Antique.. Take Two

[JoshuaLucas]

Ok, so in my last post I took one of my pictures taken in my downtown area and attempted to give it an antique look. Well, after a few solid suggestions I ventured back downtown and looked for something with more of a center of focus. That being the old sign and windows..
So.. On my second time out.. How did I do? Does the subject work for the antique style? Did i get the effects right with making it look antiquey? Any suggestions are much appreciated..

[AnnetteJ]

It's a really interesting subject and compositionally sound, apart from the drainpipe which would be better cloned out. Probably not a crop, as that would lose part of the letter.
Again I would rather see this shot in colour as it is clearly a modern pic taken now, with the old stuff looking old and disused, trees growing out of the wall, blocked up doorways.
In its heyday, when someone might have taken a photo of it which would look old and sepia to us, the paint would not be faded, the doors not blocked, the trees not growing there and there would be people.
So to take a pic which mimics an old photo you would need to find a bit which was clearly old fashioned but still in good condition, looking newish as it might have looked 100 or so years ago. Ideally have some people stand in front of it dressed in old time clothes!
A fun thing to do might be to see if there are any real old photos of this place and then go and recreate them how they are now, sort of then and now thing. Also then you would get an idea of the kind of thing people would take pix of, usually people, businesses, street scenes, life, rather than bits of buildings with no life in them.
I could be wrong, you might find they did take pix of bits of wall, it's just my impression of real old photos.
I think your pic does have a very interesting subject this time and I really like it, I'm just not sure what you want to achieve with the sepia effect. If you just want to emphasize that it is old then maybe it works. I just tend to think of that effect to make it look like it could have been taken in the past.
Good work though and keep it up, I'd like to see more pix of this interesting place.

[Darvidanoar]

I love the composition of this shot. There are so many different elements to it I hardly know where to begin.

The strict lines of the bricks and windows contrasting the relaxed meanderings of the trees.
The sealed windows standing guard either side of the still open one.
The texture of the painted brick wall.
The silhouette of the older BELK sign beneath the newer Belk sign.

The more I look at this, the more I see!

I agree that the drain is distracting and needs to be cloned out. And I also agree that sepia might not be the right choice for this type of scene. I'm not sure what software you're using, but an interesting 'urban' effect is to run the unsharp mask with a really BIG radius. This can give the picture a really griity look which might suit your photo better.

[JoshuaLucas]

I took both of your ideas and used the original coloring in the picture, saturated a little and added a grain effect. Does this look suit the subject in the picture better?

[AnnetteJ]

That works for me much better than the sepia. I really like this one.

[navcom]

I hate to be the "contrarian", but I really like your original sepia version. It's more "industrial" looking. I think the colors of the brush (low and up front) distract from the picture and lead you away from the other elements. When in sepia, it feels better.

Of course that is just my opinion. This whole art thing is pretty subjective.