Retouch / Restoration
Like it was never there...
Like it was never there...
My creativity comes primarily from my mother's side of the family. Mom painted, drew and photographed throughout her life and inherited those creative gifts from her father who hand-painted pinstripes and other details on vehicles during the Great Depression. Those that have witnessed me restoring an image or spotting a scanned image gain an appreciation for the amount of detail the work requires. You don't just wave a wand and fix the picture.
Mostly I am called upon to fix old images damaged by exposure to light, chemical and water stains, fading due to the age of chemicals used in the original print process and damage to the image surface from scratches, folds or tears. I have had many occasions to remove ex-spouses/boyfriends-girlfriends from photos or even include deceased members of the family into current group photos in which case it becomes a challenge of matching light sources, color/tone values and print grain of the available images.
The challenge presented by restoring a piece of photographic history is among the most satisfying work I do. Value cannot be placed upon, "the only surviving photo of my grandmother" or "the picture of my father before he left for the war that claimed his life." I am humbled and grateful to be a part of this process.
Mostly I am called upon to fix old images damaged by exposure to light, chemical and water stains, fading due to the age of chemicals used in the original print process and damage to the image surface from scratches, folds or tears. I have had many occasions to remove ex-spouses/boyfriends-girlfriends from photos or even include deceased members of the family into current group photos in which case it becomes a challenge of matching light sources, color/tone values and print grain of the available images.
The challenge presented by restoring a piece of photographic history is among the most satisfying work I do. Value cannot be placed upon, "the only surviving photo of my grandmother" or "the picture of my father before he left for the war that claimed his life." I am humbled and grateful to be a part of this process.
This retouch required a photo shoot placing an assistant in a sailor suit in each of the 16 different positions of the young gentlemen in tuxedos. I then masked and layered each of these individual sailor suits over the tuxedos. The final product was printed floor-to-ceiling inside the USS Lexington Museum located in Corpus Christi Bay, Texas for a WWII Themed debutant party.
My retouch projects can sometimes be more than just spot-removal and scene-cleaning, though I did both of those in this elongation of my model. Other than stretching her I had to correct for the shadow, remove a city park trash can and other items from behind the chain-link fence.
I have been fortunate enough to work with many historical print processes of which the above image is one. The original print consists of a thin paper brushed with photo-emulsion and backed with cheese cloth. This particular image was rolled and stacked upon resulting in a variety of damage to the print surface.
This is a prime example of overcoming three types of damage that can occur to an image: surface scratches running across multiple details of the image, chemical stain resultant from a liquid dripping on the surface, and an overall color fade cause by aging of the original chemical print process.
The original photo had been folded to the point of falling into pieces. There is a degree of difficulty when surface damage intersects facial features. This image dates back to the late 50's.
This is the 1938 Corpus Christi, Texas Hispanic Chamber of Commerce group photo. Aside from fixing the surface damage I was able to isolate group's seal and back row of members giving them contrast enough to stand out and be recognizable.
