NYC Trackbook 2018 cover photo contest

[Peter Dougherty]

Hi all,

Just a reminder that the cover photo contest for the 2018 edition of Tracks of the NYC Subway ends at 11:59pm on October 14. As in years past, I'm looking for entries for both front and rear covers for the coming year's book. You may enter as many times as you like; just email your favourite shots with the words PHOTO CONTEST in the subject line to nyctrackbook at gmail.com before the deadline. Full rules and details can be found at http://nyctrackbook.com/photo_contest.html.

As well, if you have any additions or corrections please contact me at that same email address. As always, I'm looking for long-term changes and GOs, tower limit changes (and the decommissioning of existing local towers), tracks being removed from service or being added, station name changes, home signal number changes or corrections, etc.

I'd like to send out a big THANK YOU to all the members of this community who've helped me keep my book accurate over the last 22 years. Without you this work would simply not be possible.

 

Cheers,

Peter Dougherty,
Author/Publisher

2017 Edition now shipping.

[RR503]

Is B/W or color preferable?

[Peter Dougherty]

Colour only, please. The image submitted for consideration can be low-res but the picture used for print must be 300 dpi or more.

[Peter Dougherty]

LAST CALL!
Typo in the initial post, the deadline is October 15th, SUNDAY NIGHT, 12:59pm NYC time. Enter as often as you wish.

Winner(s) will be announced within a couple of days here, and on the book's facebook page. GOOD LUCK to all!

[MysteriousBtrain]

Since I did some fanning today and got a good shot why not show it off?

[Union Tpke]

8 hours ago, MysteriousBtrain said:

Since I did some fanning today and got a good shot why not show it off?

Did you even read this"

Quote

Essentially, a winning image will be a front-looking view of complex trackwork, preferably encompassing at least a couple of signals, a train or two and a striking background image. Images must be from the modern era (within the last couple of years) and trains must be of the stock presently in use or expected to be in revenue service in the year in which the book is published.

First off, the image must have visual appeal to someone browsing a bookshelf or mailing list circular. It's gotta "pop." Nice sunny bright blue sky if it's outdoors, or a stunningly-lit night or twilight shot. Pics post-blizzard in the winter would probably do well, as would a gorgeous underground shot with reflections of rail, signals, work-lights, etc. I'm a sucker for high-zoom shots (300mm or greater) as well.

 

[MysteriousBtrain]

No not really @Union Tpke I kinda knew that it wasn't going to be picked anyways I just grabbed something real quick and just posted.

 

My apologies for wasting time on this thread.

[Peter Dougherty]

OK, the contest has closed and I received about 150 images to choose from all-told. I'm in the process of winnowing that down to about a dozen finalists, including a couple that were submitted last year but were that close.

I'm not fanatical about track-work and signals in the picture, but that's a good way to qualify and get to the front of the line. What's most important is visual appeal. This is for a book cover that will appear in catalogues and hopefully sit on a few bookstore shelves. The cover sells books, so the picture has to "pop," first and foremost.

I had to exclude a huge percentage of entries because the image quality just wasn't good enough. I'm not talking about subject matter here. If you shot using a small camera using "digital zoom" it simply won't enlarge well enough to be printable. Ditto if you're using an older cellphone camera. A real DSLR, mirrorless, Micro 4/3, or similar camera with a decent lens will capture an image that can be enlarged sufficiently to fill the printable frame. MAYBE a cellphone camera, too, depending on the quality.

The bleed size of the frame I print from is 3405 x 2625 pixels, at 300dpi. A typical 35mm-style frame is not tall enough to fill the entire frame, thus the whole image has to be enlarged, and then cropped to fill my frame. So I need to be able to blow your picture up by at least 30% if not more, and not lose quality.

One entrant had some great shots but I don't know if there are larger versions of them; blowing up what I downloaded wasn't enough to fill the frame without a loss of pixels.

Thanks to ALL entrants for your time and hard work. I wish I could use more than one front and one back, and judging gets harder every year since I often get so many great images. I will try to announce a winner no later than Friday.