I have been having lots of fun lately photographing my layout and the trains that run on it. In fact, I think I might have taken shots of almost everything from every angle I could think of. For a while I thought I might have run out of photo opportunities, until I realized there are endless options if just “built” the scenes as dioramas.

The more I thought about this idea the more it seemed that if I built dioramas I could get some nice shots, but it would be a much slower process than I would like. And then it hit me! I have a wonderful spray paint booth that has LOTS of lighting in place. And most of the time the spray booth just sits there empty, wanting to do something. Why not make it into a temporary photo booth? Should work!

To start, I built a background out of a section of cardboard that I painted blue and added some sprayed on clouds. To make it fit I had to custom cut out the sides to fit around all the stuff that lives in the booth for painting. Making the backdrop took me less than half an hour, and looked just fine. (OK, don’t look too closely)

Now I needed to start thinking about what I wanted in the photo. As it worked out, I am in the process of a major expansion to my “Train World” and have a number of models that will (someday) be used. Up to this point they just have been hanging around collecting dust….. Why not see if I can work them into this temporary scene?

Hummm…. I have some buildings now, but to make an interesting shot I will also need some trains. I had some loose old track from a past layout that I just couldn’t throw away, so I built a short section for the shot. I even had an old switch that never did work. (I can’t seem to throw anything away) Perfect! I had to remind myself that trains weren’t going to actually run on this line, only LOOK like they are. This section of the project took me about an hour.

I placed the backdrop, a few buildings and the track section in my new “photo booth” to have a look. Come to find out, it needed more of…. Something. It just wasn’t right yet. Looking at the scene, I needed more land out in front of the track section to fill in the photos. To do this, I had an old section of plywood that was just about the correct size. A little Elmer’s glue and some basic ground cover material filled the bill nicely. This took me about twenty minutes.

But still, looking at the scene it needed……. Even more of something. Ah yes, I need some background buildings to give the shot some “depth”. And there they were. I remembered an old set of background buildings that I had glued onto foam board a number of years ago and never got around to using. I had to clean them up a bit and add some legs to the back so they wouldn’t fall over, but they should work fine.

OK, now is the time to “build a photo”. Follow along with the shots of my progress and see how things shaped up. I position the backdrop to cover the entire back of the spray booth. Next I set up the track and the “up-front” area along with a section of road I made out of a strip of light tarpaper.

Now I add the paper background buildings to the scene. I admit I’m not much of an “artist”, so I have to fiddle around to get them to look believable. I also find they like to fall over if you even THINK about touching them. So I take a break and add bigger “feet” to the back of these paper buildings. There you go, they stand up just fine now!

On to the buildings! I have so many finished buildings hanging around it took me a bit to figure out which ones I wanted to use. Finally, I simply decided on the ones I liked the most. (At least the ones I liked the most at that moment) I built from the center outwards, working with the idea that the center objects were the center of attention and as you got further out things became less important.

And finally, I added some detail to the scene. I added cars and trucks, trailers and lots of people. After thinking about the scene, I changed it all around. What the heck, nothing is attached so why not try something different? Ow yes, and I added trains to the scene. The trick with the trains is to add interest without overpowering the entire photo. Something I had to play with.

Now comes the real test……. What will it look like through the camera? And what do you know….. Looks GREAT! I shot a bunch of photos and then took it all apart and rebuilt a new scene. And then I did it again. And again. What good fun!

All things considered, this was a wonderful project. Not only did I have everything right here on hand, but I can use them again and again in an endless combination. It was easy, fun and fast to set up this “photo booth” and I am able to get some fun shots of things that weren’t (at that time anyway) being used.