"Reload!"

[Meadster]

All my life I've been interested in the US civil war due to a relative that served along the South Carolina coast. As a Texas resident I had not had much chance to go to any reenactment battles, until this spring. I took lots of photos, but was distressed at how "fake" they looked because they were in color, unlike the real images from the 1860's.

My response to this was to teach myself several styles to create the wet plate / daguerreotype look most associate with images from that time period. Here's one of my first called "RELOAD!"

[ZafarSami]

That's a good photo, the effect is very well done. If not for you telling us, and the watermark, I don't think any one would have guessed. We would have thought this is a scan or a copy of a badly damaged original.

Just one thought though, are there any examples of an undamaged image from the era? Can you post an example of that, for us to get an idea what people would have seen in those days when the photos came out?