In September in Huntington Beach, CA, the historical society has Civil War Recreation days. These participants put a lot of effort into the authenticity of their costumes and campsites. I plan on doing a lot of black and white conversions to match the look of Matthew Brady’s Civil War photography. The image posted is a faded and distressed look of a building at the Chemung Mine in Bridgeport, CA which illustrates my thinking.
Comments and creative suggestions welcome.
I like your image very much and I think that your processing gives it a lot of character.
Matthew Brady’s photos are amazing, especially considering the equipment at the time, which I think will make it very hard to match. Focusing must have been difficult, there are a lot of artifacts, and modern cameras do a much better job faithful capturing the range of grays.
Not knowing much about Mathew Brady’s images & look, I viewed the link that @KenKv provided. His images seem to have less contrast and finer details on the barn you posted. They also have some torn edges and a washed out very faded aged look, I think maybe you need to eliminate some of the contrast a little to give it a much more faded look? Maybe add a gray/sepia color overlay and adjust the opacity or blend mode? I like how you treated the outer edges with the slight faded sepia look. When first viewing the image, my first impression of the hairline cracks were a wire fence… I would beef up the cracked worn look to really give them an aged look. Just some thoughts and things I would try?
