Sheffields Last Tram
I did this shot for my dads 79th birthday. I can remember as a youngster my dad telling me stories of how he used to catch the last tram home and raving about how great the trams were.
In June 2016 I went to the Crich Tramway Museum in Derbyshire looking for some stock shots and came across what was billed as Sheffields Last Tram (below left) and immediately had the idea for a shot to remind my dad of his beloved trams.
The problem was the tram in question was parked in the tram sheds and did not make for a photo worthy of hanging on the wall so I set about putting that right.
With an idea in my head of how I saw the final image I took a shot of the tram and then set about finding a more suitable background. As I wandered around the museum site I came across what I thought would be the perfect setting. (see below right)
While the setting looked perfect for my needs the lighting was very flat and did not give the mood I was thinking of for the final image I had in my head but I knew that with a little creativity in post production I would be able to give some more suitable atmosphere to the shot.
After a little work in Adobe Lightroom, 'turning on' the gas lamps and playing with the colour temperature to give a feel of dusk to the shot I was reasonably happy that the background was now ready to accept the tram. (Below)
After cutting out the tram from its original background and placing it in its new home I found I had covered what little detail there was left in the sky so to create a little more mood I blended in a stock stormy cloud shot which I feel both adds the mood I was after and, in darkening the sky, helps focus the viewer on the main subject of the tram.
There was still work to do though as I needed to match the lighting on the tram with the mood on the bridge so after removing the reflections created by the lighting in the tram shed I lowered the exposure and added some highlights and shadows to replicate what should have been there from the street lighting.
I then 'turned on' the tram headlight and put some corresponding light on the cobbles and to finish off the image I took the overhead wires from another tram shot and placed them over the tram to give a power source without which the shot is less believable. As a final touch I added the route names to the tram to make it a little more personal for my dad.
