Bringing the Past to Life

As you might know, if you’ve been a long-time reader of this blog, part of my job involves being the in-house historian at my office. We were founded in 1799, so we’ve got a huge archive and tons of amazing ephemera in our collections. We also have a ghost named Marcia, who lived and worked at our offices for 50 years – 1896-1946.

When we look at all of the old black and white photos, or old photographs of paintings in our collections, they seem so flat and lifeless, even if they include lots of people. In our minds, these aren't real people, because they don't look like the people we see every day.

But when you add color to the image, it instantly comes to life. I am the resident photoshop wizard, so have played around with colorizing some of our images here.

The first picture I did was our Marcia Crocker Noyes. We like to pose Marcia for the holidays, but when you've got a black and white Marcia on a bright sunny beach, it doesn't look right. So, she needed to be colorized. 

I went down to her old office, and tried to channel Marcia so I could figure out what colors her dress and cape were. I had to guess on some things, but overall, I am pretty happy with the result.

Next up was one of our early headquarters buildings. This was a lot more of a challenge, as it was on the second floor of the Emerald Hotel and Saloon. There were tons of advertisements, windows, brickwork and other details, so it was a perfect job for that odd not-quite-holiday day.

Finally, I played around with a group of physicians from the late 1800's. They're a dour bunch, clearly posing for the camera. I am not sure if that's a room at an early HQ building of ours, or a backdrop set. This is the original photo, which I desaturated to make it completely black and white.

Here’s a half-and-half version of it.

And here’s the fully colourized version.

I looked at old advertisements for men's clothing in the late 1800's to come up with the colors. I picked hair and eye colors based on closely looking at each of the men and making educated guesses. I have portraits of Drs. Chew and Donaldson, but Chew's hair is white, and Donaldson's hair is a close approximation to this. Here’s Dr. Chew in our portrait of him.

I realize that there are a lot of people who hate the idea of colorizing images, but it's not like the original people or places were in black and white. We are just giving them life again.