Making a photo look old

Hi everyone

I have attempted to make this photo look old and worn out, but I’d like to know what others think. Do you like the composition? Is it too bright?
Thanks for looking.
Sarah
(the photo is a link so if you want some background info behind the shot, click on the pic)

as far as the shot goes regarding composition i’m no expert so i’ll leave that alone.

however for the old look, i would tend to add a lightly coloured (sepia) wash, and even some light gradient from the edges, just to draw the eye into the shot.

i like the almost “pencil-sketch” look that it does have, but my thoughts are the three objects (people and donkey) need to stand out a little more from both each other and the background.

i’m not sure what the original had in terms of distinction between the objects, so that may or may not be so easy to bring back.

just my thoughts….

i do like the image itself and it’s a great concept and cause no matter what the image

Making a photo look old is a great experiment to do, because there’s no lack of source material. There’s also different periods of aging for photos – so a picture from the 70s has a certain style, and a picture from the 20s would have a very different style.

What you have here is an interesting image, but it doesn’t look “old” to me. Raising the contrast as far as you have has blown out the details of the statue a bit too much i think – there’s just too much white in there. Also you have some inconsistencies.. so part is in colour and part not colour, part has soft shadows and part really hard shadows.. these things don’t make for a single cohesive piece.

It’s a great idea, but I think you would benefit from having a bit of a look at the images from around the period you’re trying to duplicate and seeing what makes them unique and recognisable.

Thanks for the comments. I was trying to get it to look like it was taken in WW1 and has aged since then. I chose to have the coloured section to look like it had been hand coloured.
I was concerned about having too much white, was aiming to have it look like it was fading towards the top. Will work to rectify that and I have been doing a bit of research on photos around WW1 time. Hopefully will come up with something better soon.
Thanks again.

It needs to be darker and then and made black and white (keep the red bit if you like.Then apply the sepia filter to it.If you are using photoshop you can bubblemail me for the best method to get it nice and saturated B&W and then if you sepia it and after that you can play with fading it.I love making photos look old,it is a bit of a hobby of mine so if you want me to give you the whole run down of how I do it I can.