Every Labor Day weekend, the Huntington Beach Historical Society hosts history and military buffs from around the country in a two-day civil war reenactment camp and battle.

This year, I paid homage to Matthew Brady and embedded myself with the Rebels, for a couple of hours. I shot with an Olympus OMD-EM10-ii, a Zuiko 12-40mm Pro, and a Zuiko 40-150mm R lens.

Because there were so many members of the public -- not in period costumes -- it was hard to use a wide-angle lens without including them in the photos. Consequently, most of the images made with the 12-40 were at 40mm, and the majority of those from the 40-150 were close to 150 just to isolate the reenactors from the public.

Because I wanted the photos to look like they were made at the time of the Civil War (ended in 1865), I wasn't too concerned about some with a little soft focus. Mainly, I converted the images to black & white, in Lightroom CC, then added some vignetting around the corners, and then added just a bit of "grain". I added the grain by playing with the Sharpness sliders, in LR. I ended up with the Amount set to 35, the Radius to 1.0 and the Detail to 25. I didn't have a formula -- just played around until I had what I wanted, then saved the setting as a User Preset, and applied it to all the files that hadn't been culled.

I tried to capture the eyes -- either with one of the subjects looking directly at me, or looking at something else. Of course, this is a little bit like street photography in that you don't alway see the eyes of your subjects. In those cases, I looked for body language, posture, hand gestures, or actions (walking or running) but often, the reenactors were in formation, or relaxed under trees.