I have a really hard time calling it quits. But sometimes it has to be done.
Night before last I realized that I had gotten myself into an impossible situation. There have only been a few times I have dug myself into this particular hole. But...it sneaks up on you softly and before you realize it, you have done it.
It started out easy enough...the customer gives you a photocopy of a badly damaged photo. You see the folds across their faces and hear that it is the only picture of her mom and dad on their wedding day. It needs to be colorized and you are just confident enough to promise that miracle that they need.
So, you get a little deposit...she doesn't have half so you take half of what you normally would and you get started right away. Fire engine red hair, she says again and again. Blue eyes on mom...brown on dad...and a few other hints...so you put about 4 hours into it and it looks great...
But it isn't great. It isn't fire engine red...she meant auburn...but not dark auburn like the black hair in the black and white photo but less red and...now you have entered the no win zone. Try as you might, it just isn't the right shade....just not close enough. You make three more tries and finally it hits you...you have waaaay too much time in this one and it is never going to be right. It hit me when I saw 10 versions of the picture in the working file. Oooops...you did it again and now you gotta call it quits or you will spend more time losing the confidence of the customer and stuck in the lack of perfection that is a colorized photo restoration. What to do?
I have a funny thing about Karma. At this point I make the customer the best 8 x 10 photo that I can and give them their money back. Oh yes I do. I am the one that got their hopes up...I took their time and promised something that I was not able to deliver. In my mind, it is not the customer's fault. It is my fault that I did not set up the right expectations from the beginning.
Here is what I should have said..
Colorizing really old black and white photos is not an exact science yet, although some day it probably will be. I should have told her that I would do my best to capture the essence of colors,with pastels that mimic how photo artists did their job with colored inks many years ago. Some photo restorers today take the colors all the way up to look like the photo is modern, like it was taken yesterday. But I prefer to mimic the old colorization techniques along with less color saturation when the picture calls for that to look like it is really old. I don't want to take away from the picture by having people marvel at the technique rather than admiring the person in the photo fitting in with the time and place.
Be gracious and let some other professional take a crack at it. There are many photo restorers out there....see previous blogs :-). Then, write a blog about the subject so that others who want to restore photos have an idea of this and can avoid getting themselves into this situation.
Thank you for reading my blog. See you next week.
-------Follow Up to my previous blog!------
A couple of days after I called it quits, I got a note from the customer (after she cashed my refund check to her) begging me to give her 2 more free copies of the very first proof....she said she will try to pay me some day. No, I can't make this stuff up.
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