I have some great memories from my childhood, many of which seem to become more and more lucid the older I get, and the more I watch my own great kids grow.  One of my fondest memories was of the Christmas I got my first train set from “Santa” (thanks Mom and Dad; I love you!).  It was a Märklin set, and it included an engine just like this one here, same color even!  Man I loved that train set, and I played with it day in and day out.  Heck, I even had a conductors cap and baton I’d wave about while racing that train around the tracks.  Those memories cam rushing back when I saw this scene the other day, so I was glad I had my little pocket Leica with me to score the brackets needed to create this.  And, while I did not have my big ol’ Nikon D700 and 24mm PC-E (tilt-shift) lens with me, I knew I’d have no problems getting the “toy” look I was after once I got home to my Mac; once I processed my brackets and got the shot looking the way I wanted, all I had to do was bust out my trusty FocalPoint 2 Software (part of OnOne Software’s Perfect Photo Suite of post-processing goodness) and I was easily able to finish the shot off with a tilt-shift identical to what an expensive tilt-shift lens would give me.  Sweet!!

BTW, I processed this photograph to the song Train, by 4 Non Blondes.  Rockin!