Shooting steam trains can bring about some interesting conundrms. As Mike points out, the parking lot does throw things off from having a vintage feel to it. However, that's going to be the case in a lot of steam shots taken in the present day. For example, in tis shot I watned to play off the modern cars in the parking lot of an old railroad yard along with people dressed in modern day clothes taking pictures of the steam engine with digital cameras.
But in this one, I was able to put just the train in the image. The egineer helped by poking his head out of the window.
And then there is the question of whether to go black and white or not. Some folks will automatically convert every shot of a steam engine to B&W, but that doesn't always work.
So with your shot, the parking lot with the new cars is present enough to be seen, but I don't know if it works as a contrasting issue or not. Not sure what kind of zoom you have, but if the train were a little further down the track covering the car but keeping the other photog, it may have worked better. In this shot, I feel like the wheels beding cut off on the tender hurts the composition. I may have tried to crop it tighter actually. They say not to cut off people shots at the joints and that's what it feels like here.
the NKP 765 is one of the more famous steam engines running these days. Do a quick Google search to find out the wheel arrangement so we can put that in the tags and decriptions. I feel like people who ride behind these engines may do online research to see if there are good shots of them for sale. At least, I hope they will for my sake with the ones I have shot.
