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I’ve enjoyed doing some photo restoration on these exquisite antique photos. My client brought them in to have them restored for her mother’s 100th birthday celebration this summer.

The photo before I started working on it.

I really liked looking at it because it was old, because it was taken and printed in a foreign country (Poland) and because it was so ornately printed on the back where the photographer’s name and studio were written. The stock was heavy, like 8 ply mat board, which probably kept the photo from being damaged any more than it was.

Somewhere along the way, it had been folded and then taped together, unfortunately directly across the face of the baby girl. My biggest challenge was to recreate the hair and the other missing features, like the chair upholstery.

In addition to that, the tape caused the photo to discolor, so that even once I did remove the marks of the tape and replace the missing features, I still needed to make the yellowing disappear.

I worked on it for quite a while and realized that it looked odd because I had removed too much of the shadowing from the baby’s face. So I had to put it back–especially around the eyes.

All in all, it took several hours over a couple of days to get it to where I liked it. My client didn’t want me to remove all the wrinkles, because she liked the character they gave the photo. The same was true of the rubbing on the edges of the photo. So, I simply corrected the damage from the tape and folding.

The results.

Makes me want to go out and find a chair like this and experiment in re-creating the lighting and the sepia effect.

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