Retro Album Project

A few month ago, I got a project to create a wedding album from existing prints from the wedding which happened back in 1984 in Lviv, Ukraine – 25 years ago! I received a bunch black and white paper prints took by some amateur photographer and a few color prints from some photo studio. I think, I remember when that studio was located and, I think, I was photographed there once as a wedding guest. Anyway, all those pictures where very old, some where damaged over time and some very faded and discolored. Especially, the color photographs. My task was to pick the images, arrange them into a story, scan them, retouch,  restore and make an album. Right away, I knew what kind of album would work for this project. The company, I order my wedding albums from, is offering some matted albums. They look very classic, just what I needed. I have to say, that it was fun to work on restoring old photos and giving them a new life. Otherwise, who knows what would happen to them… probably they would be laying somewhere in a closet for next 25 year… totally forgotten… I always was making albums for my clients. That is the only way to preserve your memories… Media disks are not able to store your images forever… they gonna last just for a few years. They just get unreadable over time… Technology may change… I remember, 20 years ago I was using floppy disks to store data. Now, modern computers even don’t have floppy drives in them anymore. What if I had my wedding pictures on a floppy drive? I won’t be able to read them now. They were replaced by CDs, now we use DVDs, which will be replaced by Bluray disks in a few years… Then, who know what else gets invented and what gets updated… Looks like paper has the longest life… We have books which were printed hundreds years ago… still readable. Albums is the best way to preserve your memories.

Here is the link to the slide show of entire album.

This is before and after pictures of one photograph. Amazing how over time colors faded and what modern technology can do to restore them. The colors still have that look produced by film made by Ukrainian film making company SVEMA.