My mom gave me a genetic predisposition for intense attention to detail, a trait which comes in handy when you are restoring photographs. I had a really fun project recently in which I had three photos to restore (I'm working on a 4th now). Starting with the easiest, here are the before and after versions (click for larger view):
First of all, how handsome is the gentleman?
This photo was actually used as a postcard. It was a very beautiful photo and only needed a little touch up to clean some cracks in the finish, some pen press marks that you could see in person (not as evident here) given it was a postcard, and a little crisping and brightening to enlarge it (which it did very nicely on archival quality fine art paper).
In this day of selfies and digital photography you can forget how very special photos used to be. That's why I really enjoy these projects. Even though this wasn't my own Dad, I treated this project with the same care I would if it had been.
I treat everything I do that way.
Next up in difficulty was this portrait, which I was happy was already 8x10. It was difficult in that the shades of the background were so bloody close to the shades of the uniform.
I had been hoping to be able to reduce the grainy effect of the original but the very subtle shift in hue from face to uniform to background was just not going to allow it without severely compromising the available facial detail so I popped what I could, cleaned up a few stray scratches and warmed up the tone a bit, chosing a nice bamboo archival quality paper.
And then it got really fun...
Here's the original. It was very tiny (I don't even think it was 2x3 inches but I didn't write it down).
The task was to both restore and enlarge it. And as you can see looking up at the upper right corner, that spelled trouble. Who knew I'd spend an afternoon creating ghost trees? Check out the result: I was able to get it to enlarge to a very respectable 5x7. Unfortunately that is all the presenting facial detail would allow, no matter how awesome my ghost trees.
I'll pop up some photos I restored for myself down the road. I've saved my infant aunt from a nasty coffee cup stain, restored faces half torn away, and have been delighted to be able to immerse myself so fully in these moments preserved so proudly from days gone by.
Have a project you'd like me to take a look at? Happy to help if I can! Drop me a line (email in the upper left sidebar or hit me up through any of my FB pages there also).
I might have a project for you... but timing is not now.
Posted by: Kate | 01/12/2016 at 07:30 AM
Just let me know!
Posted by: Laura Young | 01/12/2016 at 07:42 AM