Mom in Pueblo (Digitally Modified Snapshot)

Mom in Pueblo (Digitally Modified Snapshot)
Originally uploaded by randubnick

This image began as a snapshot that I came across in an album today, a picture of my mom in front of our house in Pueblo. The snapshot was undated, but it looks to be around the mid-1940s, around the time she married my dad. I thought my mom looked great in the original black and white photo, but the snapshot needed to be rescued. There were the usual scratches and marks, but the biggest problem was that the film hadn't been properly advanced, so at the top of the image, there was a line, and above the line, two sets of women's shins (part of the photograph taken immediately before this one)! I thought I could rescue the snapshot, so I decided to try. I scanned the photo into the computer, and then used iPhoto to crop out the extra frame with the extraneous legs, and then cleaned up a few stray marks. (While I was at it, I got rid of my mother's cigarette, something I was never able to do by any other means.) Then I added a little color by using Painter's color overlays and then posterized the image. I liked the composition as it was, but still decided to crop a little closer, and this is the result. Now my mom is the center of attention in this image, and that is what I want for today, because November second was her birthday.