"Gardner-izing" Photography

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I've always had a fascination with the Civil War photography of Alexander Gardner and Mathew Brady, especially the battlefield images taken at Antietam and Gettysburg. Recently, I began experimenting with developing a look for my current day photos that creates the feel of the old photography, though with some license. For instance, these photos retain some color (reminiscent of the trend in colorizing photographs that took hold in the 19th century).

Click this link to view the antiqued photos in high resolution


To create this look the first step was to remove all modern intrusions e.g., power poles, paved roads, signs, towers, markers, monuments, etc.) To illustrate, the first 3 images below show 1) Gardner's iconic view of Rebel artillerymen lying before Dunker Chuch 2 days after Antietam 2) My 'Gardnerized' photo of the same scene taken at the sesquicentennial in 2012 and 3) the original 2012 in-camera view.







After that, I sorted through a number of other images in my portfolio applying the same sort of post-processing. This involved applying various textures, tints, luminosity masking and other techniques to arrive at a look that reminds of Civil War photography. Here are the results:

Antietam
'Rebels' at Antietam's Burnside Bridge


Pryor House. Gen. McClellan's HQ during the Battle of Antietam

Gun Battery at Sunrise

Yankees Lounging Near Burnside Bridge

Gettysburg
McPherson's Farm


Little Round Top (original July 1863 photograph)


Little Round Top (2009 photo)