Mrs Johnson came to me with this photo panorama of her farm - Te Waimate Farm, Ohaeawai, Northland. She and her husband had sold it to their farm hand. He’d been working there since he was 18 and is now 50, so he must have liked the place! The photo was taken in spring of 2007. Mrs Johnson said the image was made from 4 separate photos and had joined them herself, doing a very good job. I printed three copies of the photo for her, each image being 30 x 10 inches or 76 x 26cm in size. The images looked excellent, and could have been printed even bigger.

Chris came to me with a series of photos he wanted copies, cleaned up, restored and reprinted. This particular one was of him getting off a bus on a school trip in England, 1955. He took this photo in to be developed. The photo was taken to the Kodak labs in Hull, where they were printed and proofed by the staff. As it turns out, Chris’s sister was a proofer there, looked at the photo and shouted out words to the effect - “Hey, that’s my brother!”. Chris was blown away by the quality of the new prints and told me it exceeded what he was expecting and that it made his day!

Paul had this photo of a yacht race in Auckland Harbour. He wanted the photo altered, with the other yachts and writing on the sails removed. I carefully took everything out, rebuilt the background of the missing areas and altered the colours to a more natural look. Once Paul had seen the final proof he got me to enlarge and print the photo to 36 inces x 30 inches (912mm x 762mm). Paul was very happy with the final print and is now getting it professionally framed.

This was a more unusual request for a photo restoration project. Shelly bought in this torn damaged photo in need of some serious photo fixing. Someone in the past had tried the old method of repair - tape it up. It left a horrible dark stain across the image.

Shelly wanted only the left side of the photo fixed as these were the important relatives to her. I scanned in the image, joined up the tear joins as accurately as possible, then restored the sections of the photo according to Shelly’s instructions. Shelly was thrilled with the print and immediately ordered another photo print.

Bethley bought me this photo of her distant relatives’ homestead. It was built in the 19th century located at Maungakaramea, 20 minutes drive away from Whangarei- the house is still standing looking very much the same as in the photo. The image was in serious need of restoration work. I patiently removed every small mark as the photo was going to be printed to an 11 x 14 size. Bethely loved the job done on it and has now given me a 45 photo restoration project for an up comming jubliee of the Maungakaramea community. This will take quite a while, it took me over a day to scan the photos in!

Blair came to me about getting 2 copies of an aerial shot of some land on the outskirts of Whangarei printed onto canvas. It was a crop taken from a digital photo. I enhanced the photo and printed it on canvas onto a frame 1m wide. Blair was wrapt with the service and then recommended his workmate to also have a panorama image printed to canvas.

Started back yesterday after 2 weeks of some relaxation - and doing some cycling to burn off the Christmas excess. This included a 127km round trip to Paparoa. Sounds insane but after spending all day in front of a computer, hitting the road seems like a good idea (my mates think I’m crazy). A lot of work to get thru from before Christmas. Some big restoration/scanning projects and canvas and photo prints to sort out already, with new queries and orders coming through. 2008 will be a big year as the business steadily grows.