How to Recreate a Civil War Era Photograph

A few years back I was at Fort Barrancas in Pensacola, Florida and took several photographs. I came across the digital files recently and decided to attempt to turn a modern photograph of the fort into something that looks like it was taken around 1865. The following will take you through the steps I took to achieve the effect I was looking for. Depending on the image you want to transform some of the steps may not be applicable.

Note: the following was done in Photoshop CS 3

Step 1: Turn Color into Black and White

Open the original photo in Photoshop. 

Click on the New Adjustment Layer icon.

Chose Black & White from the list. This will bring up the Black & White dialog box.

Keep the Preset set to None and click OK. Many photographs of the era were not perfectly exposed so no need to make any adjustments here.

Step 2: Make the Sky Over Exposed
Usually in Civil War era photographs the sky was over exposed due to the long exposures needed in those days. This step is to lighten the sky.
Click on the New Adjustment Layer icon and click on Curves. In the Curves dialog box grab the line in the middle and drag it up until the sky is washed out.

Because only the sky should be washed out not everything, fill the Curves layer mask with black. 

Make sure the layer mask is selected by clicking on it. 

With black as the foreground color, click Edit > Fill. In the dialog box be sure the settings are as below and click OK.

Make white the foreground color and click on the Brush tool. 

Select a medium-soft brush and paint the washed out sky back in. 

Don't worry about lightening the edges of the branches, in fact it is desirable to do so.

Next copy the 3 visible layers to a new layer above in order to work on the trees. 

There are two ways to do this. Holding down the Alt key (Windows) or the Option key (Mac), click on Layers in the top menu, move your mouse down to Merge Visible and click.

 

That can be a bit clumsy so the best way is to use the short cut keys: Shift+Ctrl+Alt+E (Windows) or Shift+Command+Option+E (Mac). You will now have a black and white layer (I named it "stamped")

Step 3: Blurring the Trees
In the 1860s photography was still in it's infancy and even outdoor photograph had to have long exposures. This resulted in moving people or objects often times to be blurred. In this step adds motion blur to the tree branches.

Make the stamped layer active.
Select the Quick Selection Tool. Make a rough selection of the trees. As with the sky this does not need to be prefect. In this project imperfections are good.
When the selection is satisfactory, click Alt + j or Option + j. This will copy the selection to a new layer above (I named it "trees").
Right click on the blue area of the trees layer and click on Convert to Smart Object. Smart Objects allows you to apply filters with out being destructive to the layer and allows you to go back and make adjustment to the filter if need be.

Go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur.

I selected -8 degree for the Angel and 45 pixels for Distance but that is a matter of experimentation.

Next add a Mask to the trees layer by clicking on the Mask icon.

Use this mask to paint out some of the blurred tree limbs. I set the brush opacity to 15%. The goal is to remove most of the streaking and leave (no pun intended) most of the blur on the outer most limbs.

Step 4: Adding a Vignette
Create a layer above everything and fill it with black. Add a mask to the layer and using a soft-edged brush with white selected, paint away the center of the image. Again it does not have to be perfect, just experiment until it looks the way you want it.

Step 5: Scratches and Spots
To really age this image I found a texture online (there are lots of free ones out there). It doesn't matter if the texture you find has color or not.

Copy the texture image into a layer above everything.
On the top menu click on Image > Adjustments > Desaturate to remove any color.
Change the Blending Mode to Overlay.

The overlay blending mode gives the desired effect for everything except for the sky.
Duplicate the scratches layer by clicking Ctrl + J (Command + J).
Set the Blending Mode to Hard Light.
Click on the Mask icon to create a mask and fill it with black.
Use a soft-edged brush and paint the scratches back in the sky area.

Note: I added a mask to the first scratches layer and masked some of the scratches.

The last step I did was to add a New Adjustment Levels layer and boosted the contrast a bit.

And there you have it, a Civil War era image. View higher resolution version HERE

B-17 Then and Now - Part 3

With the B-17 reconstructed I turned my attention to battle damage, adding additional B-17s and finally bombs.

I experimented with many brush setting in Photoshop to paint smoke and create fire for the stricken engine. I also used the blur filter and smudge tool.

I figured out a way to make the flak smoke (I don’t remember the process but it was  with much trial and error) and peppered the sky with as much flak as I thought looked believable.

The Internet once again was my source for the wing damage on the right wing tip. I found a photo from World War II of real wing damage on a B-24 and used it for my B-17 damage.

As mentions previously I photographed a scale model of the B-17 in various angles. I added nose art to each plane in Photoshop as well as numbers on the tail. The nose art was lifted from photos of real bombers. On the right B-17 I added some tail damage and each plane  had to have it's props blurred. I also added a blur  filter to each.

Nose art, tail number and prop blur added to model photo. Tail damage was added later.

For some time I was not going to worry about bombs because I had no clue how I was going to do it but eventually I experimented with some free 3D rendering programs and found a 3D bomb someone made that fit the bill.

Model with bombs and tail damage layered on the final version.

Bombs added to main B-17

Close up of another B-17 model

Close up of the final B-17 model

All the elements of the "then" version was then assembled, re-sized, positioned, various filters and adjustments applied and everything tweaked.

All that was left was to marry it to the "now" version.

Final compilation 

The full resolution version can be seen HERE. (There is tool on the page to view full resolution sections)

Note: 

While preparing for this blog series I noticed some things that I did not see when I first worked on this. For one thing the "then" compilation lacked uniformed grain. For example the bombs, which were computer generated, looked too smooth compared to photographic elements. To rectify this I added a 50% gray layer on top of everything, set the blending mode to overlay, applied an Add Noise filter and a Gaussian Blur filter. I think it helped. 

Also as you may be able to see in the close up of the main B-17, the ball turret looked a bit tool sharp so I added some more blur to it. In addition there was some masking that needed cleaning up.

If you look at the current version on the page linked above you will also noticed that I made the stenciled lettering look more like it was actually stenciled. 

With something this complex it's a good idea to go back over it after some time has past so you can see it with fresh eyes.

This was my most ambitions Photoshop project and was quite a learning experience. If you have an idea that will require this kind of work and you aren't too sure how you are going to pull it off, just dive in, you'll figure it out as you go.

B-17 Then and Now - Part 2

After accepting my own challenge to turn an image of a parked B-17 bomber with a crowd of people in front of her into the same plane flying a combat mission, the most challenging thing I faced was how to reconstruct the bottom of the plane.

The first thing I did, however, was to select a different sky from pictures that I had already taken.

This sky was chosen because it had dark clouds as well as blue sky to account for sunlight hitting the plane and the light is coming from the same direction as in the original image

 

I then cut the plane out and layered it on top of the sky. I separated three of the engine props, applied a radial blur and layered theme back in place. The forth prop was left in a stopped position. I wanted to show some battle damage and this engine was going to be a casualty.

Cut out plane layered over the sky. 3 props blurred and rotated slightly (right wing tip readied for damage)

To reconstruct the bomb bay doors, the rear section, and the landing gear in the up position, I bought a plastic scale model. After a assembling the model I photographed it in various positions including some close ups as approximating the same view point of the original.  

Typical model setup for photographing

This was used for the bomb bay doors and landing gear

 These photos were also used later for the B-17s in the background.

Bomb bay doors, landing gear and rear horizontal stabilizers in place

The detail of the ball turret on the model was not satisfactory because of the small scale so I search the Internet and found a fairly high resolution photo that someone had taken at some air show somewhere. It was taken from the correct view point. It was not copy righted so it became my ball turret.

Ball turret in place

Part 3 will deal with the battle damage.

B-17 Then and Now - Part 1

This blog is to document the creation of my work entitled “B-17 Then And Now”.

It all started with my attending an air show at Niagara Fall, New York in 2007. A B-17 that that was used in the filming of the 1990 movie “Memphis Belle” was on display. Knowing that my Photoshop CS5 had the capability of stitching multiple images into a panorama, I took 5 overlapping shots of the bomber with many people milling about in front of her.

 

After stitching them together in and cleaning it up a bit Photoshop, I thought I was pretty much done with the image. The somehow I got the idea to do a then and now composition, with the plane at the air show on the bottom and the same plane on a combat mission above.

The first real challenge I faced was to reconstruct the bottom of the B-17 that was obstructed by all those people standing if front of her.

That will be the subject of part 2. 

Calvary Cemetery 1971 - My Summer Job

1970 was the year I graduated from high school and the year I started attending Virginia Commonwealth University art school. My passion was photography but at that time, believe it or not, photography courses were not offered by the art department. Photography was just starting to be recognized as a legitimate art discipline.

In my freshman year I took many different courses, painting, sculpture, art history and the like. At the start my sophomore year I had to decide on a major. I picked sculpture so I could use photography. That sounds crazy but there was a guy that majored in sculpture and was a film maker so I figured it should work for me.

As it turned out I left college half way through my second year but that’s another story. This blog post is about the summer job I took in 1971 before returning to what turned out to be my final semester at VCU.

The job was cutting grass at Calvary Cemetery located in Norfolk, Virginia.

Here is a brief history from Calvary’s web page:

Calvary Cemetery was established as a burial ground for Norfolk's African American citizens on January 9, 1877. Calvary spans more than 68 acres of green space in a pastoral setting. For nearly a century, most of Norfolk's African American citizens were interred at Calvary as there were not other burial options available to African Americans in Norfolk until the mid-1970s.

I am not African American (from this point on I’ll use “black” because in 1971 you were black or you were white). I’m as white as you can get. Try to imagine a white 19 year old long haired kid working with an all black crew in a cemetery just for blacks in the south in the early 1970s.

You might imagine that there was tension and distrust but actually there was none of that. Those guys were friendly and accepting of me and I was never treated badly by anyone who worked there. It was a great experience for me, a young white boy, to work with these men of color.

One day I decided to take my camera to work. I took pictures every chance I got (usually when we were on break). The guys joked that I must be a spy for the city because the only time I took pictures was when we weren't actually working.

I can no longer remember these guy's names but I'm glad I took my camera that day.

Click on the link below to see more photographs I took that day at Calvary Cemetery.
More photos