Playing around with Alien Skin's Exposure 5

A few days ago I published this photo of the Kaaterskill Falls, a popular subject in the Catskill Mountains of the 19th century Hudson River School painters and a major tourist destination today. I wasn't thrilled with my resulting photograph. The falls runoff was very low and my time of day was bad. I plan to go back some other time and redo the scene. 

The place is so popular with tourists and cameras that I began wondering what the scene would have looked like photographed by earlier photographic processes. So I ran my image through several of the vintage photo process techniques available in Alien Skin's Exposure 5 software plug in for Photoshop to have a look.

Below are some of the results.

This is an early mid 19th century wet-collodion glass wet plate look.

I modified one of the Exposure 5 miscellaneous effects, a high key with glow and sepia tone for this version. I modeled the look and feel on some older, faded prints I had seen by Thomas Sullivan. 

This is the Exposure 5 version of an early print from Kodachrome with a faded, cyan tint.

I'm sure you can tell from the border that this is a version imitating aged Polaroid 55 film. 

And this is the scene as Thomas Cole, founder of the Hudson River School, painted it in the 1820's. I'm jealous.