Digitaly colourized Civil War photos?

[GreencoatCross]

Re: Digitaly colourized Civil War photos?

Nathan,

Yes, I want to go back and finish this one as well as some others I started several years ago. I need to de-saturate the colors a bit, soften/blend the edges, etc., so they don't look like they've been painted with heavy watercolors. The original can be found at the link below.

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cwpb.04529/?co=cwp

[ThehosGendar]

Re: Digitaly colourized Civil War photos?

Adding color to period photos is another way of approaching the same problem. We're all used to seeing color photos and casual poses, so we hardly notice the medium any more, unlike wetplate, where we have to train ourselves to get past the medium. On another thread, someone, maybe Jason R. Wickersty again, cropped out and enlarged little vignettes from period crowd scenes, that showed people in casual poses--two people chatting in an audience, things like that. It helped one to see the past, the way we're used to seeing the present.

I couldn't have put it any better... that's exactly what I was going for! The oft neglected backgrounds and falling-out-of-focus edges of the glass plate hold some great surprises... what I like to think of my antidote to the "suspender clasping stand stiff as a board with no personality" recreation of history we too often see.

And the colorised images were along the same lines, too - plus I just wanted to see if I could do it well enough! I chose Federal images because I knew the colors, and those shots that were in extreme crisp focus. I have a few more somewhere on one of my harddrives... I have to dig them up. I know I did one of that great group shot of Custer in 1862 - the one of him sitting, holding a pistol, and showing off the wart on his pinky...

[Rob Weaver]

Re: Digitaly colourized Civil War photos?

This is one of my favorites of those I've found. The Dictator mortar, in position before Petersburg. Now the area is heavily wooded. Notice the background. Open, hot and dusty.