A Mother's Wish

This restoration was based on a special request from my mom. Her best friend's baby boy died over 23 years ago. She had always lamented the fact that the only photo she had of him was in a hospital bed with tubes. My mom recently remembered seeing a story online of an anguished father's wish to also see his son without being surrounded by tubes. A digital artist saw the story and provided him a beautiful restoration. My mom asked her friend if she would like me to do a similar one for her. She gave me the only photo she had, and this is what I was able to do. Her grateful appreciation is what makes photo restoration so rewarding to me: "I just can't describe in words how much this means to me to have a picture of Baby Michael without the hospital bed, tubes and constant reminder of what he went through. I finally get to see just my sweet baby."

WWI photos

I just recently finished restoring three photographs of soldiers from World War I. These were some of the toughest restorations I have done because the photos had been stored poorly and  folded tightly. The lines and tears went down faces and uniforms, leaving me to completely redo some items. The face photo below was utterly ruined, so I ended up going "Frankenstein" on it! I took the eyes, nose, mouth, forehead/hair, and uniform from different parts of the photo and made this composite.

Restoring Memories of New Zealand

I just completed my latest project for a lady originally from New Zealand. These photos were precious to her because there had never been a photo of the entire family together. So, she first had me add in the missing people (mom and the little boy), and then position the whole family in front of their childhood home. Then I needed to color the family photo since everything was in black and white. Because the photo of the home is recent, it shows the "wear and tear" of old age. So I updated the "new house" to make it look like the original "old house." This included recreating the accurate color and making minor repairs. The final step was taking out the shadow on the ground and putting in new grass. I originally added lush green grass which I thought was "New Zealand." Apparently, the grass in New Zealand where they lived is not lush; it is rather dry and dull looking. So I found more appropriate grass, and voila, the finished photo. She was thrilled with the final version and will soon be surprising her siblings with copies.

Update

It's been a while since I have updated the blog. Life and work has been busy but I figured now would be a good time to upload some new photos.

Picnic In New Zealand

It's been quite a while since I have last posted. Life's been crazy and kept me busy. I have been working with a client, who hails from New Zealand, for the last couple of months. She had a sepia photo that was a treasure of her family back in the early 1900s at a picnic in New Zealand. At some point, someone had tried to color the picture with marker, but it came out pretty fake. She asked me to re-do and color it for her. She didn't want bright colors or light, since it would look weird in what is obviously an old photo. So this is the final result. She said it looks fantastic printed, and she is so excited to share it with the rest of her family at Christmas.

New Stuff

So I haven't updated in a while. I have had some jobs, but nothing that was really original that I hadn't already put something up. I finished these two jobs about a month ago, and thought they were some good examples of my work.

Big One

I just completed an order of an old photograph that had a lot of damage. After doing a volunteer for DUP, they have asked me to do some more work. This one definitely tested my skills. It's amazing for me to go back and look at how far I've come since I started.