Section of board photo
I have been restoring a fair few black and white photos on fibrous cardboard recently. This type of photo seems to have had the light-sensitive emulsion painted onto the board and then exposed to light. I would suggest that such large sizes of paper could not be made so the photographer simply grabbed a stable matt cardboard base and painted on the chemicals. The resulting image is a very soft focused photo without any hard defined edges.
With this photo board, it has a matt finish and absorbs moisture very well. If you have any very large old photos, perhaps stored in the loft, still in a frame in a plastic bag, please dig them out and put them somewhere dry and warm before they suck up the moisture in the cool damp air, circulating around your loft. As they do this they swell a little and often grow mould of varying types. The fine black soot-like mould and dry white, spidery feather-like mould, possibly mildew. Neither of these does your photos any good, its best to dry them out slowly and then dust them off very lightly with a soft artist’s paintbrush. Once the worst is off, use a little photographer’s canned air to blow away the spores, but do this outside otherwise they will just settle in the house and not too close to the photo either.
Once it’s all clean get your photo restoration done. The process of degradation is already happening and there is not a lot you can do to stop it! Click this link to see a post on photo restoration of board based photos
Hi I have three black and white vintage pictures and trying to see if they have value. The first is Bill Cosby and I think arthur Ash the Tennis Player and the second is “As Time Goes By, Humphrey and Sam at the piano and the other is liek the Three stoogers but different detectives and it has a 321 on the picture. They show signs in the light of fading but they are or seem to be originals. I bought from a flea market and took them out of broken frames. Do you happen to know a site where I can go to confrim if they have value? Thanks
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Hi there. Sorry i do not, the best bet would be to try your local auction house.
Seems like you are a real expert!
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A definite great read….
Hi there welcome to the Blog!
It is my belief that the “ink” was either watercolour or coloured inks watered down. I have no scientific basis on which was used but know that the colour had to be very weak so as to still let the grain show through. From my observations I would imagine that it was done with inks. When I did my photography degree (still with paper and chemicals, there were inks available then in various tones for fixing problems and touching up photos. The pencil is just a pencil, possibly of a particular quality suited best for photos, or maybe even a type of charcoal. This would only work on the matt, fibre based papers of the age.
As far as I am aware this pencilling is not used any more as the standard of the lenses and equipment now negates the use of it. Some people still hand colour the photos but with modern papers the result is very very subtle and in my opinion is lost without the real papers of yesteryear and the silver halide chemicals. It was that combination that made the hand coloured photos so magic. Modern equivalents are just not up to the job.
I hope this helps.
Neil
What is the value, if any to the old tecnique of coloring in a black & white photo? . I have several of these my grandfather did in the 1930’s -50’s . 2 have faded and i was going to throw them out. Is this tecnique used today and what was the ink or pencil used?
thanks,katherine