Colorized Vintage Young Beauty IV

Another anonymous young beauty colorized from her vintage portrait circa 1900s.  If anyone knows her name, please let me know.

Colorized Vintage Portrait of Cleo de Merode (1875-1966)

Another colorized vintage dark beauty (dark as in darkly photographed), a deadringer for the young Isabella Rosellini, daughter of the late Ingrid Bergman,. This time, someone quite popular during her time - the French Ballet Dancer Cleo De Merode (1875 - 1966) taken in 1903 . She was more known for her legendary beauty than dancing skills and at 22 became the mistress of 61-year old Belgian King Leopold II after attending one of her ballet performances. The model of choice among painters, sculptors and photographers (considered the most photographed woman during her prime) she was the first elite ballerina to dance with the Follies Bergere creating a sensation and a more modern following.

I made extensive creative liberties as you can see in the comparative. I threw out historic accuracy to get the outcome I want. In the first place, I have no information on her eyes and hair color.as the online sources I visited didn't have them (No problem as I can alter this when I have the information.) As it is, black hair and blue eyes are rare among peoples, but they do exist mostly in northern Europe. (Elizabeth Taylor who was British by birth, had raven hair and violet eyes. and was an example of a rare DNA mix.).

Her jewelry was a bit pathetic so I composited one from an online gold chain file. I added a rear bun on her head just to echo the red on her blouse which was also composited from a red mink coat. Her eyelashes which were only hinted at in the original were further detailed.

Colorized_Students of a Catholic school w dog circa 1900s

For my Lenten retreat - I colorized a vintage class picture in a Catholic school taken around the turn of the 20th century, along with the nuns and a few teachers. (Plus a dog said to follow one of the students to school and wait outside patiently and then followed her or him again back home every day.)

51 people and a dog to colorize in 3 days, a Hail Mary for each one to complete the 5 decades, give another 2.

I like the unstructured and very casual arrangement of the people in the lineup, even as the nuns so placed created symmetry.. So relaxed, unlike the class pictures I had in high school where the arrangement was stiff.

Colorized Vintage Portrait of Cissy Fitzgerald c1910

I came across this decently preserved vintage of a smiling woman which is rare considering that most vintage portraits often have serious looks.(http://petapixel.com/2016/03/12/video-people-never-smiled-old-photos/)  This is a portrait of a certain Cissy Fitzgerald sporting a full smile. And it's not a contrived smile, showing an imperfect but healthy set of front dentures that was also rare at a time when fluoride toothpaste has yet to be marketed.


I couldn't make out the flowers on her hat which was hinted only by an outline as I colorized the leaves. So I just guessed and composited a couple of white carnations from another file.

Colorized Fitz Guerin's Lady Libertine 1902

At the other extreme, this vintage portrait invites some gay abandon in colorization thanks to a riotous background and a woman who looks like a Gypsy minus the usual trinkets and the dieting. The vintage photo is from a post-American Civil War veteran Fitz Guerin who took up photography after the war. It was titled "Lady Libertine" one of his so-called metaphorical maidens taken in 1902, just a year before he died. I have no idea what the metaphor was about, but the vintage photo is well-preserved as an excellent specimen for colorization.

This portrait shows a very healthy woman puffing cigarette at a time when the habit was considered unlady-like. (While cigarettes had been hand-rolled even before the civil war, the first commercial mass produced cigarettes appeared in 1881 and cigarette smoking was first advertised for women in 1920). And what is that on her right hand? Looks like an Amarula or a Bailey's Irish cream liquor coffee, one of my favorite beverages that I can no longer afford. With 18% alcohol content, liqueur is stronger than champaigne with just 12% alcohol. This lady certainly knew how to be drunk in style though cheaper. However, It has to be an earlier version, since neither the Amarula nor Bailey's existed prior to 1970.

Fitz Guerin's Lady Libertine is one of the few vintage photos where I have 3 colorized versions. Colorization may be the only luxury I have today when I don't have to decide and make a choice. I just do what I like in as many versions. Well, I lied. I did have to decide that 3 was enough. There are several more colors and I am sure other colorists will have other ideas. Here are the two other more aggressive (garish) variants.

Colorized Vintage Young Beauty III

Colorizing can often bring the subject to stand out using subtle colors in the clothes or background. The vintage photo itself suggest what colors to use.  Here is a colorized vintage portrait of an unnamed beauty circa 1900s where pastel hues in the dress is a natural choice.  I used off-white with a slight greenish hue (may not be apparent depending on how your monitor is calibrated).  Used a little creative liberty to put on an eyeshadow.  There have been colorized renditions of similar subjects using faded colors to retain the vintage look. It is not the same thing.  I don't subscribe to the philosophy of retaining the vintage look in colorizing. Like I said elsewhere in this blog, colorization is not about restoring.  It is not about the photo.  It is about re-creating a real-world scenario behind the photo.

Colorized Vintage Beauties I & II

A little erotic subject for a change. Came across this lovely specimen of the female persuasion that simply refused to be glossed over. Her sensuous youthful innocence represents precisely a lost irreplaceable period in time. I saw no specific name in the vintage file, nor in the site, simply referring to the photo as that of an unnamed beauty circa 1890s. Could be a stage actress. Doesn't really matter, she is timeless beauty personified. And now colorized.

Sometimes a vintage b&w registration gives a strong hint it has no place for subtleties. This one cried out for a little aggressive coloring. Some would call it garish colors. (garish as in red, lavender, fuchsia, and green, the kind you would expect Batman's arch nemesis Joker to wear.) But her aggressive beauty requires it. I went with dark hair with dark green eyes this time. Again, this is another unnamed beauty from late 19th or early 20th century.

Colorized Autry Family in a Winton Touring Car circa 1915

Here's a vintage Autry family portrait in a luxury Winton Touring car taken in 1910. The pioneering Cleveland-based Winton Motor Carriage thrived from 1897 to 1962. The beach is Old Orchard Beach in Maine,  The Everingham house is a  landmark at the time. at the corner of Seawall and Union Avenue   The house on the left remains standing as seen here

Yellow would seem like a good color choice, but I already made one and it would not stand out from the sandy beach color. So I experimented with white. just to be close to the vintage original where the car and the beach have about the same monochromatic registration. Just like black, white is another uninteresting non-color though the various shades that can create details can be a challenge on its own, such as the Library of Congress and the NY Grand Central buildings that I did earlier. I played around and settled with off-white that has slight greenish hue. This gives the car some character without being aggressive. Now whether the real Winton model used that color is another matter. On the side, this is another colorization where I spent more time on the background than on the main subject.

Front seat: chauffeur on left, James Lockhart Autry, III. on right. Back seat left to right: James Lockhart Autry, II, Allie Kinsloe Autry, and Allie May Autry.

Colorized 1929 Graham Paige Coupe with Two Ladies in a Park

This is among my first vintage car photos i colorized and which I can now form as part of a series. While I don't usually like colorizing inanimate objects, cars with occupants create a more interesting subject than standalone cars.

Colorized Portrait of a Boy by Wilhelm von Gloedon

This portrait was first thought to be a woman, but turns out to be a beautiful Sicilian boy dressed like one and captured by the famous gay photographer Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden (1856 - 1931) at around the turn of the 20th century.  This was among my first colorization efforts, straightforward without engaging in creative liberties like changing the background which I could do later when revisiting my old works. As I am always on the lookout for vintage photos in the Public Domain, the works of von Gloeden with a large number of relatively high resolution prints have become a source. Never mind if his subject was mostly homoerotic.

Colorized 1920 Herbert E. French in a Packard touring car at the Library of Congress

Original Vintage Photo

This is a vintage photo of a certain Herbert E. French in a Packard Touring card  in front of the Library of Congress circa 1920.

Colorizing Options
Differentiating the various shades of white and grey for the backdrop was the main challenge. As usual, colorizing the car is open tovarious options, but decided on a red hue. This was one of the few colorization efforts with a second variation.  This time on a night time or dusk setting and using one of the Photoshop filters on rending lighting effects.

Colorized 1919 Haynes touring car with Family Passengers

Original Vintage Photo
Here's  a  vintage photo of the 1919 Hayes Touring at a California park (maybe the Golden Gate Park).

Colorizing Options

There would be no end to it if I could have my way.  I might be colorizing the same photo or portrait a thousand times and each one would offer a great visual experience. But I just have to make a conscious choice and sadly reject other equally wonderful coloring options. Black is often the least preferred options for colorizing a major photo element which in case is the car.  But for some reason, I chose black for the car body which allowed the little girl occupant in baby blue dress to stand out. Well, she would also stand out in pink.

Unfortunately, the outcome wasn't really as strikingly colorful as I wanted and a bit cold.  So rather than changing the color of the car, I made another version using autumn colors.  This was just one of the few instance when I made two colorized versions of the same photo. I have made a few others but the other options remained unfinalized. Take note, spring and autumn colors register about the same greys when desaturated for a black and white photo.

Creative Liberties: Colorized Lucille Ball 1946

Here's the gorgeous Lucille Ball that everyone knows from the I Love Lucy TV show of the 50s and early 60s. A near Rita Hayworth look-alike in her 30s (born 1911) she was a ravishing beauty but somehow didn't project the same screen presence or acting panache as Rita and became known as the Queen of B-movies. Her talent lay in comedy having starred with the Three Stooges and the Marx Bros at the start of her screen career. She ended up in Television as a comedian with Cuban husband Desi Arnez in the highly successful I Love Lucy sitcom. In this portrait, Lucy was already 35, quite old by Hollywood standards in 1946. Her TV career would soon start 2 years later.

Creative Liberties
This 1946 vintage photo was easy to colorize except that I invested a little more time to indulge in some little creative liberties. Sometimes an image element is not something I was to appear in the final outcome and simply Photoshop it out.  I don't know what that furniture behind Lucille was and just removed it as irrelevant to the outcome I wanted.

Creative Liberties: Coloized Wedding Portrait of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy

Creative Liberties

Vintage photos provide an opportunity to engage in creative liberties that enhance the outcome.  This is what matters to me - the outcome.  Faithfulness to the original photo is a illusory considering that the colorization process on its own creates an entirely new visual experience that renders the original vintage photo a mere outline and a shadow. The outcome is no longer the same as the original. That is why colorized vintage photos can be copyrighted.  They are legally considered derivative works entitled to their own intellectual property protection for the colorizer.

Here is a vintage portrait of the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis taken in 1953 on the day of her wedding to Senator John F. Kennedy from Massachusetts. I could have used baby blue, fuschia, yellow or mint green on her dress that can create a more pleasing visual result. However, from online sources, I learned her wedding dress was white. That was the only concession I made but the rest were all a products of creative liberties that on the whole renders the colorized image entirely different from the original.

Colorized New York Grand Central circa 1910

The edifice  is not exactly the best example of architectural creativity but it was an imposing landmark that is now just another major train station overshadowed by towering New York buildings  surrounding it.   Here is the Grand Central just a few years after its construction was completed in 1903 with continuing improvements.  I am not sure about the exact year this was taken, but the large presence of horse-driven carriages suggest it may not be later than 1910-1915.