Old fashioned newspaper-style photographs

Remember when the newspaper had photos in black and white, the ink came off on your hands, and, on the sports pages at least, it always seemed to be raining?

A few months ago, I saw an exhibition of London Street Photography at the Museum of London. The exhibition has recently finished, but the book is available from the museum shop. As I was looking at some of the pictures, from the 1890s onwards, I wondered about creating some of the effects of these photographs today. Our friend Photoshop can do much, but some of the effect must depend on the actual equipment on the ground, with digital sensors capturing a level of detail, and sometimes clutter (of which I suspect there is more today too), not possible on film.

Whatever else may have changed, the essence of most sports has remained the same: the ball may be synthetic materials instead of leather, but there are only so many ways to kick it. The rain too continues to fall on the righteous and the unrighteous. So I thought I would have fun with some of the pictures from Prescot Cables' trip to Lancaster City, and try to create the atmosphere of the papers of days gone by.

I adjusted the lighting on some of the colour pictures for the slide show, using the levels, as discussed in the last post, to get rid of the mist, then lightening the shadows to emphasise how hard it was raining in the second half.

Then, I went a step further, using the "Convert to black and white" menu in Photoshop Elements, starting with the "Newspaper" option, tweaking the colour intensity and lighting shadows to give that old fashioned press look.

If it was not for the advertising and the white ball, you could probably be anywhere between 1930 and 1980.

There is one aspect of the golden age of the newspaper photograph I cannot recapture - the mud. Lancaster's pitch looked to be in excellent condition, and it is only September, but even the heaviest pitches at our level are positively verdant compared to even First Division pitches in the seventies and before.

The rest of the photos from the game, including more pleasant weather in the first half, can be seen here.