Sandra Marvin lent me a photograph to see if I could locate where it was taken and so started a trail that links in to many parts of Whitstable history.
First the picture:
All Sandra could tell me was that the young lady on the left was her mother, Doris Emily Mary Bean, at some time in the 1930′s (from her marriage on 2nd October 1937, Doris Osborne). She had no idea about the other young lady nor why it was taken outside the business of Geo. Reeves.
On inspection of the picture I realised, that despite some creasing and edge wear, it appeared to have been developed on good quailty photographic paper from a good definition negative. Indeed, there was some suggestion that the picture may have been taken by Douglas West or his father for the family.
My first task was to scan the picture at a high resolution in an attempt to bring out more detail, which was successful and proved that the photograph was probably taken and developed by a professional.
I then worked on the damaged areas with careful use of the clone tool. This enables the replication of nearby pixels over the damage to replace the lost areas.
Whereas this operation does clean up a picture it is most useful where identical areas are found, in this case the edge of the window. useing such a tool on something like facial features is beset with difficulties, not least that one has to guess what the missing bits looked like and inevitably one ends up with something that may not look as it was before the damage, i.e. the facial features.
Here you can see a section of the detail before any cloning work, but after balancing of the highlights, lowlights and shadowing had taken place.
Already the increase in resolution was bringing out some clues for later investigation such as the number on the door and a poster offering Freehold Building Sites on the May Downs Road development.
I’ll show you a low resolution of the finished picture at the end but for now let’s start to find out more about where the picture was taken.
