35 Pueblitos Road, Belen, New Mexico, 87002
Better lighting makes for better photos. There are so many parts
to an engine that often one portion will cast a shadow on others so
that they don’t photograph well. The canopy acts like a sun
roof keeping off the light needed to show the detail of an engine.
To help this problem I try to take my pictures just after sunrise
the canopy instead of down on it.
To do this I ask the engineer to move his engine into an open
field the afternoon before and position it so that the next morning
sun will hit the side I want.
I like the cylinder side with a little of the front showing. To
get a better angle I put the camera about 30 inches off the ground
and aim up. A tripod is best, or a camera can be held firmly on a
solid object such as a cinder block or wooden crate. Even a very
slight movement of the camera makes a picture fuzzy.
Open fields are better for engines or machinery. Buildings or
other machines in the picture clutter the photo and distract from
the subject.
Look through the issues of Iron Men Album and notice how the
photos you like best were taken and this will give an idea on how
to take your next picture. Now, go out there and take a picture and
send it in.
Iron Men Album is our magazine. Iron Men is not only for us,
it’s by us. If you have an old photo, a copy can be made by any
photography store without a negative. Get a copy, write a little
about the photo and send it in. Just write down like you would tell
a friend about it and send it in. If you mail it in, me and all the
rest of us can enjoy and learn about it. Maybe it’s just a
story about an engine, how something got fixed, or how something
worked, or something that happened, or maybe something you saw on
vacation. Take along some black and white film. Write it down and
send it.
Pass your copy of Iron Men around among your friends and get
them to subscribe, because the more people that get Iron Men Album
the bigger and better it will be. Remember, it’s OUR album, a
collection of pictures and stories about US and OUR things. So,
mail that picture or letter so we can all enjoy and learn from
it.
