So starts the second week of Summer Vacation, and it is raining…
Since vacation has started, my kids have eaten more bandwidth than food!
What to do?
Well, being the frugal person that I am, and seeing that we had 5 ripe bananas…
I Googled three recipes, printed them up, and had the kids review the recipes, and create a common ingredient list:
5 Ripe Bananas
2 Cups Flour
3/4 Cup Brown Sugar
2 Large Eggs
1 Stick Melted Salted Butter
1/4 teaspoon Baking Soda
1/4 teaspoon Baking Powder
1 teaspoon Cinnamon
1 teaspoon Vanilla
Preheat Oven to 350ºF. In large bowl, mash the bananas; Mix in the Eggs, melted butter, brown sugar, baking soda/powder, cinnamon and vanilla. Pour mixture into buttered loaf pan, and bake until center is cooked and crust is deep brown (60+ mins).
This helped Logan with this reading, while Madison learned more about units and measurement conversions!
What was also fun, was to comparing ingredients, such as white vs brown sugar, and deciding which one to use.
They also gotten to use a mortar and pestle to ground the fresh cinnamon, which was finished off in a coffee grinder.
I encouraged them to taste it, and explained why it was not a good idea to try the fad trick of trying to swallow a tablespoon!
And let us not forget the mashing of the bananas!
During clean-up, we also had the chance to “test” the classic Baking Soda vs Power with vinegar trick!
As I set up and measured, the kids kind of knew what was going to happen, but they were still very eager to see what would happen!
Finally, as the bread pan went into the oven, we used some of the leftover flour, to test our drinking glasses for fingerprints!
Update
I have since started this post, and the lights in the house flicker off and on because of the storm passing over us.
The house is beginning to smell good!
Update 2
The loaf is out and the smell!
The kids don’t seem to understand ‘cool down on a rack’…
Over the past couple of days, I have been exchanging phone calls with a potential Photo Restoration client, and today I finally got to met Eleanor and my new project, Michael Moran.
From what Eleanor had told me on the phone, was the original was 16×20 inches, mounted into a new wooden frame some years ago.
When Eleanor arrived, the picture was packaged in bubble wrap and a white garbage bag, being especially careful, since it had rained lightly earlier in the day.
As we sat and talked, I reiterated that it was not very common for people to get pictures done because of the expense and time involved, let alone an immigrant of the 1800s, and especially at a large size!
“I have a call into my brother to confirm that Michael Moran was from Ireland. He married Mary Hughes here in the States. Four children were born and 3 survived to adulthood (one of which was my grandmother). He became the Head Farmer for the Cassatt estate until he died of pneumonia.” – Eleanor
We chatted some more, and when Eleanor left, I knew I was in for a really good adventure with this Restoration project!
The first thing that I wanted to do, was document what I was doing, just encase I was confronted with some issue as I progressed.
Inspection
So, how was I going to get this thing apart?
Turing it over, I inspected how the internal frame was connected to the external picture, and I was able to find five (5) small nails holding the picture to the frame.
Connection Nails
Thankfully, these nails were easily removed with a pair of needle-nose pliers and some careful tugs.
Once the exterior frame was separated from the interior one, the next element to be aware of was the large pane of glass, and when it was removed, and inspected more carefully, had several ripples as a sign of age.
It was also now possible to closely inspect the surface tears and map them to the backside of the frame.
Toward the middle of the image, there was this pair of tears, one going all the way through to the fiber of the cloth backing, and a strange blue mark:
Restore Michael Moran – Tears (Middle)
and near the bottom of the image, there was this tear:
Restore Michael Moran Tears (Bottom)
Note – You can double-click on the pictures to get a larger view of the damage.
Additional Surface Cracks and Water Stains
Some of the damage appears to be simple cracks to the surface, along with other water stains.
Top Edge Damage Detail
When looking at the edges, there is noticeable damage to the cloth used to connect the images to the frame.
Scanning
I always have a concern when I am faced with a large print, especially of this size!
What also makes this digitization more challenging, is the fixed wood frame that the image is suspended on.
Most of the time, I encounter loose original prints that are not mounted, and with the condition of the cloth material, there was no way that I was going to remove this image from the frame for scanning.
The scanner I use, is an old Epson Perfection 4490 Photo, which I bought numerous years ago, and has a scanning bed of approximately 9×13 inches.
Another requirement of this project, was to scan the original to be Printed at 100%, which I knew was going to make for some very BIG files, but I had a plan, and hoped that my scanner was up for the task.
My solution, like many times before, was to break up the scan into four (4) sections: upper-left, upper-right, lower-left, and lower right, and then combine them into one image using Adobe Photoshop layers.
The final concern, and the most important, the scanners depth-of-field, which is exactly the same concept as with cameras, but with desktop scanners, the depth-of-field is very shallow, and the beveled lip on the edge of the scanner was not going to help, even if it was only 2-3 mm above the glass surface.
I lined up the first corner, leaving just a little break between the scanners capture edge and the edge of the print.
Once aligned, I placed a soft folded cloth on top, and then added some weights to gently and evenly press as much of the picture surface to the glass bed of the scanner as possible, and repeated three more times.
Photoshop
Once I had the four (4) quadrants scanned into 16-bit TIFF files, my next step was to combine the scans into one image, making absolutely sure that the images overlapped enough to mask out any softness that might have occurred during the scanning stage.
Restore Michael Moran – Quadrants pre-combined
Thankfully, and once again, my Epson did not let me down!
Once combined, the final image is beginning to take shape.
Restore Michael Moran Working Proof – Before
From here, it is just taking the time to use the various tools within Photoshop to clean-up the various issues caused by cracks, rips, tears and water. For more information on how to handle these issues, please consult the various reference materials that are available on the internet.
Proof Image
After several hours of clean-up and tweaking, the proof image looks like this:
Restore Michael Moran – Proof 01
but remember, it is always the Client that has the final say!
Klaus Herrmann (farbspiel) is a photographer out of Germany, who specializes in Interior HDR Photography.
On his main website, “HDR Cookbook“, you will find a wonderful collection of pages, that describe in vivid detail, the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of creating his beautiful images.
Over the years, I have gone through many pages and videos on “How to do…” HDR, but this is the first site that I have found, that goes into ‘in-depth’ experiments explaining why certain steps are needed to achieve the final product.
Seeing the side-by-side effects of software and processing, has caused me to reconsider how I will view and process future images.
Recently, I have been revisiting some of my older captures, and processing them with new knowledge and techniques.
In reading Klaus’ suggested Workflow, which is highly recommended, he makes the following observation:
Let the finished file sit on your hard disk for a day or two. Don’t post it right away. I found that when you get back to it a day later, you will discover things that you might want to change, things that you did not discover while you were working on the details of the image very intensely. If you let you mind do other things and some time passes, you will look at the image more objectively, more like your viewers will. If you’re content with the image now, go ahead and post it.
Needless to say, I highly recommend that if you are interested in HDR, Tone Mapping related photography, and are in search of some advanced tips, techniques and very qualified insights, then you should be rewarded with a visit to “HDR Cookbook“.
