I have for the last few months been working on fixing up my late mother’s house in the UK and it has literally, become a 14 hr day and 7 day a week thing?  Fortunately, it’s starting to make progress, so eventually, hopefully by June, I’ll be able to go home to Vancouver.  It means that I still have no time to work on my restoration work, which is VERY frustrating.  But I am however, scanning loads and loads of pictures of the family, ready to be worked on when I finally do get time.  I’m using a Canon 9000F, and it’s pretty good.  I’ll add a scan so you can see what results it’s giving me.  Now if only I had time to scan EVERYTHING before I leave in June…nah, that’s not gonna happen.

 

Oh and the lady in the photo is my grandmother!

A very cool update from yesterdays article about the soulless face of photo restoration.

Neil from imagerestore.co.uk has since taken the blog article down in which he derided all other would be photo restoration artists.  Good man Neil.

I hope that he will embrace all who attempt this tricky profession, be they good, bad or plain horrible.  For it is they who make Neil look as brilliant as he is at his craft and no doubt look to him for inspiration and guidance.

Most appreciated Neil, thank you.

Rich

Ok, so I was recently browsing other photo restoration websites to get some hints and tips about website design, when I came across a blog for the company imagerestore.co.uk.  Always eager to get advice from those with experience and knowledge, I started reading until I came across the following article:

http://www.image-restore.co.uk/blog/how-not-to-restore-photos/

In it, the writer and owner Neil Rhodes proceeds to describe a company that, “claims to restore photos with no colouring, implying they are experts at just one process.  Plenty of examples of ‘photo restoration’ are shown, but no ‘restoration’ has been done, only tonal corrections.  Photo restoration is about restoration of photo’s isn’t it?, showing no examples of this on your site is a little contradictory?  Having a ‘major restoration’ category and charging top prices but showing an image with a tiny amount of damage is just wrong”.

Of course, he’s talking about my site.  The references are obvious.  And that’s actually fine, because I have to agree with a lot of what he said.  And if it weren’t for the fact my restoration business has had to go on hold since losing Mum last year, I would have had an infinitely better selection of work to show.

But he goes on to bemoan the quality of other restoration artists work too, finding fault with almost everyone in competition with him and lamenting the thought of them bringing down the tone of the photo restoration neighborhood.

Neil, a word to the wise.  Not everyone is as talented as you!  Some, like me, are still learning and finding our feet.  Some are better at some things than others. Some are probably just not that good, but persevere because it’s all they know or all they have. And although it may make their work less credible in your eyes, if the final results make the customer happy, then they have performed their job admirably.

You are a very talented photo restoration artist, and someone to whom I had until now, held an aspiration to emulate.  However, your ego has caused you to lose sight of your humanity, which in my books, makes you the poorer person for it.

So don’t look a gift horse in the mouth!  Instead of complaining about the competition, take heart in the knowledge that you are one of the shining lights of this business and people come to you for the quality workmanship you provide.  One day you may have serious competition and will rue the day you ever complained at all!

I thought I’d add a couple of photos to my blog.   I lost my fabulous Mum this year to cancer and I’m putting together a montage of pictures of her for my sister Vanessa for Christmas.  Among the photo’s I plan on using are these of my Mum and Dad on their wedding day, at Spofforth church in Yorkshire.  It’s so great to see them together, especially as they are both gone, and it reminds me how lucky I’ve been to have these amazing people as my parents.  Huge love for them both.

Continue reading →

Elite Photo Restoration
It’s the same as the .com address and goes to the same place

Yay.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/75-captivating-looking-into-the-past-pictures

Why restore your old photos?  That’s a very good question?  You’ve got the prints right?  The slides?  The Polaroids?  Well yes, you have, but how long are they going to last?  The silver halides in your prints aren’t designed to last forever, in fact 40 or 50 years max. especially with older prints.  Even more so slides, with their colour layer dyes, which fade and discolor over time.  And if a print get’s damaged, scratched, dropped into a cup of tea?

When you get your photo restored, you are not only preserving your valuable family and local history.  You are reawakening the past, making it available to the present and future generations and creating a lasting legacy.  If you only have one copy of an old photo among the whole family, what better way to share that cherished memory than with a digital copy?

All of the images on the elitephotorestoration.com website are from my own family albums, and I can share not only a cleaned-up and enhanced view of our ancestry, but unlimited copies among all of my numerous cousins, nephews, aunts, uncles etc.

No-one gets left out!