I got out to the Clayville Outdoor Train Garden this past weekend. Here are some photos from that adventure. If you are in Maryland and near Pasadena, I suggest checking it out. If you do check it out, they are collecting money to help two families, each of which has a little girl with cancer, so please go and donate if you can.

And on to some photography tips. For starters, you need to find out if photography is even allowed. This is as easy as simply asking. Most places have email or social media, or you can even ask at the location like I did. Regardless of how you ask, I recommend asking to avoid being asked to leave.  Often, places want you to photograph anyway but some places don’t so ask.

As for what lens to bring, do your research and consider your goals as well as what conditions the location itself might create. In this case, I didn’t want to be changing lenses as it was outdoors and was going to be relatively crowded so I opted to take just one lens. Since we were dealing with hobby trains, I opted to go with a lens that could zoom in, so I took my telephoto lens.

Finally, for settings consider your conditions and go in with a plan to save time. For this, I knew I would be outside, I knew I’d be in a crowded area, I knew it would be nighttime with some lights and I knew the trains would be moving.  This all tells me I’d be photographing moving objects in a low light area where I might only have a few seconds for some shots. My ISO would be high (4000 to 6000), my shutter speed was about 1/350 – 1/500 depending on what I could get away with and my aperture was as a low F-stop number. I like to select my focus point and keep it to one point however for this I did not move it so I always knew where it was for faster for focusing.

It was really cool, and you should check it out.