Backdrop Photos
Using some photos of Tōkyō (and other places) as background seems like a good way to make the city seem larger than the single scene I’m working with. Here are some suitable photos I found online, not all of which have been used, at least so far.
Note: all photos used on this page and for my backdrops are licensed for Creative Commons use (and a form of that license that permits derivative works with attribution for at least noncommercial use). This page serves as the attribution, and you can click on any photo to reach the original page where I found each of them for more details and the original.
If you want some pre-made panoramas suitable to a more rural layout, this Japanese site has several. With pixel doubling as described below, these should be suitable as 13” x 48” backdrops (thanks to kjh48 on the JNS Forum for pointing these out). Per the website, these images are copyright and may not be reposted, but are provided for “background, and diorama or model photography.”
What’s particularly interesting about those rural backdrops is that a couple of them were made by taking an ordinary photograph, duplicating it and horizontally flipping one of the two, then combining them into a panorama twice the width of the original. This isn’t a technique that would work for most urban photographs (due to signs, street markings, etc), and the area right around the center can look a bit odd. But it’s an interesting idea.
For information about how I made my backdrops from multiple photos, see my Making Backdrops page.
River Crossing
The following panoramic photo was used for the River Crossing scene backdrop. It’s really not big enough (in terms of pixels) as it’s only 3,072 pixels wide. At 48” that works out to about 64 dpi. Ideally, you’d want at least 300 dpi to be “photographic” up close (and a high-quality photo might have more), although you can cheat a bit on that since normal viewing distance is further away. What I did was scale this up to double the number of pixels (using image/resize in Photoshop Elements). That interpolates (guesses) new pixels between each of the originals, to get me an effective 132 dpi, close to the 150 dpi needed for a low-quality print photo. There is resizing software that can do a much more sophisticated job, and yield a higher effective dpi (and thus a better-looking picture), but I don’t own it, and I’m fairly happy with the results from this resolution.
I actually made this a bit wider than 48”, then adjusted to put the central street where it would line up with my expressway. That made the end image even lower dpi, but the typical viewing of this backdrop is at an angle from one of the main scenes, so it’s likely 48” or more from the viewer, rather than the 24-36” distance that the other backdrops are viewed from.
Location: Himeji seen from Himeji Castle
Source: Flickr
Photographer: Stéfan
License: CC by-sa 2.0
Width: 3072 pixels (64 dpi @ 48”)
Riverside Station
The following two photos stitch together nicely into a panorama, which is what I used to make the two backdrops for the Riverside Crossing scene. However I actually made them into a panorama slightly longer than 96”, then adjusted the central split to eliminate the overlap and minimize the buildings cut by it. The combined panorama is 13,728 pixels wide (after doubling and a bit of editing), and the two backdrops are about 6,860 pixels each, which gives me about 143 dpi.
The point-of-view is a bit high, but I’m going for a “hillside above the city” look and much of the foreground will be obscured by the station, so hopefully this illusion will stand up to casual scrutiny.
Location: Shiodome, Rainbow Bridge and Odaiba Island
Source: Flickr
Photographer: KimonBerlin
License: CC by-sa 2.0
Width: 3504 pixels (73 dpi @ 48”)
Location: Shinagawa and Tōkyō Bay (Haneda Airport at upper right)
Source: Flickr
Photographer: KimonBerlin
License: CC by-sa 2.0
Width: 3504 pixels (73 dpi @ 48”)
Urban Station
The following two images can stitch together (although not as well as the two above), and were used for the Urban Station scene. Much of the foreground was cut off, and behind a row of Kato and Tomix N-scale buildings, it looks quite good.
Location: Imperial Palace and Marunouchi
Source: Flickr
Photographer: KimonBerlin
License: CC by-sa 2.0
Width: 3463 pixels (72 dpi @ 48”)
Location: Ark Hills in Roppongi/Akasaka
Source: Flickr
Photographer: KimonBerlin
License: CC by-sa 2.0
Width: 3450 pixels (72 dpi @ 48”)
Hilltop Scene
Now that I’m adding scenery to the formerly “unsceniced end”, I need a backdrop behind that scenery. This is going to be viewed from a typical distance of six feet (2m) or more, and will have the low hill of the “hilltop” rising in front of it. So what I want for this is a distant view of urban sprawl. After a bit of searching, I found the following image (this is actually cut from the larger image on Flickr, click on image for link, and was then expanded 3x to 135 dpi, which should be sufficient for that distance.
Location: Tōkyō
Source: Flickr
Photographer: jam_232
License: CC by 2.0
Width: 6075 pixels (135 dpi @ 45”)
Urban Tram Layout
I used a strip from the middle of this photo, with some editing, to make the backdrop for my Urban Tram layout. I wanted something that combined the iconic Mount Fuji with a cityscape, and this was ideal. The photographer used a telephoto lens, which makes Fuji look larger than usual. To edit it, I cropped out all the foreground buildings, and erased the brown skyscraper that sticks up in front of the background ones, making the backdrop seem more distant due to the slightly washed-out colors of the remaining buildings.
Location: Mt. Fuji over Shinjuku, Tōkyō, from the Bunkyo Civic Center
Source: Flickr
Photographer: Sarmu
License: CC by-nc-sa 2.0
Width: 2560 pixels (53 dpi @ 48”)
Other Photos
I also have a few others I’ve thought of using, but presently do not have a use for:
Location: Shuto Expressway #3 towards Shibuya (looking SW)
Source: Flickr
Photographer: KimonBerlin
License: CC by-sa 2.0
Width: 2336 pixels (49 dpi @ 48”); not really suited for a whole backdrop
This one is too narrow, but a strip (or perhaps more than one) from it could make a backdrop with some editing to add a sky. That's probably more work than necessary with other things available, but I really like the central highway, so I might use it someday.
Location: Shinjuku (looking W)
Source: Flickr
Photographer: KimonBerlin
License: CC by-sa 2.0
Width: 3501 pixels (73 dpi @4 8”)
The back section of this would make a nice transitional backdrop between an urban center and a less-dense urban area. The foreground buildings need to be removed for a good “distant view” since they imply a close-up high viewpoint.
Location: Osaka, viewed from the castle
Source: Flickr
Photographer: ThomasLu
License: CC by-nc-sa 2.0
Width: 2860 pixels (59 dpi @ 48”)
This probably wouldn't work as well as some of the others, but a strip cropping out the foreground and most of the park could be used; I tend to think the foreground buildings are too large relative to the others for it to look good.
Location: Tōkyō from the 47th floor roof of St. Luke's Tower
Source: Flickr
Photographer: Ian Muttoo
License: CC by-sa 2.0
Width: 4010 pixels (83 dpi @ 48”)
I came close to using a strip from this on the Urban Tram layout, cropping off everything in front of the slightly-faded skyscrapers just back of center.
Location: Ginza, Tōkyō
Source: Flickr
Photographer: Dave Domingo
License: CC by-nc-sa 2.0
Width: 6687 pixels (139 dpi @ 48”)
It's hard to believe this is Ginza with the park in the foreground. But it would be an excellent backdrop for a small module of other scene with the park, or at least the road with its distorted curves, cropped away.
