Vintage black and white effects also need vintage subjects

I found a scene of the same vintage as the effect I wanted to recreate, but did I miss any modern details that might give it away? Yes! Annoyingly, I can see it right now…

There are a number of photo editing and effects tools that can produce wonderfully atmospheric and evocative vintage looks. This photo was created with Silver Efex, one of the best black and white editors you can get and part of the DxO Nik Collection. But being able to create vintage effects like vignettes, textures, fading and toning effects is only part of the story.

If you try to create a vintage effect with a modern subject, it’s just not going to work. You have to compose your shots in such a way that the modern world is excluded, or at least disguised. If you photography a vintage car meet, for example, you have to find a spot with no people in the scene unless they are wearing period costume. Even the props, subjects and scenery need to be time-appropriate. It’s no use having a vintage Saab parked with a modern van in the background, or a seventy-year-old steam loco surrounded by a crowd of 21st-century onlookers.

You can’t just make a photo look ‘old’ with a few quick digital effects. The subject must be old too.

I was lucky enough to stay in a London hotel with a fabulously elegant interior that seemed almost lost to time, with no fire extinguishers, electrical sockets or other guests to drag it into the present. But you have to look out for the smallest details. I missed the tiny warning notice on the wooden pillar, center right, which I’ll need to erase next time around.

That’s not to say you can’t use vintage effects on modern images at all. There are many old (and new) film cameras in use with old-camera light leaks and vignetting that have been popularised by brands like Lomography and a resurgence of interest in film photography. But this works best if you stick to digital treatments that mirror the films, cameras and effects being used today. Few people shoot with a Victorian plate camera any more, or in the romantic sepia-toned style of Eugene Atget or Josef Sudek.

If you do want to replicate the artistry of these long-gone photographers, it’s not too difficult to approximate it digitally – the hard part is finding and arranging subject matter of the time and that they might have photographed.

I have great admiration for the Time Machine feature in DxO’s FilmPack analog effects software. But it’s obvious straight away that while you can recreate the photographic looks of these past eras, you also have to replicate the subject matter of the time for the images to make any sense.