Old College Pictures

More Photo Restorations

I have some old historic photos from Randolph Macon Woman's College where I taught for most of my career. It was fun to colorize and enhance scenes from more than a hundred years ago. For example, here's a restored image of the 1897 graduating class.

The next animation shows stages of restoration from the original damaged black and white photo to the final enhanced colorized product.

Final restoration quality depends on original source photo quality. Sometimes the original is slightly out of focus, or the scan into digital form isn't very good. For example, restoration of the 1901 basketball team picture didn't turn out as well as the 1897 image above. Faces seem fuzzier, and smudges on the original aren't completely removed.

Here's the restoration animation.

This picture, showing an art class of the same era, was also a bit fuzzy.

The restoration animation shows blemish removal.The next colorized photo shows the original college faculty. William Waugh Smith, the college's founder, is front and center. The college science building is named after Fernando Wood Martin who is the second man to the right of Smith.

The original small college observatory, Winfree Observatory, was located on the front of campus approximately where Smith Hall is located today.

Later, in 1923, Winfree Observatory was moved to its present location. This colorized picture from 1954 shows the original 6-inch Brashear refractor on its original metal pier containing a mechanical clock drive.

Color really brings old photos to life! 

 

Photo Animation - Part 4

Maternal Grandparents

Both my maternal grandparents died before I was four years old. Sadly, I don't remember grandmother Mary at all. Memories of grandfather David are vague. It was interesting to bring them briefly back to life with animated photos. Unfortunately, very few suitable pictures were available. For example, colorization of the following portrait of young Mary McCormack came out well, but her profile didn't animate properly. Mary, born on December 31, 1879, was the daughter of Irish immigrants. 

I did have a good forward facing picture of young David Smith. The colorized version looked fine except for the overexposed right side of David's head.

David, the son of Scottish immigrants, was born on September 4, 1880. I was astounded to see his youthful face move in the next animation!

The next colorized picture of older couple Mary and David Smith has lots of character. The straw hat and dangling cigarette are a hoot!

Facial animations from this colorized picture were flawed. David's cigarette moved in unnatural ways, and Mary's facial movements were complicated by the intruding edge of David's hat. For some reason, animations from the original black and white image worked better, though not perfectly.

   

One colorized image of Mary and David Smith from 1924 is particularly lovely. They are holding my newborn mother, Helen, probably in Garfield, New Jersey. Both parents were about 44 years old at the time.

Next are animations from the 1924 picture above. Mary's hat moves nicely along with her head, but David's face was not well oriented for animation.

 

In 1925 Mary held my mother in this colorized picture.

The animation tool could not correctly portray Mary's hair in the next animation, but it is the best representation of her relatively young face.

David's face did not animate well in older pictures, so I'll include the next two still images to show his apparent interest in cars.

   

The date of the next picture is probably in the 1940's. David and Mary were likely together in the backyard of their Passaic, NJ home. 

Animation of Mary's black and white face from the previous photo seemed to make her glasses disappear! David's animated face looked terrible - like he needed a shave, so I didn't include it here.

The last picture of Mary I have is from September 25, 1949. The next animation is from this black and white photo. She died on May 5, 1950 when I was only 1.5 years old. I own no picture of the two of us together. 

Grandfather David lived about three years longer than Mary. Here he stands with me on August 10, 1949. David is almost 69 years old, and I'm 10 months old. Notice the unfortunate cigarette in his hand.

On June 26, 1951 David sat with my mother and me during a trip to the Smoky Mountains. I have no idea what I'm yelling about, but my elders seem tolerant! 

Grandfather David died on October 21, 1953.
 

 

 

Photo Animation - Part 3

Paternal Grandmother From Childhood to Old Age

Only one of my grandparents lived long enough for me to know well - my paternal grandmother, Barbara. I remember her mostly as an old woman, growing older and more feeble with each passing year. But all old people were young and vibrant long ago. They were once children with attractive, unwrinkled faces. They grew into fair young adults before morphing into the elderly grandparents we grandchildren came to know. Through the magic of photo animation I was able to follow my grandmother through time from about 1894 to 1966 and better imagine her life before my birth.

In 1894 my grandmother was a blond-haired seven or eight year-old daughter of Polish immigrants. She looked like this:

Four or five years later, in 1898 or 1899, Barbara was roughly 12 years old, sporting earrings, and growing into a lovely teenager.

I wish I had pictures of Barbara's wedding to my grandfather, Michael, in 1905. She would have been in the prime of youth then, and, I imagine, strikingly beautiful. Unfortunately, no wedding pictures exist to my knowledge. I was told she tore them all up in grief over the early death of Michael in 1927. I have only two damaged pictures of my grandparents together in 1926. Barbara must have missed destroying these two. A colorized version of one of these is shown next. The left side of Barbara's face is overexposed and smudged by some kind of scraping. 

I worked to repair damage to Barbara's face in Photoshop, but there was no way to completely restore the unblemished photo. The following color animation represents Barbara at about age 40. 

Four years later, at age 44 in 1930, Barbara's face was more rounded, and her hair was darker in this black and white animation.

In about 1937 Barbara sat proudly before her five children in this colorized family portrait. My 23 year-old father, Stanley, is second from the right.

Barbara's 51 year-old face still looked far from old in the next animation.

A World War II era black and white picture from 1944 showed 58 year-old Barbara now wearing glasses and beginning to resemble the grandmother I knew.

Five years later, on February 17, 1949, I was grandma's third grandchild. She was 63 and looked happy to see my chubby presence on her lap!

On November 25, 1952 grandma's hair still had blond color as I watched her prepare Thanksgiving turkey.

At my high school graduation on June 21, 1966 grandma was 80 years old but still able to stand firmly.

I used Photoshop to manually remove flash reflections from grandma's glasses. Unfortunately, this produced a slight distortion of her right side eyelid in the following animation. Otherwise, the animation gives a hint of her former beauty and spirit.

Nine years later, in the summer of 1975, after a series of heart attacks and strokes took their toll, grandma was largely confined to bed and could barely walk. In this last picture she sits in front of my parents and my newly married brother, Richard, and his wife, Sindi.

Barbara died on July 17, 1978 at age 92.