Soldier

[gimmie5]

My son came home yesterday from the local historical museum with a Civil War hat. I thought it would be fun to try and make it look "old", but am not sure if this works. Would love your thoughts.

EXIF:
Nikon D60
1/60
f5.6
62mm
ISO 400
Flash

[JFSanders]

Good pose but one that wouldn't have been used. Have him rotate the hat just to his right and stand at attention with his rifle at arms (on his shoulder) or with the butt of the rifle next to his right foot and his hand extended out so the rifle is on a angle. Need to stop way down and kill most of the light. Go as high as you can with the ISO to get it grainy. Then convert it to sepia. He is a menacing looking hombre!

Jim

[gimmie5]

Thanks for the input. I will definitely have to try your tips!

[oneronnalee]

Yep, agreed with Jim - looking at references is good when working with this kind of thing. Here's a couple of photos that could help with referencing the pose and other features of an old photo:

example
example
example

Note the 3/4 posing and refusal to look into the camera. Also, soft focus could be beneficial to add to the realism to a fakie vintage photo (Adobe's Lightroom has an excellent Luminance/Clarity control, for Photoshop I think Surace Blur could work - but don't forget to heap on some grain/noise afterwards). Another thing you could look at adding is textures (scratches, crumpled paper), there are plenty of free ones for download on deviantart.com. Lastly a possible feature (that I'm not a fan of but it could work) is slight white vignetting (vignette effect with the edges of the photo fading into white rather than black) as seen in the 3rd example. Have fun and don't be afraid to experiment

Ronna

[gimmie5]

Thanks for the examples. I was actually thinking about adding a texture, so I will have to try that.