I first started taking
photographs of railroading subjects in 1967 as a result of an extended discussion I had with a fellow member of the Purdue RR Club over the paint scheme Tyco was using on their model of CB&Q F-7 locomotives - freight decals on silver locomotives. I admitted that it was a very attractive combination, but I had lived along the CB&Q's mainline as a kid; I didn't know the difference between an E-unit and an F-unit back then, but I noticed that passenger units were silver and freight units were "white" (technically light gray, it turns out). My memories meant nothing to him, so I started taking pictures as an incontrovertible means of saving history. Thus, I have always viewed railroad photography using journalist standards - don't change anything, because anything could be a part of history. When I take pictures of a fan trip, for example, I try very hard to include the fans, because they are the reason a
fan trip exists. That does not mean that I keep every image SOOC, because I do crop or fix color/contrast if that is needed for some really obvious reason (for example, I scanned some old negatives, and the sky was closer to green than to blue). But, that is just me.
You can change whatever you want to change on
your pictures.
I am a regular at a photography discussion forum, and they regularly emit more heat than light over this subject. There are some (who spend more time on Photoshop than in the field) who defend their right to be artists; there are others (most are like me and used slide film rather than negative film) who think Straight-Out-Of-Camera is the only way to go. I'm guessing that if we follow their path, this thread could set new all-time records here for number of posts in the thread and for futility.