The Jones house was built around 1809 for John Jones, a local turpentine distillery owner, with a second wing being added to the home in 1820. Standing at the corner of Pollock St. and Eden St. in New Bern, it still displays its 19th century beauty today.

Following the Battle of New Bern in 1862, occupying Union forces used the house as a Confederate jail. The archived photo used above is dated 1863, and appears to feature Union soldiers leaning on trees in front of the walk, with many unidentified folks looking down from the porch above.

Processing:

The Jones House itself seems quite unchanged over the past 150 years. The main differences between images are the trees and fence (aside for the folks pictured). The main goal here was to highlight the soldiers and people in the archived image. The first step was to lighten the upper porch to bring out more detail in the people pictured. It was a little eerie as I worked the image and more faces appeared. It was as if I were seeing ghosts, and in a way I was.

Bringing the two images into one Photoshop file, as two layers, yielded this. A big goal here was to show as many of the people as possible as well as show how those big trees are no longer there.

As you can see, lining up the houses (at least roughly) took quite a bit or transforming, twisting and stretching. From here, it was time to do the masking to bring the old and new together. I went with an angled mask because I wanted to show as much of the current view as I could without losing the guy leaning on the tree. He is just too cool. Also, I liked the cars on the street for some historical juxtaposition. 

The next step was to refine the old a little more. I trimmed the edges and further transformed and distorted until I got the porch to line up. Something I began to notice that I hadn’t before is that the fence had changed a bit over the years. I think the height is neat to note!

Finally, I decided to bring the crop in to meet the bottom and left side of the old. Normally, I’d meet it on three sides, but the old photo didn’t leave enough room for me to have the peak of the roof and current chimney if I went with that crop. Also, by leaving the new on the top of the old, you can now see that those two trees are no longer standing, which was a goal at the onset.

So there you have it, the process of creating this New & Old image. The whole goal of these is to show how much has changed -and how much has surprisingly stayed the same- over many years. Be sure to follow along at facebook.com/uprootedphotographer as I post more of these, like the one above and the ones I’ve added below.

Kinston, NC Post Office / Chamber of Commerce

Lenoir County Courthouse, Kinston NC

Bodie Island Lighthouse, Outer Banks NC