Photo Restoration | Marilyn Gillespie

How I Created my Perfectly Imperfect Family Photo Wall

My family photo gallery wall gave my husband and I a great project to focus on during Covid lockdowns. In the early days of lockdown, time seemed to slow down and our motivation to tackle long-term projects around the house waned. Then, one day inspiration struck and we got busy.

Our house, which was built as a cottage in 1934, is quite small, so wall space is very limited. We have a cute landing upstairs with two comfy chairs which face the staircase. This is where we like to sit and read or journal in the morning with coffee. It was the perfect spot for our family photo gallery wall. And since the photos are on the staircase wall, we will see and enjoy it multiple times every day.

Gallery photo wall in our staircase

My family photo wall is about our ancestry and includes reprints of photos from three generations from both my husband’s family and mine. The original photographs are filed away in archival boxes. I was thinking about how one day these framed photos would be passed on to the next generation, so I wanted the most important ones to have solid, archival, custom-made frames. I choose some images for their historical interest, like my mom and brothers standing in front of the American Pavilion at Expo ’67 in Montreal.

My hip looking family at Expo ’67 in Montreal!

Since I wanted to include all of the older photos that my dad had so lovingly collected, I created two collages in InDesign. One piece includes 10 photos that I scanned from a scrapbook he made. I kept his meticulous tiny handwriting below each photo identifying who’s who. This keeps his “hand” in it, it’s more personal than if I had redone it and typed it all out. He didn’t live long enough to see this but I know he would be very pleased that these photos were no longer in a box in the closet.

A Legacy collage made from scans of my dad’s photo album about our ancestors

To plan where the frames would be hung, I started with the larger anchor pieces and figured out where they would look best. Then we worked our way out – placing the medium then smaller frames around them, keeping it balanced. This would have been much more difficult if we had wanted to separate the two sides of the family, so we didn’t restrict ourselves that way. Instead, we hung the frames where they “looked right.” We also didn’t want to fall into perfectionism and measure everything again after we hammered in the nail. To be honest, there is a gap or two that I am not happy with, but it will do for now! We can always add to it and rearrange them in the future.

Our wall has 9 custom made frames out of 16. Some of these were made recently and some I had from my wedding photography days. I invested in some simple, tasteful frames to display my portfolio pieces. I simply swapped the old wedding photos with the new family photos. I am familiar with the different types of hangers on frames and how to work with them, and having a husband who is handy doesn’t hurt.

I wanted some photos to be flush for variety, without a border or a mat. For others I added a white border around the image in Photoshop, so that a 5×7 image could be used in an 8×10 frame, and it almost looks like there is a mat. Some of them showed a ripple in the print because there was no mat to hold them down though. I had to spray mount them to a backing, which was messy.

An inexpensive frame on the left, and a custom-made frame on the right, both without mats

The 8×10 ready-made frames that I used were bought at craft stores, camera stores, home décor stores, or art supply stores. They were collected over time in our case. My husband had two that he found at garage sales that had that vintage look, so we used them to add variety.

This kind of project can be a challenge because it takes commitment and is completed over time. But the result is so very worth it! In my case I created family heirlooms. When you frame something, you are saying – this image is important to me. Future generations will have the same respect.

About the Author:

Marilyn Gillespie is a professional photographer, who creates custom-designed legacy photobooks for clients worldwide. She also offers photo scanning, retouching and photo restoration services. Marilyn can be reached by email and loves chatting to clients about how best to archive and preserve their family history or life stories.

in Blog / Photo Restoration

by Marilyn Gillespie

The Legacy of the Doyle & Molloy Families Photobook

Family Legacy Photobooks are one of my favourite projects to work on with clients. I love hearing their stories and helping them make their dream of sharing their family history a reality.

This book begins with a family tree spread of two generations. It shows my client’s parents and their parents with a touch of the “Kelly” green and a Celtic pattern to celebrate their Irish roots.

My client and I discussed her preferences for the design after she saw the family tree that I had created. We agreed on a simple and tasteful style with only a few design elements to embellish the pages, and a colour theme for each section. She wanted to include over 500 photos so the backgrounds were kept subtle. For the spread about her mother’s love of her grandchildren, I got more creative and designed a soft, dreamy background. I screened back a sweet image of her mother holding her 4-year-old granddaughter’s hand at the beach for the background, and then placed the other photos around it.

This page features the grandchildren

My client collected photos, newspaper articles, historical documents, memorabilia and obituaries and we shared all our files on Dropbox. She created subfolders for the chapters in the order that she wanted them in the book which saved us so much time.

The history of Molloy’s Bar, which is South of San Francisco

After I reviewed all of her materials, we had a couple of long phone calls. We talked about the scope of the book and I asked some interview-style questions. I talked to her mother, who was understandably shy to disclose more personal things to me over the phone, but it set the tone to build trust and she opened up as she saw the initial pages. I was able to convey that I cared about getting their stories correct, in a truthful and tasteful way.

I love photos that show the hairstyles of the 1940s and 50s!

It was such a delight to have so many great stories to tell about this large Irish family. The book is told from the point of view of my client’s 87-year-old mother who has 7 children and 20 grandchildren. We kept the text in her voice. She lost her husband in 2012 so the photobook is as much of a tribute to him as it is a retelling of their family history. It took us 90 pages and many months of emails and phone calls, but we did it!

A tribute page to Lanty Molloy, the patriarch of the family

On a technical note, my client had not done a lot of scanning before this, but knew to set the dpi larger rather than smaller for better quality. I reduced the files that were too big down to an 8×10 at 300 dpi since her book was 12×12 inches. In some cases, the only available option for my client was to take a photo with her phone of a framed image, reflections on the glass and all, and send that to me. I was then able to fix and edit the image so it looked as good as the others when printed in the book.

I am so grateful to have had this incredible photobook project to work on during Covid. It gave me a sense of satisfaction that is hard to describe because we were creating a book for future generations in a time of so much uncertainty. I would love to meet Deirdre the next time I am in California and to have a pint at Molloy’s Bar. She dedicated a lot of time to this photobook as a precious gift to her mother and is an inspiration to me and my future clients.

About the Author:

by Marilyn Gillespie

Confessions of a Retouching Perfectionist

Confessions of a Retouching Perfectionist

I learned photography using film in the 1980s, when you couldn’t see the results immediately and you had to be accurate with your exposure. We had light meters to help guide us and trust me, you thought about whether the image was worth it before you triggered the shutter. There where costs involved with each frame – film and processing, plus travel time to pick up the prints or slides. Imagine waiting weeks for a roll of Kodachrome slides to come back from the special Kodak lab in Ontario – it was frustrating sometimes!

I worked in many photo labs, starting with the One Hour Photo stores, and then after Ryerson University, custom labs, where I printed for discerning professional photographers. Thinking back, I should have been informed that I was using too much paper on test prints – but I guess the customers were happy! Of course, I was even fussier printing for myself, and every image, even snapshots of friends, had to be perfect.

This has carried over into my digital retouching and restoration work for my collages and photobooks. I can’t stop until I am completely satisfied that I have done everything I can to make the scan even better than the original. With my Wacom tablet and its pen, I feel like a painter. I create a layer, make the modification that I would like for a certain section of the image, invert it, then use my brush to reveal the adjusted layer. It may not be the fastest way, but I enjoy it. It also feels like how printing black and white images in the darkroom used to. I loved watching the image come through in the tray of chemicals, hoping my judgement had been correct. Now of course, with digital images you can see the effect immediately and make very precise adjustments. You can even toggle back and forth to compare the changes you have made with the original, which make perfection possible!

You can see how I have started to brush to reveal the red adjustment layer over half the girl and the back of the boat.

I sometimes rely on my knowledge from the days of shooting, processing and printing film. In Photoshop there is a warming filter, just like we used to use on the camera lens. Sometimes it’s the last step if I can’t get an image to look pleasing. Also, there are plenty of ways in Photoshop to burn and dodge areas that are too light or too dark. But in the darkroom we made our own tools using cardboard and coat hanger type wire… I may even have one or two stashed away in the attic somewhere. (Wait, what? In case I find myself in a darkroom again?!) The Shadow/Highlight feature in Photoshop is excellent for highlight recovery and often takes care of it for me; it’s almost too easy and I feel like I am cheating.

The Limits of Auto Colour

Using Auto Colour is a good start, but for me, just the beginning. I always do auto colour on a layer so that I can use the slider to see it in degrees. Sometimes 50% is a good start, then I do more precise adjustments to certain areas. I love correcting the colour in one area at a time. This is especially useful when fixing faded colour photos. I longed to be able to do that in the darkroom, but that was not possible! I used to add half a point of magenta to perk up an image as my last resort. Now you can use Selective Colour and see how a colour changes when you try the sliders but I find it is very limited. If you know what you want, select the area, or like I said before, create an adjustment layer. The adjustment layer is perfect if there are multiple areas you need to correct the same way. I learned to use curves, not levels, because they give me more control.

You can also use the software in your scanner. The higher end Epson models have filters to restore old photos in the scanning stage. I have tried it, but I like the control of doing it later in Photoshop. For an amateur it’s perfect. You can see what it wants to do in Preview then decide if it’s better or not.

This is how I corrected this image. You can see the limits of the Auto colour correction in Photoshop. In the Phase 1 sample I thought I was done and sent it to my client. But the next day I decided I couldn’t live with the magenta blotches in the water. After trying a few things, I found that selecting those areas and reducing the saturation helped. Then I used the blue photo filter in those areas to create the colour the water should have been. Then I went further and brushed in tiny amounts of colours that neutralized the magenta. It was a bit insane – it took quite a while. But it was very satisfying!

Retouching on Paper in the “Olden Days”

Here is a fond memory I would like to share. I worked at a professional lab in Calgary in the 1990s that also printed murals for displays. Paper 60 inches wide had to be cut in the dark and fastened to the wall with magnets in front of an enlarger that would project on the paper. This sounds so crazy now with the convenience of modern digital printers. Ok, I didn’t enjoy (the pressure of) this kind of printing but I did get involved with retouching these murals. Inevitably there would be dust on the negatives which, when projected, created a much bigger white spot on the image. The mural would be spread out on a huge table and multiple retouchers had to get busy, especially if the mural was due that day! We had tiny retouching brushes and spotting dyes. This could take hours and get tedious. You had to use multiple colours to simulate the grain, and being this close to it you could see how the colours of the grain blended to make that colour. There I was, Pretending-to-be-a-Painter, Phase 2 (Phase 1 was during high school art class).

But the “fond memory part” is enhanced by how cool my bosses were. They had a great stereo system and we could play whatever music we wanted. This was the 90s and I was intent on only listening to alternative music and rejected all popular mainstream radio hits. So Nirvana was ok, for example. One day my boss put on a Johnny Cash CD. Picture Ring of Fire blaring in the large, open cement-walled work space. I had not yet realized how great some country music could be and how classic this artist was! I made every possible plea to change the music and suffered through that long 40 minutes. Now I am thinking they should have fired me right then and there! Johnny Cash rules.

Back to the Future

With so many people shooting photos on their phones, often a lot of correction is needed before publishing an image. In this photo shot by my husband with his phone in Saskatchewan, the morning light caused a light flare which broke down all the colours. I worked long and hard on it, sections at a time, to get the rich colours back so it would look nicer on his blog.

I would like to add a brief tip here but can expand on it later. If you want to photograph an old photo on your phone for restoration please use diffused daylight to shoot it. Make sure there are no shadows: that the light is even. The camera or phone must be parallel to the photo. I find putting the photo below you, like on the floor on a background is quick and easy. Watch the edges of the photo, and if they aren’t square or look distorted readjust yourself (you are the tripod!).

What techniques and tools do you use to do retouching? I’d love to hear what works for you. Drop a comment below or in an email to me. Happy retouching!

in Blog / Photo Restoration / Photo Retouching / Photobooks / Photography / Vintage Photos