Photo Restoration Blog

Archive for the ‘restoring old photographs’ Category

Balliol Invicta Football Club 1910-1911 Division one Winners for Southwark and District

Balliol Invicta Football Club 1910-1911 Division 1 Winners for Southwark andDistrict

I recently restored a photo of a football team, Balliol Invicta Football Club winners, Division one, Southwark and District 1910-1911

Balliol Invicta Football Club 1910-1911 Division one Winners for Southwark and District faithfully reproduced to the same size and blue black tones on Hahnemühle Paper 24x20 inches.

Its remarkable how things changed over the 20 years from the Clapton Football Club photo from 1890. The shorts are so much shorter and kit matching.  The socks match unlike the disorganized mess of woolly socks and shin pads of the Clapton photo. I guess rules were coming into force to ensure teams looked the part and the kits were being standardized. Covering the knee was no longer an issue because of more relaxed opinions / rules of how much skin could be shown, not to mention being more practical.

Even the boots in this photo look remarkably similar. Although its difficult to see the Clapton Team had their shorts held up with anything from rope, a scarf or a proper belt. The Balliol team seem to have good image here in the photo and REYNOLDS in the front is even smiling, something you don’t see very often in early photography.

I don’t follow football myself but these early photos do offer a great insight into the fashion of the day and its great to be able to compare them. Yet again another example of how photographic techniques of yesterday still stand the test of time today.

Some more challenging photo restorations of 2011, enjoy watching!

In order to make a daguerreotype, iodine fumes are used to react with a silver-coated copper plate to form light-sensitive silver iodide. The plate is then exposed to light using a box and lens or camera and the image developed using mercury fumes, before being fixed in a warm solution of common salt. This was quite a lengthy process and the exposures were very slow, as plate was not that sensitive to light as we know photography today. The daguerreotype process was very popular during the first half of the 19th century, is was soon after replaced with faster and less complicated but safer techniques.

Old Daguerreotypes had to be protected by a glass font and sealed to prevent the image getting damaged, The image itself is a thin coating of deposits on the copper plate and can easily be ruined with a simple finger touch. Think of the image rather like candle soot on a glass tile, a very fine power that can be smudged with the lightest of touches.

I recently restored a Daguerreotype for a customer of mine.

Old Daguerreotype Restored

Several scans of this beautiful little old Daguerreotype were needed. It measured around 5 centimeteres tall and was encased in a red velvet and brass case, with a glass sealed glass panel protecting the image. The scans were combined to give the best image to start the restoration process.