Bakersfield, CA photographer {A cautionary tale for photos & presevation of them}

A client brought me this priceless image of her family.  A treasured memory from yesteryear.  Her father is a small boy in this image.  Keep in mind there weren’t digital images everywhere back in 19something.  A photo was an event.  Something to be dressed for and cost a pretty penny.  Many heirloom photos have been lost throughout the years.  This family for example came from Spain fleeing the reign of Franko.  Very few photos to show their early years.

So fast forward to 2012 and this client handing over this image.  You can imagine my horror at seeing those orange dots…. everywhere!  There is no Photoshop filter that is going to be an easy fix for that.  The best educated guess is that this print was behind glass and sprayed with windex at some point.  Windex then eating away silently at that emulsion over the years.  The correct method would have been to spray a cloth and then wipe down the glass.  But, alas, this poor woman trusted her family heirlooms to the cleaning methods of young children and teenagers.  Those Saturday cleaning sprees inflicted on the children now coming back to bite her in the pocketbook.

Here is the after restoration.  Dots gone.  Long hours of retouching to restore this to it’s former glory.  That could have been avoided of course had those offspring of hers not been entrusted with the task of cleaning.

However, the last laugh is had my the Mother/ Client in this story. Because the restoration time and money was paid for by one of those horrible children…. Me.  Yes, I’m remember cleaning all those images in the hall.  I’m fairly certain that 197whatever, the method best used was if it was glass spray it with Windex.  I will find a way to make those siblings of mine pay a little though for me being the one retouching this.  Argh, it is times like this that I wish I had just become a doctor!