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Trying to replicate 90-130 year old portraits
A friend recently bought a house that was built in the 1880’s. I’m going to take some family portraits for him to hang inside the house. My goal is to replicate photo’s from the 1880-1920’s. I’ve been searching around on google and I haven’t come across any tutorials that capture what I am trying to do. Although I’ve found plenty of images that reflect what I want to do. Does anyone have suggestions on how to process the images in post? I’m almost going for a sepia meets instagram type of look. I want the right shadings, colors, texture to the paper etc. I want the portraits to appear like they are 90-130 years old. Thanks Tom Mar 23 13 09:23 pm Link I highly suggest getting a 4x5 camera and getting some outdated film and shoot like it should be shot and process normally. And when you develop do some negative contrast so they are somewhat faint. Mar 23 13 09:35 pm Link I made a camera out of a box, a blanket, a lens, and some parchment paper. I shoot the image projected onto the parchment paper with a regular digital camera.  No fakery needed! Mar 23 13 09:41 pm Link The most important thing is to style the family. Hair and clothes. That is what gives the feeling of the time. And also test to use natural light and long shutter times to replicate how things was shot then. Although I’ve found plenty of images that reflect what I want to do. II would advise you to post one instead of trying to describe it, to avoid confusion/interpretation. Mar 24 13 01:45 am Link Depends on how easy you want things to be. If you want the easy route, there are plenty of Photoshop actions that will do this for you, but they might not be perfect. I'd suggest building your own camera. Pinhole photography was used a lot in those days and even a small child can build a pinhole camera. If you're using digital, you can even just use a lens cover with a pinhole in it. You can take it further and build a camera that doesn't need any modern film processing. You can print photos on a variety of materials they used then..just depends how deep and authentic you want to take it. Mar 24 13 04:09 am Link Tom Nardi wrote: To answer your initial software question for post. I'd highly recommend trying out the trial versions of both Alienskin Exposure 4 and onOne Perfect Effects 4 if you are looking for an easy way to get some great effects. Sepias ... Paper textures ... Grunge ... Borders etc. Mar 24 13 06:47 am Link pellepiano wrote: +1 Mar 24 13 07:46 am Link Take your finished prints and then physically artificially age them. Professional fakers commonly use techniques like slow baking in a low heat oven, rubbing with used tea bags, lightly rubbing with wire wool. Mar 24 13 07:56 am Link you could also try making a pinhole camera using a digitl camera and a body cap. No lens needed Mar 24 13 08:02 am Link Tom Nardi wrote: 1) The easy way: Get this free download add-on: Virtual Photographer. It has tons of enhancements for digital images, including a few "aging" effects. Try these. Mar 24 13 08:26 am Link Since you asked specifically about post processing, I'll forgo discussion of wardrobe, paper negatives, salt prints etc. (though I'm really getting interested in the later items). After taking the image covert it to black and white, I suggest getting the 30 day trial of Topaz B&W Effects to play with. Then take a look at this tutorial; http://www.digitalimagemagazine.com/blo … l-painter/ it may be adaptable to Photoshop with some smudging involved in the final step, (or maybe Topaz Simplify?), even though it's written for painter. This is what I did on my current avatar. Another idea is to search for some free Daguerreotype textures, there are several floating around. Convert to B&W, put the texture over it in overlay or soft light (or a layer of each), gently erase or otherwise vignette to see the details and daub some purple and orange around the edges with a charcoal type brush in PS. You can also do some colorizing with this technique. Here are a couple of examples I did.   Mar 24 13 11:00 am Link Shoot everything in without artificial light. Don't shoot anything with a shutter speed faster than 10 - 20 seconds. Make your subjects hold that pose. Reds are dark. Blues are bright. Mar 24 13 12:26 pm Link Wow, so many great thoughts and ideas. The outfits, hair styles and accessories will be taken care of. They are getting finalized / fitted this week. I don’t know yet what exact time period they picked as in 1880s vs. 1920s. It was going to depend in part on what they could find that fits their children. I do like the idea of a pinhole camera. I haven’t used one since I was a kid in summer camp. I might make one and if there is time at the end of the shoot use it. But right now I’m most comfortable shooting digitally and I figure this would be a great way to enhance my PS skills. I have onOne Perfect Effects. I have to play around with it more. I feel my results still look a little too digitally manipulated. I’m hoping this will change with practice. I will also check out some of the other plugins. I haven’t decided on a specific look I’m trying to recreate. I’m fairly flexible and it part it will be decided by which specific time period they get outfits from. I'm probably going to try looks from too time periods. I’m looking at these for inspiration. http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=htt … Dg&dur=382 http://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=i … 8876262741 http://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=i … 9510917537 Thanks again for all the great suggestions. Mar 24 13 12:27 pm Link Tom Nardi wrote: Mar 24 13 12:34 pm Link Tom Nardi wrote: You can just link them, which I think is more polite if there are lots of them or it is one really large one, or you put them in BBcodes (http://www.bbcode.org/) like this: Mar 24 13 01:07 pm Link If you really want to be authentic and unique then, ....Make a simple pin-hole camera with old 4x5 b/w sheet film or photo paper, develop, print and scan them, then go to post. http://www.kodak.com/ek/US/en/Pinhole_Camera.htm Mar 24 13 02:48 pm Link Why a pinhole? They had multi-element lenses. By 1890, Kodak was thriving, with roll-film cameras as well as glass plate-based cameras.  1890's. Is everything within depth of field and diffraction limited? (No. Thus, not a pinhole.) Here is a slideshow from the Duchess of Devonshire's Ball in 1897; it's one of the best recorded/documented costume parties of the era because it was so heavily photographed. (Non-video from someone else here, showing a few dozen of the photographs taken at the event.)  Mar 25 13 03:14 am Link Schlake wrote: That's why I was hesitant to post anything in the first place. Thanks for the tips. Much appreciated - Tom Mar 25 13 07:19 am Link The Space Cowboy wrote: Yellow will also appear dark. Mar 26 13 12:23 am Link |
