Handtinting photographs

I’ve spent a good part of my life handtinting photographs with a variety of paints, dyes, pastels, Photoshop etc. (There’s 30 years I won’t get back.) I recently signed up for a youtube channel and posted two handtinting how-to videos. Click here for a link to the first How-to Handtinting with Oils 101. The second video is specifically about tinting photo canvases with Marshal oils. At the end I include a timelapse portion, tinting a large canvas of a dead great white shark – guts and all – for a client to hang in a seafood / espresso shop down at the docks. Click here for that second video.

Here are some samples of photos I’ve colorized by various means:

Click on any image for a larger view:

: Infrared photo, fiber base silver print. Photo oils.

: Fiber base silver print, hand colored with oils.

: Infrared image. Fiber base silver print. Hand colored with pastels.

: Infrared photo, fiber base silver print. Photo oils.

: Rocket Camera photo. Fiber base silver print. Hand colored wiht photo oils.

: Infrared image. Hand tinted negative with dyes.

: Infrared image. Hand tinted negative with dyes.

: Fiber base silver print. Hand tinted with photo oils.

: This is a Pintoid (created using a pinhole camera made from an Altoids container). It is tinted using photo dyes.

: This is a Pintoid (created using a pinhole camera made from an Altoids container). It is tinted using photo dyes.

: This is a Pintoid (created using a pinhole camera made from an Altoids container). It is tinted using photo dyes.

This isn’t general knowledge, but I used to handtint black and white photos for magazine covers. It was a lot of fun. I recently came across some of the covers and thought I’d share.

: This was the very first cover I tinted.

: Ha! Fun times.

: The black and white original.

: The tinted image.

: Imagine my chagrin upon receiving this.

: But I made it through! I persevered! I tinted every single detail in this image. AND .. I did it with Photoshop. I ain’t no techinal dummy when it comes to software. The client simply needed an electronic file. That’s a lot of layers there.