Colorized Fotos

Saturday, February 13, 2016

1942 Arthur Rothstein colorized foto

1942 Arthur Rothstein - Charro Days fiesta, watching the children's parade, Brownsville, Texas

Saturday, January 2, 2016

1864 photo of Charles Stillman

On first page of son James Stillman's photo book is this 2" x 3" photo of Charles Stillman, founder of Brownsville, Texas.

The rounded photo corners were squared and sepia removed. It appears someone attempted to darken in eyebrow and facial hair lines but stopped before causing more damage. These lines are not as visible until magnified. Contrast was also engaged to enhance photo and background lighten to delineate coarse of hair around his head. Some darker areas (eyes mouth) sacrificed a minimum of detail.

Charles Stillman was 54 years old when this photo was taken. The object of this colorized process is to convey his age through the graying blond color of hair and beard. With blue pen lines removed it became a matter of laying down base colors (back ground, skin and coat).

Caucasian men tend to have pinkish skin that reddens with a little sun baking which is what our subject was accustomed to in South Texas. Acquiring the correct tone of skin isn't always easily achieved when compared to actual skin textures and colors of modern photos.

The most tedious stage of this restoration came from removing tiny dirt-dots and "cleaning" dark lines around mouth to smooth out the quality of photo. Most importantly, the object of this enhancement was to add dimension to his eyes. In this case it was adding a simple glow or glimmer to each eye.

This was my first attempt a couple of years ago. The scan was taken from a page copied from a book printed in 1954. It was until recently that the original photo was acquired and thus a second chance to do it right.

Here is a sketch drawing made from photo in 1962.

Monday, November 9, 2015

1942 Arthur Rothstein photo of E Levee St sign for bridge

1942 E Levee St with sign for Gateway Bridge for Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico from Brownsville, Texas. This photo includes a rare view of Missouri Pacific Railroad station and El Jardin Hotel built in 1928. The photo was taken during the annual Charro Days international celebration between Brownsville and Matamoros still held every February but bull fights in Matamoros are no longer part of the celebrating.

Colorized by Javier R Garcia

Thursday, October 8, 2015

c1922 Rudolph Valentino by Laura Miniel of Brownsville, Texas

I'm excited to present our first colorized Foto entry from Laura Miniel who writes:

Out of nowhere I decided to try recoloring a photo. Maybe it was from watching your exhibit. Anyway, I found an old black and white photo of Rudolph Valentino the 1920's silent movie star. My grandfather used to tell me stories about Valentino and how when he died unexpectedly, both women and men committed suicide. Anyway, he was very famous and spent some time in San Antonio but died before color photography came into being, thus no color photos of him exist, only a few painted movie posters and things like that from the 20's. According to my grandfather his funeral was something of a riot with around 100,000 people tried to view the body, getting trampled and suicide attempts. He's wearing, I think, the infamous slave bracelet and the cursed ring. I wanted to see what he would have looked like in real life. It took a few hours to do this, but I thought maybe a fellow recoloring afficionado would like it! Here I'll attach the original B&W and my version. What do you think? I was surprised at how alive he looks in color. Like he could just turn away from the wall. So strange. Hard to believe he died over 100 years ago. Your hobby is kind of addicting and somewhat fascinating to see what you get back after recolor. Hope you like it smile emoticon