Jackie Robinson Photo
 

Just thought id share another piece from my photo collection. Very clear and awesome image of Robinson. Was curious to why there is this blueish tint on certain areas of the photo? Is this due to being a original photo? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

http://i450.photobucket.com/albums/q...sfa36a524.jpeg

Joey, I assume you do not even have this in hand yet thus the question?

Hey ben! Yes ive actually had this for awhile. Never knew why it had that blueish tint on some places

Are you speaking of the silver gelatin?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gelatin_silver_process

Yes...is that just a normal part of the photo

Could also be some light press art/shading.

Yup.. does it "shine like a diamond" in the light or does it look like something added Joey?

It has a shine to it...definitely not something added (editorial markings) or anything like that

It looks like a light wash of gray "editor's paint" in those areas used to enhance the contrast of the printed image. That's just looking at the scan though, and I don't think I've ever seen that have a "blue" color unless something else stuck to the paint. (FWIW, it looks more gray than blue to me, but again, I'm not looking at it in person)

The "silvering" that I have seen is usually such that you can look at the photo from one angle and it looks like a normal black/white image, but when you tilt it, you will see the light reflecting on the darker portions of the photo, giving it a silver or mirror-like effect. It can show up in scans, but those are not the areas I would expect to see it in.

Yup, it can be very subtle sometimes and not as obvious as some crop jobs you see on press photos.

I'd wager that's exactly what it is.

Joey - the blueish tinting you see is actually retouching "paint" applied with an airbrush.

Before computers and Photoshop, lots of photo enhancement/retouching was done by hand with an airbrush. It was quite a difficult technique to master and people could make living as a retoucher of photos. Not all retouching was done with airbrush; it could also be done with brushes and paints and even colored pencil.

In the case of black & white photography, the retoucher's goal was usually to add contrast or highlights so that when the photo was screened into a halftone (dots) and reproduced in newsprint or magazine, the image would not look as flat or muddy...edges and highlights would show up more distinctly. For a photo reproduced in one color (black ink), the camera used to make a halftone of your image would "see" the blueish paint as gray (in the same way that he blueish paint would show up as gray if you made a photocopy of your photo print).

I've worked in advertising/commercial art for nearly 35 years and for maybe the first 20 of those years, retouching was all done by hand by craftsmen. Today, all of this work is done in a computer. And when the artist makes a mistake, all he has to is hit "undo." In the old days, the retoucher would probably try to paint over the mistake and try again...or in the worst case, start over with a new photo print.

+1

Nice pic, Joey.