A Variation of Old and New

Back in 2018 our town was preparing for its 200th anniversary in 2019. 

Along with several friends we took photos around the town with the idea of juxtaposing old and new photos in a calendar. 

I forget which month was which, but this was one of the calendar images. The photos look downriver from the bridge on our main street toward the railway bridge, which is now part of a recreational trail.

Recently. the curator of our museum came across an image from another museum where someone had blended an old photo with the new as if they were one. She liked the effect and wondered if anyone local might be able to do something similar.

While it would be best to take the old photo that you want to match out with you while you shoot the modern version, winter would not be a good time of year for such comparisons, especially while we are in lockdown mode.

However, as an experiment to see how well the idea might work and to see if I could accomplish it, I used the same two photos in an attempt to apply to concept.

While it took some effort to line-up the two photos using the far bridge as a reference point, this is what I was able to accomplish. Modern cameras tend to line-up differently than old images, so joining them into one can take a bit of effort, doubly so if you weren't trying to match them perfectly initially in camera.

I think this is what our curator had in mind, and I like the result well enough and would like to try more when the weather is better and when I can go out with a specific comparison in mind. Meanwhile, I do have some other photos from the calendar that I can experiment with and will likely post about here in due course.