Many years ago there was a world-renowned photography college here, and their students were taught how to become very adept with the use of an air brush and charcoal. They took photographs of people in their regular every-day clothes and then added the "finery" to the picture using the air brush and charcoal. They also completely re-did people's hair styles! We have a picture of my husband's grandfather in Tennessee with a fine jacket on--but when you looked beneath his beard you could see there was no tie and his shirt was "homespun". That same picture shows him with really fake-looking hair--baldness ran in the family, and no doubt he didn't have much hair, so they tried to fix that! The photographer who made negatives and prints of some of our old family pictures was married to a much older man who had been a student at that college. He had shown her how to identify these pictures and how they were re-worked, and it was she who could spot those little details. Marian ----- Original Message ----- From: <Acltk2@aol.com> To: <KENTUCKIANA-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Saturday, January 01, 2005 1:10 AM Subject: Re: [KENTUCKIANA-L] photos...how did they do it? > >>Thinking maybe these families even paid the photographer with food or other > goods. Can't imagine they could spare a dime if they even had it for a > family photo. > >> > > > I have a tintype (or something similar) of an ancestor in one of those suit > coats that has a velvet-looking collar to it. We think we know who the > relative is, but wanted to pin down the time period using the coat. It fits him > fairly well, so it didn't necessarily belong to the photographer. > > I found a site online that dealt with historical clothing, more for the use > of theatrical costuming than anything. The site editor was nice enough to take > a look at my photo and told me that the coat was of the era we thought, but > that the young man seemed to be wearing the coat without a proper shirt collar > or tie! > > I'm not sure how he took it when I told him that the coat was probably handed > down from a relative and most likely was the only piece of the outfit he > owned. This would have been after the typhoid of the 1850's, followed by the > Civil War in the 1860's. He probably felt very much the gentleman in his finery, > and lucky to have it at that. > > JA > > > ==== KENTUCKIANA Mailing List ==== > To reach the list administrator go to: > pmount@nre.umass.edu > > ============================== > Search Family and Local Histories for stories about your family and the > areas they lived. Over 85 million names added in the last 12 months. > Learn more: http://www.ancestry.com/s13966/rd.ashx >