Jan had taken this nice photo of the KeriKeri estuary, New Zealand, featuring the historic Stone Store and Kemp House. There’s an interesting story to how Jan took this photo. She been taking photos of a small steam ferry that was cruising in the basin (just visible on the LHS). Jan had misplaced her camera bag and was looking through the bush for it when she looked up and saw this scene before her. She moved around until she had the perfect shot.

Jan had me enhance the colours in the photo, remove a modern speed boat spoiling the scene, then make a master proof. Jan has gone on to sell this image in calenders she made along with this 760mm x 350mm canvas panorama print. On a nice note, Jan couldn’t find her bag, but some people had noticed it on the ground, found her business card inside and contacted her.

I had a nice email from one of my regular customers today. Curtis had sent me a photo of a young girl to colorise (sorry, no photo this time). As with most colorisation jobs getting it right the first time can be difficult. Emailing Curtis proofs and making small adjustements, I was able to get it near perfect. The photo was printed and dispatched. Curtis emailed me this morning:
“Just received the photo today and I am so glad with it. It is exactly how I imagined it in my head. Once again thankyou so much for your time and effort!”

Helen from Auckland sent me this family photo needing some urgent photo alteration. Helen’s son on the far right was cut off. She wanted to have the whole of him in the photo. Helen provided some other photos of him taken at the same time to allow me to fit him in. Not only was he fully added in, but I also finished the remainder of the background and foreground. Also note in the top left corner the tree has an ugly protrusion - Helen asked me to remove this too.

When Helen saw the proof she replied “I’ve just come in and checked my e-mails and saw the proof from you. I’m very, very pleased with it! Thanks so much for a superb job. We’re just so pleased with how you managed to get what we wanted!”

Jack came to me with a suitcase literally full of slides to scan. He wanted them put on DVD so he look at them on his TV. Jack used to be a pilot in his younger days and also did a lot of hunting out the back areas of New Zealand.

Here are a couple of hunting shots in the back areas of the South Island. Another is one of his plane on the beach at Dargaville to collect some shellfish! And finally, one parked out the front of the Rangitaiki pub! I scanned over 650 images for Jack. As I previewed them for him he remarked it was like looking thru his life again. He couldn’t wait to get home and look at them in detail.

This photo was sent to me from Auckland looking worse for wear and in serious need of repairing. Even though it had seen rougher days, I was able to fix the photo back to good condition again.

I had previously done a photo restoration job for Jan of a water damaged photo, taken in the Kaimanawa ranges New Zealand - the camera had taken a dunking in her backpack while crossing a stream. Jan was so happy with the first job, she ordered another copy of it, and brought in another damaged photo to fix. All the water spots were removed, the photo being repaired to original condition.

Jenny contacted me with a small photo alteration problem she wanted fixing. This is a family picture with Jenny’s sister on the right hand side. She’d had a very red nose - and it wasn’t from being on the booze! She’d been skiing in the snow and hadn’t put on any sun cream - hence the sunburned red nose. Jenny was never happy with the otherwise nice photo. She asked me if I could fix it. No probs. A couple of waves of the magic graphics tablet and all redness was gone - if only it was that easy in real life! Jenny had me print a couple if 5 x 7 and 11 x 14 photos to share with her family.

Jason called me enquiring about getting photo art-work projects printed, created by local polytech students. He bought in this image to be printed on photo art matt paper and my Epson Premium Luster paper. The theme was the copying of overseas culture and Jason wanted an ‘industrial’ type look. Here we see the image in it’s totality and the Z3100  printer creating a 1000 mm x 1500 mm photo print. Jason was very pleased with the results - I hope he gets an ‘A’.

Lois brought in a group of photos to be scanned and reprinted to give to her relations. The most important job was this one of her pioneer ancestors dating back to the 19th century. She wanted the father and wife to be sitting together on their own. My task was to extract them from the original image, restore any marks and imperfections then blend them together.

The man’s arm and left leg had to be extended to look like he was sitting just behind his wife. The background was then lowered to fill in the space behind them. Four copies of this and the other photos were made to be given as gifts to the rest of Lois’s family.

Rachel Mooney from Auckland, NZ, runs a business called ‘Art Of Nature’. She specialises in night time-lapse photography of nature scenes. Rachel was looking for someone whom could make fine art reproductions of her work onto canvas. Rachel contacted me, and after seeing my sample prints, gave me the three images above to proof and print onto canvas . These were mounted to A3 size frames and produced stunning vibrant colours. Rachel called me today to tell me how rapt she was with the prints.

Art of Nature