Retouching and Restoration
There is that moment when your heart sinks into your stomach because a favorite photo was damaged. There is a similar reaction when you see a photo that can't be recreated has something horribly wrong with it. Over the years, I have restored, retouched and made editing corrections to thousands of photos. Some were only a few minutes work. Others were hours of painstaking effort. But in the end, they were worth the effort.
I can't promise that I can salvage every photo. Some are just too far gone. What I can promise is that I will make them much better than when you sent them to me.
This photo is of a model named Allie, whom I particularly enjoyed photographing. She had promised to deliver new head shots to an agent. Unfortunately, right before shooting, she tried a new product that caused an allergic reaction and a breakout. It only took a few minutes to put things right and let her deliver the photos on time.
This photo and the one below both came from another photographer's blog about how the difficulties of wedding photography can make some shots unusable. She claimed that the photos were "ruined for the couple" and "beyond salvaging." While this first photo was impacted by another photographer's auto-focus light, I would hardly
say it was "beyond salvaging."
Another shot from the same photographer that was "completely ruined by a relative jumping in to get their own photo of the special moment." I gave myself a 5 minute time limit on this edit, just to see what could be done. Given the full sized photo and a few more minutes, I could have easily saved the couple's special shot.
A good friend asked me if I could help with the only surviving photo of a family member who passed at a young age. Due to the fact that she didn't know a lot about scanning and was reluctant to send the original in case something happened. I was only able to work from a low resolution photo. But she was thrilled to be able to include it in an online family album.
Historic St. Anne's church in Detroit is the second oldest continually operating Catholic church in the United States.
I was presented with a series of low light photos by a fledgling photographer who was unable to capture the entire window in a single frame from his position. What's more, the inability to use a flash during services made it impossible to capture the detail of the surrounding architecture. Luckily for me, he shot in RAW format, and I was able to enhance detail and composite the images and reconstruct them into a single image.
This was probably one of my most challenging, but most gratifying edits.
