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How I Became Interested in Photographic Reproduction Restoration


The first time I ever did any photographic reproduction restoration was when I was about 16 years old. It was around the year 2000 and I had traveled to visit my grandparents for a week.

I was looking around at some of the pictures at my grandparents' house and my grandmother happened to mention the fact that my grandfather's parents never had any photographs taken together. She then showed me some photos of both of his parents and I decided to scan them and attempt to combine them into one image.

In order to make this photo restoration project happen, I was going to need to extract my great-grandmother from a photograph and place her alongside my great-grandfather in a photograph of him standing in a corn field.

At the time I was familiar with Adobe Photoshop (I believe I had version 5 at the time), but I didn't have the privilege of having Photoshop with me at my grandparents' house. All I had was good ol' Microsoft Paint! It was quite the task, but I was able to get it done.

To this day, that photograph still hangs in my grandparents' breakfast room in an 8 x 10 frame. I definitely wouldn't say that this specific experience set me on a course to pursue photo restoration as a profession or even a hobby, but it did get me further interested in what could be done with Photoshop.

I would also say that another reason that I really became interested in photo restoration is because from time to time, my mother-in-law would ask me to do some work on photographs. There have been occasions in which she has wanted me to remove persons or objects from photos, restore faded photographs, and clean up old photos with a lot of markings on them.

One final thing I would say that has helped spark my interest in photo restoration is my strong interest in ancestry and genealogy. For some time I've really been interested in finding out where I come from and what people I have in my family that I never knew of. But when doing genealogy research, I come across new photos of my ancestors periodically. Some of these photos aren't in the best shape. It makes me glad to possess the ability clean up these old photographs and restore the image of an actual person who took part in making you who you are today.

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