http://www.viralnova.com/takes-pictures-of-model-town/

http://www.craftsmanshipmuseum.com/SmithMP.htm

Terry........

The title should be "Awesome Photography". I have seen Michael's work before.......before he became famous, so to speak.

A few of his buildings were done by him, but others are built by friends and some were bought. All the vehicles are store bought die cast models.  When his stuff first showed up, a lot of people in the auto model world thought he was the next best thing since sliced bread, until it was shown that he can't build a car model. Another critique often heard about him, is his mixing of scales. Some vehicles are 1/24th and I have seen shots with 1/18th trucks mixed in. He also gets confused with 1/20 and 1/25 scales....all of which are common in automotive models.

I spent years building museum quality automotive replicas, and to tell the truth, Michael's models don't impress me. His photography does, but his models don't. His ability to compose a scene and capture it realistically on film is his greatest talent.

To me he's just another dude with his hand out looking for a free buck from some sucker. Why else would he have a "Dpnate to me" page on his website?

Sid

Sid - On modeling, I meant the "scene". You are technically correct I suppose.
We are in model railroading. What does "model" railroading mean? Modeling a railroad?
Lay some track. Put on some buildings and scenery like trees and such and you have modeled a railroad. Correct? You don't have to actually build the structures and equipment or hand lay the track.

This topic is evolving into an awesome philosophical question.  What exactly is model railroading?

I have built static models since I was old enough to hold a tube of glue.  Airplanes, cars, ships.  Two of my ships have won national contests.  So I am a modeler in addition to being a model railroader.

A model railroad is obviously a collection of individual models.  You might compare this to a model ship, where the ship's boats are models of individual craft unto themselves.  Or major components of the ship itself, such as gun turrets that can almost be considered individual subjects.  Or the individual aircraft on an aircraft carrier.

I would say that a model railroad should be considered as an individual model in itself.  But very few model railroads would actually be defined as "a model of a railroad".  Only the very smallest railroad could ever be modeled in its entirety. Even small portions or actual railroads are seldom modeled in total.  The best we can do is to selectively compress real scenes into badly-out-of-scale but hopefully still recognizable portions of real railroads.

Mixing scales on a model railroad can seldom be done well, but can be a way of creating forced perspective in scenes that can only be observed from one vantage point.  The problem with model scenes is scale distance verses actual distance.  A model railroad car may be 86' long, but it may be sitting in a terminal 500' deep, representing an actual terminal 1500' deep.  This causes all sorts of perspective problems.

If you are building one individual model, say, a model automobile, keeping to scale is not so hard.  The biggest problem faced with injection-molded models is the thickness of the plastic is a great deal overscale.  Fortunately, there are few places this could be a problem.  Scale dimensions on operating model railroads are much more difficult.  Wheel flanges come to mind foremost.

If the model railroad is expected to actually operate, we need to hold it to a slighter looser standard than if it is a static museum display.  This is not to say we should excuse sloppy modeling, but that operating model railroads should be given a little more tolerance than "still lifes".

Les

Sid,

When I was a kid in the early 1960's, my friends and I had a model car club where we would build plastic models and hold contests.  One of my favorite tricks was to take an engine from a 1/24 scale kit and stuff it into a 1/25 scale kit.  That tiny increase in size made it look much more powerful!

Les