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[Ausimax]

Hi Dave,

I have read your comments in Leah's " Take One" post and not wishing to hijack her thread, decided to post here.

QUOTE

"Leah,

I think it's great that you're taking on this challenge and while it pains me to say it, I think this is a lost cause. This photo should have never been accepted by OPR in the first place.

Becky, Mike and I have all talked about this issue in regards to future copywork runs. We have to be more realistic about which photos are worth taking on and which ones are beyond our capabilities.

I can tell you firsthand, that when we're taking these photos in it can be hard to turn anything away. However, if we are going to be truly successful in our mission we have to recognize our own limits.

In looking at the photo, I would say that 95% (probably more) of the important information is obliterated. There's nothing to build from. Out of the four people pictured, I can only make out the facial features of the woman on the left. We'd be building faces from scratch for the other three and that wouldn't be true to the memory that this image holds.

You have my complete blessing to do as you see fit. Give it your best shot or return it unchanged. We will let the image owner know the outcome either way.

Again, thank you for even having the courage to attempt such an epic restoration.

Dave"

End Quote

I would have to agree that some of the images are beyond normal restoration, and rely more on artistic ability and licence
than being true to the original image. I do feel however it would help the restorers with difficult images if more information about the image could be supplied eg:

Images with bad colour casts - information about the real colours, peoples clothes etc.

Images with bad peripheral damage - more information of what aspects of the image are important - some times you have people who have been cropped in the original image who are in badly damaged areas - if they weren't important enough to capture fully in the original are they important to the restoration?

Images with badly damaged faces where other images of the people exist, would these not be better as a "package deal" where the restorer has access to all the relevant information. I know that some of these images have little damage and are classified as "easy" or "moderate" and are placed in those categories, not a problem as long as all the relevant images are available to the "difficult" restorers.   I had one image where the instructions required that the faces be cloned from other images, I then had to get Mike to find the other image for me.

Dave, I am not trying to teach anyone how to suck eggs, I know how much effort you all put in on making this whole concept work, nor is it criticism, I am just making suggestions to help make the final outcome better for all involved, and in some cases save a lot of unnecessary work.

Regards,

Max

[glennab]

Hi Dave and Max

I'd like to comment that I like the idea of one volunteer restoring a group of photos of one person or family -- not necessarily as a rule, but by choice. I agree with Max that it would be very helpful in many instances to have more than one photo for reference to get the images as true as possible, especially when working on someone who's partly missing in one photo but is completely there in another.

I restored a very faded painting of a young girl and later found another painting of the girl with her mother that gave me a completely different perspective on the girl's age and more reference on her appearance and clothing. I had to guess at some of the detail on the first restoration that is more apparent in the second painting.

I don't know how feasible it is to batch photos for those of us who would like to work that way, but I'd appreciate having that choice.

Have a great what's left of the weekend!

GG

[Dave]

Max,

Sorry for the delay in reply, but I had taken a short hiatus from OPR for a couple of days. The hiatus included replacing a toilet that went horribly wrong. I still can't talk about it. My only saving grace was that the Raiders beat the Steelers on Sunday.

 In order to answer all of your questions and/or points, I'm going to offer short concise answers (I don't want to end up writing an essay tonight):

1. More info on images: We try to get as much info as possible. However, when we do copywork runs the volunteer force is small and the workload is heavy. When we went to New Orleans, on the last day  7 volunteers worked with 133 families during a 7 hour period. Doesn't leave a whole lot of time to write down a lot of details. However, this is an area we can constantly improve on. We have an army of restoration volunteers, but we don't have many people who have the time, finances and/or abilities to make copy runs. Because of that, our ability to gather info is severely limited.

2. Questioning what's important to the owner and what's not. I'll refer to my previous answer in regards our ability to gather that kind of info, much less catalouge it. If we manage to get concrete specifics, we pass that info on to the restoration volunteer. If we have no specifics to offer, we should restore all aspects of the image to the best of our abilities. If that means leaving damage in the final print, that's just the nature of the beast.

3. Packaging groups of photos together:This is a good idea. I don't think it's feasible to have one restorer handle all of the images in a single package, because of the difference in damage from image to image. In the end, that would be a logistical nightmare on our end if some packages went out whole while others had to be broken up due to the skill limitations of individual restoration volunteers. We have been breaking down images into galleries according to level of damage. I think for the next round we'll probably just have large galleries run by several distribution coordinators. We could build these galleries based on file name (for example, all of the Jones family orders would be found in gallery 1). Again, I wouldn't want to see one volunteer responsible for every photo in a single order, but we could make every image  in that order available to any volunteer for "parts." I hope I made this last point somewhat understandable.

Hmmmm ... I think I still ended up writing at least a short essay. Please keep the ideas coming Max. Even if it includes instructions on how to suck eggs.

Dave

[Leah M]

Poor Dave.  Such a massive undertaking from you and your colleagues.

My thoughts -

1) Rather than volunteers writing down details, would a standard questionnaire to be filled out by the owners of the photos help?

3) Many of the photos from one owner  would be unrelated to each other, but when there are runs of photos for one event, weddings in particular come to mind, perhaps even those classified as easy/moderate could be included in the worst case scenario if the restorer could work on all as a batch.  What is destroyed in one photo can often be picked up from one of the others.  I can trhink of two sets of wedding currently in the difficult section where working on them together could help gather more details rather than working on one.  Also I think the style of work would be more coherent in the completed photos.

Take care

Leah M

[Ausimax]

 Thanks for the reply Dave, I realise the Mammoth effort you and the other OPR slaves have to put in to organise this operation and keep it running, it is all too easy for us to see it only from the perspective of how it effects us.

Wish I could be of more help to OPR, however distance precludes other than electronic assistance.

See what happens when you take time off! You don't end up in that much of a stink at OPR.

Thanks again, keep up the good work.

Max

[Dave]

Leah,

I think you make a good point about the notion of being able to maintain a consistent style if one volunteer completes all of the images in a single order. However, I still dislike the idea for the reasons that I stated in my previous post.

There's also the issue of volunteers of lesser abilities who have no photos to work on because the easier restorations are quickly snapped up. This problem will only grow if we go to the practice of one volunteer per order. A lot of volunteers are sitting around right now twiddling their respective thumbs, because the only images that we have left for them to work on are beyond their abilities.

Also, the point can be made that if one volunteer works on an entire order that it may take longer for that order to be completed than it would if several volunteers were working on it.

Dave

[Kenny]

Dave, what if we had some sort of image archive? Then, we could request an image for reference.


Kenny

[Dave]

Kenny,

Do you mean like a separate gallery on Photoshelter where you can access any of the photos that have already been picked by other volunteers?

Dave

[Kenny]

Yes. I'm not sure of the exact process of moving an image to someone's gallery for download, but maybe a copy could also be archived for future use if needed.


Just a thought...

[Dave]

I think that would be completely feasible. It might mean some extra work on the part of the distribution coordinators during the next round, but the end results could more than outweigh the effort.