My customer John G had a photograph he had taken of an old oil painting of an early member of his family (centre photo above). The photograph he gave me was not very good quality itself and you can see by the close up of the face on the left that the surface of the painting was also very cracked and damaged.
On the right is the same section after I had digitally restored it.
Holly asked me to create this photograph for her mum.
She left this review on Google:
Richard at Photographs Forever blended three photographs together for me of my mum with myself and two sisters, one who sadly passed away when she was a baby before my second sister was born. It’s a photograph that would have been impossible to do but my mum wished she had a photo of us all together and now she does. It made her cry and is the sort of thing that is absolutely priceless and means so much. Richard stayed in touch the whole time and his communication was second to none. Such a professional service and very reasonably priced too. Will definitely be using him again!
Carol send me the creased old photo to restore. Her romantic story is below.
‘So the original photo was taken in London in 1998 in a pub called the Bram Stoker Tavern. Adam worked there, he was on a work visa from Australia. At the time he was 20 and I was 21.
I was a nanny that lived around the corner. One evening I walked into that pub and was greeted by his cute Aussie accent declaring that I was the most beautiful woman he has ever seen.
We fell madly in love! Both of us had never been in love before. After a year I decided I hated living in London and wanted to come home back to my country life in Oxfordshire. Adam didn’t want that and unfortunately we split up. Both of us being stubborn.
Fast forward 20 years, he had been looking for me for years on Facebook but I had my married name still even though I was divorced but I found him! I never stopped thinking about him. He told me that he had never stopped loving me and he wished he had moved to Oxfordshire with me all those years ago.
After a few months of online dating he gave up his job and moved to England. We are planning to get married and have a couple of children. Life is really good. ‘
Here is a photograph I restored recently that had a burnt patch and lots of creases. I removed them and then went on to add colour.
My customer Brian C contacted me to restore his Grandfather’s certificate on which the handwritten personal information had badly faded in the frame. I asked Brian for the story behind his enquiry and he wrote this back to me –
“The certificate was presented to my Grandfather, an engine driver at Horsham, Sussex when he retired from British Railways in 1964.
It had hung on the wall in his house for many years, in a frame with no mount or seal and in bright sunlight. The effects of this are clear from the pre-restoration pictures.
When he died in 1982, I was given the certificate, which I had properly mounted and framed, however the damage was already done.
I have looked from time to time for somebody to restore it, however those I contacted all said it was too difficult. I saw your website and what you do, the old telegram being the clue, as most of your work is around photographs and I thought I would contact you to see if you could do anything for me. The answer is plain to see – a beautifully restored certificate, which looks like new, and will grace my wall as a nice reminder of my late Grandfather.”
John, now long retired, and in the centre picture as a boy, had these three photographs of his brother, himself and his dad on his brother’s new motorbike. He the thought the photographs were beyond repair and was absolutely thrilled that I managed to get the photographs to look this good again. I even turned his dad around so they are all facing the same way to go into the frame!
My customer John G wanted to get his grandfather with his two brothers together in a single photograph with a Scottish background.
Here are the three individual photographs and below the final result
Here’s the review John left for me on Yell.com
“Please accept my wonderful thanks for the restored colour job you did to the photo of my late grandfather and his two brothers.
I was very pleased to be awarded Best Photograph Restoration Specialists for 2019!
SME News were delighted to present the annual UK Enterprise Awards, proudly encompassing a multitude of exciting and vibrant business industries from across the UK. As a business community, the UK, is renowned for its ability to thrive in diverse conditions and strive through times of economic uncertainly. For this reason, SME News celebrates and showcases some of the triumphs from those among the UK’s strongest and most innovative businesses and business owners within the UK Enterprise Awards each year. We are delighted to award Best Photograph Restoration Specialists 2019 to Photographs Forever for the outstanding quality of their work and efficiency
This photograph started out as a faded and dull black and white transparency in a cardboard mount.
My customer Lesley was very pleased with the outcome.
She messaged me:
“I have just received the photos and I am totally delighted. You are so clever I can’t thank you enough. I will be sending you more things through once I have moved house. Please let me know where I can leave a review for your business. As I said previously you take such a chance when choosing a service from the internet and I am so glad I chose you.”
I often get asked to reproduce family photograph albums so that various members of the family can share the family history.
I was asked by Moira to recreate an important family photo album so that both she and her sister could have a copy of the book with the historic photographs and handwritten descriptions.
Below is the original and the new lay-flat photobook I created.
Moira said “My sister and I are just glad that we have this marvelous record to share and that you could bring it back to life for us”
Old album and new photobook
Moira told me
“My father signed up for his national service because the Essex Regiment were going to be posted to India. He had a place a medical school but deferred it to go to India. He loved it there, a complete culture shock from Chingford. The army taught him to drive, allowed him to play hockey and he was upset to leave India having fostered a dog there that he had to leave. My father was a doctor so army life was far from ideal but he appreciated the opportunity he was given and never forgot his time there. He was a keen photographer and you can see the care he took to display each photograph and carefully write an inscription.”
