Marine's Photo Restored 60 Years Later

[Mhayes]

Hi Everyone,

Last Tuesday I gave a talk about Operation Photo Rescue at the Butler Community College for their Life Enrichment program that meets every Tuesday.  It was held in the beautiful Welcome Center--Clifford/Stone Community Room. This is a great facility and just like where Phil gave his talk at Hallmark, this room had two large screens that came down where I was able to go online to our website and show our two videos. Because of icing on some of the roads from melting snow, there were only about 25 people attending, which is more than I thought would venture out. A photographer friend of mine was going to take pictures, but she was recovering from the flu, so she did not make it. Jan Boehm was kind enough to send me some pictures she took. I wish you could see the screens behind, but Jan had no way of knowing that was something I wanted.

I was surprised when Loreta Mason approached me with a picture of her husband still in a frame that was damaged. It had been damaged in the El Dorado, KS tornado of 1958 and had been sitting in their basement since then. Her husband, Leslie,  didn't even remember it. I agreed to take it home and restore it and have it printed.

Below is the before and after and thanks goes to Hannie on helping me improve the background. There was nothing left to restore of the background, so I believe I used the green channel as it looked the best and then I cleaned up the damage. The results needed the white behind to be toned down and Hannie suggested tweaking  the background with some noise (very subtle), slight blurring on the face, and a lens correction for a nice effect. Most of the texture of the paper was kept and even though the face was blended to smooth it, the pattern of the paper was allowed to show through.



The following Friday I delivered the restored photo to their home. They were delighted with the results. Here is a picture of Leslie and Loreta holding the before hand after.



Leslie is in his eighties and that photo was taken of him around l952 as a Marine that had enlisted in 1950-1954 and fought in the Korean War. Loreta had taken the photo off his mother's dresser to keep and after they married and moved into their new house in December of 57, the photo stayed in her parent's home. On June 10, 1958 a tornado hit El Dorado, KS and her parents house got hit and looked as if it had just "exploded." Loreta doesn't remember how the photo was found and later it made its way down to the basement of their present home and was forgotten until now.

Here is some photos and description of what happened in 58:

http://www.kansas.com/2009/03/26/749196/1958-el-dorado-tornado.html
http://www3.gendisasters.com/kansas/5294/el-dorado,-ks-tornado-devestates-city,-june-1958

Below is some photos from the college. I was tempted to do some work in PhotoShop to slim me down and appear more glamorous, but realized some of you would notice and rat on me.




Photos by Jan Boehm

Margie

[Tori803]

Beautiful job and wonderful story! Thanks for filling us in.

Tori

[Mike S.]

Margie,

I think it is fantastic that you were able to not only give the seminar on OPR but actually demonstrate what we do for one of the participants.

Great Job,

Mike

[Bambi]

What a great story! You do such beautiful work, Margie.

Bambi

[Pat]

Sounds like the seminar went very well! 

You did a beautiful job on the restoration Margie.  Leslie and Loreta seem to be a lovely couple; what a heartwarming story. 

[pic-dr]

I'd like to join the others in congratulating you on a job well done. And that brings up a question--you wrote:

" There was nothing left to restore of the background, so I believe I used the green channel as it looked the best and then I cleaned up the damage."

Can you elaborate on how how you used the green channel?

Thanks,
Larry

[Mhayes]

Thanks Everyone.

Larry, I have 14 different saved files of this marine. I am giving you an example of one where I worked in a high contrast red channel for the black/white. This is the channel that I would use to start on the background and the green channel would have been the channel I would use for the darker version of his uniform and also his face. Of those 14 different files, some were backups and others were experiments for a better layer. I even tried Calculations where I combined the red channel and the green channel and adjusted the blending. Sometime I would take a layer that I had done on a previous saved file and then use it on the current file I was working.  This example doesn't show it, but later I was using a lot of layer masks. Even when I use the green filter in the black and white I did a lot of tweaking by modifying points on the Curves Adjustment Layer, to adjust the tone of the face.

Here is an example of using the red channel to get what I wanted for the background. This was not the end result, but got me a layer that I would use as my background layer. I pushed the background as light as I could get it and then took the magic wand tool to isolate the background from the marine on a layer mask and then do a cleanup.




Every photo is different on how to approach restoring.

Margie

[Hannie]

Margie, thanks for the report and the lovely photos!
The restore looks absolutely beautiful, I wonder how many more people in your town have damaged photos from the 1958 disaster...

Hannie

[schen]

Margie,

That was a great event you did and I like your restoration too.  I wish I have a picture taken with me in the uniform.

Shujen

[G3User]

Margie,

Interesting story and the results looks great, you have still got it ;)

Athol

[Mhayes]

Thanks Athol!

Sometime I have it and other times I can't find it.  :funny:

Margie