Not Inconsequential

Look at almost any photo that is 30 or more years old. You'll discover things within that photo that provide a window into what life was like at that time. You may notice a piece of furniture you remember as a child or just the way a certain room was arranged. If there's a TV in the picture you can almost always tell the time period.

When I look at old photos, I always study what's in the background, or what other objects or people may be in the photo. I try to formulate an approximate date (if I don't already know) and try to piece together this moment.  What was happening? The time of day/year, the occasion for the photo, etc.

In the old days of film, a camera wasn't usually brought out unless there was a special occasion when someone felt compelled to preserve that moment. These days, since there's no cost associated with simply "taking a picture," people take them for all kinds of reasons, special or not. 

Even the unspectacular captures you make will be interesting 30 years from now.  It may seem inconsequential now, but that's because we take our surroundings for granted. We don't usually visualize the changes will take place in the next 30 or 40 years, but 30 or 40 years from now those photos will tell your story.

Restoring An Old Photo

I don't really market myself as a photo restorer and it's not really a service that I offer, but if a friend needs assistance I can usually provide something pretty decent. Recently, a friend presented me with a photo of her father taken in 1971. The picture had almost completely faded to nothing and she thought if I could do anything with it, it would surely be an improvement over what it was now.

First step was getting the photo into the computer. The photo was professionally framed & mounted and my friend requested that I do my best to keep everything as is and intact. So I took a razor blade and carefully cut the paper off of the back.

Here I found a piece of cardboard held in with small nails. After I pried back the nails and got down to the actual picture, I discovered the most probable reason for the fading: this was instant film. I don't know that much about what sort of instant b&w film was used in the past, but it was obvious that's what it was. The print was a very flimsy piece of laminated paper.

I did a high resolution scan of the picture. Here's what we had:

As you can see, it's almost completely gone. I told my friend that I might be able to improve it slightly and that the software can only work with the information it has. If the info isn't there, it's not going to come out. I told her the best we could hope for was giving it the appearance of a not-so-clean b&w scan out of an old newspaper.

Not much to work with, but I was hoping by scanning it at a high resolution that I could capture enough detail to get something usuable. I imported the image into Lightroom and gave it a simple grayscale treatment. Immediately the image jumped out:

This was already better than I had hoped for (gotta love Lightroom) and I knew immediately I was going to be able to pull a lot of detail out of the photo.

A few minor adjustments to the lights, darks and contrast gave me this:

Now it was time for Photoshop. I started the very much needed cleanup: removing dust and blemishes, fixing scratches and other damage, etc. The instant film had left these swirly rings all over the picture. I removed as much of it as I could, but in some spots removing the abnormalities made the image a look a little too "photoshopped" for my taste. Plus, since the image is only a 3X5, you probably wouldnt notice it in the print anyway.   

Truth be told, I could have spent several hours working on cleaning this picture up. It was more a question of if it really needed all of that work. I decided that it didn't and it wasn't worth the time fixing details no one would see unless they held a magnifying glass up to the picture. Altogether I spent about 2 hours. 

With the cleanup finished I added the finishing touch using Silver Efex Pro (a Photoshop plug-in), played with the lights, darks and contrast a little more and this was the final result.

Considering what we started with, I'm pretty pleased with the results. Now I'm inspired to go through my own old faded photos to see what kind of new prints I can create.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Red Velvet Room

This is a pretty silly family photo from 1975 of my stepfather carving a turkey on Thanksgiving. His paper pilgrim hat made by my sister on the left. I'm the kid making the funny face (and wearing purple pants). On the bookshelf I can see our American History Encyclopedia collection that only went up to 1963. On the table is an old blue Pyrex bowl, and some matching Corelle tableware (I still have a bowl from that set), early American chair cushions and of course the beautiful red velvet wallpaper.