A Photo Project – Time Travel with Photoshop

This is 4 and a half year old Hazel hanging out on Ma-me-o beach with her Grandma Jeanette, also 4 and a half, in 1938.

Yup, Grandma and Granddaughter at the beach.  I did this using a photo from 1938, my Canon camera, and Photoshop.

This is the original photo:

It is Jeanette (Hazel’s Grandma) and her sister Joan at Ma-Me-O beach. The photo was hand-painted by Jeanette’s Aunt Helga. Helga was a photo tinting artist.

This has long been one of my favourite photos of Jeanette’s and when we noticed that Hazel and Jeanette were at the same age, we had to give reproducing it a try. So we headed to Ma-Me-O with a tin bucket, my Canon Rebel, and the original photo in a ziplock baggie. I excitedly told everybody I met that we were reproducing a historic photo from 1938! Nobody seemed quite as excited as me, though. Huh.

Here’s Hazel on Ma-Me-O beach in 2010:

You can’t see a row of buildings from the beach anymore like in the original photo. There’s a tree line there instead.

Here’s how I photoshopped Hazel into the original photo:

First I removed Joan from the picture. I know, it seems kind of mean — and she’s totally adorable! Sorry Joan!

I used Photoshop’s Clone Stamp tool to clone bits of the background onto where Joan was. Then I inserted Hazel into the photo.

Hand-painted photos are made by applying tint with a brush to black and white photos, so I converted Hazel into Black and White. Then I used the brush tool to get the same hand-painted look. I picked some tints and, well, painted them onto the photo.

If you’re trying this at home, make sure you set the Layer to “multiply” and turn down the opacity of your brush to about 50%.

I’m a total hack with Photoshop and I just kept hacking at it till I thought it looked right-ish. I had to blend the low-resolution sand from 1938 with the high-resolution sand from 2010. Hazel’s & Jeanette’s eyes are the same colour so I had to lighten her eyes.

Then I stole Joan’s bucket. It was just too beautiful, all hand-painted by Great Aunt Helga, to resist.

Et voila! Aren’t they a pair?

xoxo
Marlene