Sometimes in restoration you come across unexpected problems. I was asked to restore a 90 year old photograph. Thankfully they were only looking black and white and not a colour version as well. There was a problem with the background specifically the corner window and what looks like a spade. I assume it was part of a coal scuttle. Either the background was out of focus, (small depth of field) or there had been movement during the printing. Either way i was not happy with that corner of the print.

I decided to recreate the window and spade. I found an old spade from that era photographed it on an iphone and then matched that area in terms of grain and look. Once I was happy I showed the final image to the client who approved it which I had resized for A2. The client never even noticed the change in the background. Had they noticed I would have went back and redone it.

To have made this image colour would have been fun but the client didn't ask for a colour version but for the purposes of this website I did one anyway. The image shows the main issue I have with colourisation, objects that are well hidden in mono suddenly become vey obvious in colour. Like the spade in the background.