Colorizing Old Photos
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Copyright Dana Keller
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After reading about Dana's work in an article on the web and seeing her colorized photos, I became very interested to "bring to life" one of my ancestors, my great grandfather Francisco Machado Drummond, from Terceira Island, Azores. The result was great and it reflects what I was waiting for a long time, to be able to see my great grandfather like in the real life. I love it!
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| My great grandfather Francisco Machado Drummond, 1927. |
Interview with Dana Keller from History in Color Copyright Dana Keller
Dana, tell me a
little bit about you, your bio.
My name is Dana
Keller, and I'm currently finishing up grad school in Boston, MA, studying
archival science. My undergrad was in graphic design, and I've had several
years experience in photography, which helps in understanding the roles that
light and color plays in images. I've been colorizing photos for about 10
months.
How your background
as an archivist creates awareness on preserving photos and the impact on what
you have been doing with historical photos.
The controversy
around this is interesting. Firstly, the overall response to the colorizations
has been very positive. The majority of people see the photos in a new way when
they are colorized, and it actually helps them to appreciate the events and
figures of the past as more relevant. Conversely, as an archivist, it is
essentially my job to conserve documents/photographs as they are, and to
preserve them for future generations. Several archivists in my circle (and many
people in general), tend to see colorizations as a misrepresentation of history
or even a deliberate defacing or violation of the original record. While I can
see their perspective, it should be clear that colorizations are done out of a
reverence and respect for history, and the reason they exist is to give the
viewer an opportunity to see an image from history with a different
perspective, not to replace or change the original records. The originals are
still here for us all to see and enjoy.
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Copyright Dana Keller
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How did your work
of coloring photos in a digital format started and when you realized that
people was responding well to it?
My interest began
when I discovered a collection of colorized photos online that was getting a
lot of attention for being very realistic. To me, these photos, while very
carefully and skillfully colorized, did not really look true-to-life, but more
like paintings. They no longer looked like photographs. I had seen many
colorizations before, and it has always been very obvious that they were
colorized. I wondered if it was possible to colorize photos and concentrate on
the subtleties of realistic colors and shading, perhaps with enough skill to
make it seem as if it really was an actual color photograph. I posted a few
images online as I was getting started with colorizations, and the response was
very positive. People were recognizing them as a little different than previous
colorizations they had seen, in that they weren't distracted by the fact that
it was a colorization, and were rather viewing the photo in a new way, as if it
was really in color.
Family heirlooms
are very important to the families they belong and an old photo from a relative
means a lot to them. Can you explain how your work is done in a digital format
and that the original photo is not changed or affected in any way?
Photos of our
family members are very important, and people want to keep those photographs
safe and close to them. Often times a black and white photograph is all someone
have ever seen of their relatives from long ago. They do not want anything to
happen to those heirlooms. When families want their photographs colorized, it
is always because they want to feel a closer connection to the history of their
family, and to see them in color would make them seem that much more real. Of
course, we want to have the original photo remain untouched. The photographs
are scanned into a digital image, and all of the colorization is done in a
digital environment, with no alterations to the physical photo.
I know you have
been coloring a broad amount of subjects in photographs, but I would like to
know more about your work with family photographs. What type of photos
people usually send to you, adult portraits, children portraits or family
portraits? Do they have any special requesting for you?
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Copyright Dana Keller
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There is always a
wide variety of photos, which makes it very interesting: family portraits,
weddings, military, vacations, casual snapshots, holidays, etc. Each photo is
unique, so there is no typical photo. Usually, any requests beyond the
colorization involve some restoration work to clean up scratches and tears in
the photo. There aren't many unusual
requests, though I have had one request to extend a photograph in order to include
a little bit of a person that had been cropped in the photo, which means I had
to essentially paint in the missing pieces!
If someone willing
to have their family member photo digitally colorized but doesn’t have a scan
to do it, can you scan the photo for them? Tell me the steps, if you do so.
I don't currently
scan photos myself, though I do plan to soon invest in a high quality scanner
so that I can offer that as an option.
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Copyright Dana Keller
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Last but not the
least, is there any special family photo that you worked on and have touched
you in some way?
I recently worked
on a photo of a man's grandmother, which depicted her in a park when she was a
beautiful young woman. The grandson who commissioned me was planning on giving
her the colorized photo this Christmas. It is one of his favorite photos of her
because it is one of the few in which she was smiling. Tragically, his
grandmother passed away before he had the chance to give it to her. He has let
me know that the photograph will be displayed at her funeral, and even though
she did not get to see it, he was so happy that the last image people will have
of her will be of her smile and her love of life.
Contact info for Dana Keller:
Facebook page
and email
thehistoryincolor at gmail.com
