apsc mode by mistake. So instead of 42 megapixels these are only 18 megapixels. But I would honestly bet my money on operator error (me) and maybe some downsampling.