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Color from Greyscale-My Version of Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother (1936)


ALB68

ALB68

Dear Departed Guru and PSG Staff Member
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Here is my colorized version of Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother photo from 1936 during the Great Depression. I tried to maintain the mood of the image, as that was a very dark time in our Nation's history. Many of you young people on here have no idea how bad this was. I was born after it happened but my parents, and my brother spoke of what really hard times were then. This photo portrayed it very well I think. This family undoubtedly had migrated to California to find work picking peas. This woman was 32 yrs old at the time and had 7 children, living in a tent. Now, that's hard times!
Migrant Mother rgb.jpg
Library of Congress source file
Migrant Mother GS.jpg
 
Only just came across this from another thread... wish i could do something like that...its great... but i did notice that the thumb and part of a hand in the bottom r/h corner is coloured the same as the cloth and the tree.
 
inkpad.t said:
Only just came across this from another thread... wish i could do something like that...its great... but i did notice that the thumb and part of a hand in the bottom r/h corner is coloured the same as the cloth and the tree.
Click to expand...

I did this some time ago and it was posted here. I guess it got bumped up because I linked to it as demo in another thread last week.
As to the color of the cloth and the hand..I have an excuse..I'm OLD :bustagut: I guess I didn't recognize that has her hand.

Edit: I think you are referring to what appears to possibly be a thumb holding back the tent by the edge. Good catch on that if that is actually what we're seeing there.
The baby in the blanket is also colored incorrectly. I just noticed it. I am going to post a new version of this on this thread making those corrections and hopefully my technique will have improved since this one was done.
 
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Here's a fresh one as of today Dec. 21, 2014
 

Attachments

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inkpad.t said:
Wonderful.. Only wish i could do this type of stuff... really like it.. thanks for sharing it.
Click to expand...

Why can't you? If I can..anybody can. Just takes a little patience and some decent selecting ability.
 
@hawkeye
You treated the sweater on the woman differently from me which I think is correct. I viewed that as part of the boys garment as being a baggy old shirt. I may change mine based on your interpretation. Like your color selections and tones too. Good job!

Edit: One thing though, I don't think the people in yours look grundgy enough. You know these folks were living in a tent without any running water etc. I intentionally tried to maintain the look of being in bad circumstances.
 
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The skin tones are especially good, Hawkeye. For a moment, when I first saw it, I thought I was looking at a long lost color photo. :-)

Tom M
 
Good work gedstar. Take it back in though and go to Image/Adjustments/Shadow and Highlights and recover your detail and it will look great!
 
I like your grunge. The way these poor people had to live they had to be grungy, so the look is more authentic.
 
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