Photos make great Christmas gifts

It's been a while since I've posted something photography related. I did get the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS Image Stabilizer USM lens, but the weather has been so bad/cold here that I haven't had a chance to get out and use it yet. Monday and Tuesday are supposed to be sunny and around 65 F, so I am taking those days off from work to get out and enjoy the warmer weather and make use of this monster.

For Christmas, I usually do something photography related for my family. I usually create a calendar for my parents and sister. Last year the calendar was all photos that I had taken over the course of the year.

This year, I decided to do something different with the calendar. I have been teaching myself photo restoration and have made a project of restoring several boxes of my mother's old photos. For this year's calendar, I chose my sister and I as the theme. I sifted through 38 years of photos and picked out about 24 of my favorites to restore for the calendar. It was quite a time intensive project, but it turned out very nice and my sister and parents loved it!

I also chose to restore a 37 year old portrait of my grandparents (who are no longer with us) to give to my mother, her sisters (my aunts), and each of the grandchildren (my sister and cousins). I think that this really moved them. They had this picture already, but it was old and faded. I was glad that I could bring them so much joy and memories. This was a tough project because of the state of the photo, but I think my hard work on it paid off.

I used an Epson Perfection V700 Photo scanner, VueScan scanning software, Adobe Lightroom, and Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended for all photo restoration work.

Hopefully I will have some photos to share on Monday or Tuesday. I will probably hit the National Zoo and the Smithsonian area in Washington D.C.. I may even head out to Arlington National Cemetery. I haven't been out there in a few months.