Today we combine photography with just a touch of history. I was recently going through my catalog of old photographs and came across some I don’t believe I’ve posted before of Old Town Manassas, also referred to as Historic Manassas, in Virginia. Given the history of this area I wanted to process the photos to give them an older feel.

Manassas Station

The opening photo is of Manassas Station, an historic train station built in 1914 by Southern Railway. It was later acquired by the city of Manassas and is still in active use today by Virginia Railway Express (VRE) and Amtrak trains and also houses a tourist information center and a gallery of railroad exhibits.

Railroad Tracks

Turning east and facing down the railroad tracks we can see the old Candy Factory building on the left and the far more recent parking garage on the right. The garage is used for daily commuters and also for those visiting Old Town Manassas.

The Candy Factory

Turning to the left we see The Candy Factory, built in 1908. It produced tons of candy and shipped it by train all over the eastern US. In 2002 the building became home to the Center for the Arts, now referred to as the ARTfactory. They house local artist galleries and provide classes, performances, and advocacy for the local arts scene. You can see from the old painting on the side of the building that says Manassas Feed & Milling Co that the building was used for other purposes after the candy factory closed and before it became a local artists hub.

Okra’s

Continuing down Battle Street from The Candy Factory we come to the intersection with Center Street. Across the intersection is a lovely building that in 2011 was home to Okra’s, a fantastic Cajun/creole restaurant that had the best gator bites and Cajun deviled eggs in the area. Sadly, they are no more.

A Few Notes on Processing

And just to touch briefly on how I chose to process the images, I used Adobe Lightroom and processed the photos initially as I usually do, then converted them to black & white. I wanted more of a sepia tone than pure black & white so I used the Color Grading feature, formerly called Split Toning, to shift the colors. I pushed the highlights towards yellow, the shadows towards red, and nudged the midtones just slightly towards blue. I adjusted the black & white mix, shifting each color slider to affect how those colors were converted to monochrome. Finally I did a couple things I rarely do, I created a white vignette around the edges that faded into the image, and I tweaked the color calibration values just slightly. All of these settings were mostly the same for each photo except that I tweaked the color calibration values differently based on how they looked on each photo.

I hope you enjoyed this look at Old Town Manassas in 2011, as well as a little look into how I processed the photos. What did you think of the processing? Would you have done anything differently? Have you ever visited this location? Have you ever eaten at Okra’s? Let me know in the comments below.

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