Hey there Mr. Russ. Great to hear from ya! Like you, I've not had much opportunity to hang around the NGDF of late, so I was surprised to see a response to one of my posts pop up in an email notification. You really ARE going through old stuff, aren't ya?
Congrats on finally moving to a broadband connection. With the content rich nature of the 'net these days, it's the only way to go, and it opens up whole new worlds. Enjoy.
Thanks for the nice comments as well. The B&W of 93 and 40 is actually one of those shots that I have mixed feelings about. It was done as part of an organized night shoot, with lighting, as credited, by someone else and... well, y'know. I've had long conversations on this topic with others in the past. I'd rather go my own way, but I decided there was enough of me in this shot to put it up.
And your critique of the tower shot is gracefully acknowledged as well. I have to admit that one of my major pet peeves in some of the railfan photography I see is the lack of appreciation for the value of foreground in an image. As a consequence, I sometimes get carried away in my own stuff. This image desperately needs a good croppin'. In fact, it just needs to be relegated to the edit pile. I think I have better versions from this angle still in the "waiting to be reviewed" pile. I really do appreciate your comments on this.
As for sharpness - nothing I shoot these days generates less than a 21 Mpixel file, so all of my stuff is (obviously) heavily downsized for web display. I learned years ago when I got serious about hi-res film scans that the larger the file (and the more detail), the more you need to care about downsampling techniques if you want the quality and detail to carry over into a web-sized version. As with most things, I probably get carried away, but when I have a few minutes, I'll try to back-channel you with some details.
Scott
