Photos for backdrops

Lots of fantasy type backdrops available on the web including:

Why not beg-borrow-steal a digital camera and shoot a few buildings yourself. Then you can size them how the project needs, or even alter them in an image editor (changing signs, extend or compress, scale it as needed to provide perspective)?

Backdrops are not always to scale. To enhance distance, it might make sense to make a backdrop scene to 1:100 or 1:120, for example.

Interesting idea, Jack! I do have a digital camera and thought of taking pictures but didn't because the background in quite right. We have a plant that processes starch into food grade products. It has a an interesting piece of equipment on the non-track side of the plant. I would like to model the plant and use a digital image of this machine as part of the backdrop. But how do you achieve a uniform sky (with clouds) to match on the background? It is too cumbersome to cut out the real background and save only the ducting. Any tips?

Thanks!

Rick

(Corelane replied: Lots of fantasy type backdrops available on the web including:

Bill Bill's Railroad Empire N Scale Model Railroad:

If at all possible, get a paint programme which has a "select by color" tool. I know GIMP does (it's free). Then you can probably set it to take the sky colour +/- a few percent, and it will claim most of the sky pretty easily.

I'd expect the hardest problem would be something like a chain-link fence-- the select-by-color ends at a differing color boundary, so you'd have to clear the chians one by one.

Of course, the more work you can save by picking a day with a nice even sky to shoot, the better.