I realized that it's been quite some time since I shared some scans of slides that were very faded and pink. As usual, I attempted to color-correct them, and they definitely look better, though they still leave something to be desired.
So... here's one, in its unrestored state. Pretty bad!
The restoration improved things a lot, we even have a bit of blue in the sky. There's still a pinkish cast to some of the buildings; after fiddling around with it for a while, I decided that this was about as good as I was going to get. Imagine going to the park on a November day (presumably a weekday), and seeing it so empty! Walt was surely not happy about it, but the holidays were approaching, and I'm sure tens of thousands of people would show up soon.
Next: Fantasyland, right next to Merlin's Magic Shop (to the right). There's not a child to be seen!
Major-
ReplyDeleteI'd be happy to go back to that Disneyland - faded or no-! I would bet many of the folks in the 2nd image were born in the late 1800's. Must'a felt like going back home for them to just walk down Main Street, USA.
Thanks, Major.
Wow, the smog is reeeeally bad in the first image! ;-)
ReplyDeleteIn the restoration, like you said, things look a LOT better! Also like you said, not perfect. The color and lighting here remind me of the look of the movie "Asteroid City" (2023), which had an exaggerated, somewhat weird lighting and coloration to it... i.e., surreal.
The second faded image looks like it was taken at the moment a hydrogen bomb was detonated. I was going to add that everyone here was turned to ash a second later... but that seemed too dark humored, even for me. So I deleted it. ;-p
Now THIS one turned out much better! If we hadn't seen the original, faded version, I would never have guessed that this had been restored. Although, now that I look more closely, the roof tiles on Merlin's Magic Shop look really magenta-colored. They're not normally that color, are they? We also see the Disneyland mailbox next to the keppy cap. I think that's Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) staring at us , wearing the gray suit and hat. He must've used his DeLorean to go back to 1961 and photo-bomb this picture just to mess with our minds. Now he's back in the here-and-now, looking at this post and chuckling.
Nanook, facts like that (born in the 1800s) really set my mind spinning. Kind of amazing!
Major, don't wait so long to show us more before-and-after scans next time! Thank you for showing us these restorations.
Great job, Major! Congrats on your success. What does it say on the magic shop sign, underneath the words, "Merlin's Magic Shop"? JUST KIDDING! We figured that out two weeks ago (on July 8th's GDB post)!
ReplyDeleteNanook and JB, my fried chicken-toting great grandmother was born in 1897. She almost lived to see the Millennium, but passed away in mid-1999. She was about to turn 102, and she was still mentally sharp!
Thanks for sharing these with us, Major!
Nice job. I really like the Fantasyland pic. In the foreground, 7 elderly women, 3 elderly men and 0 children. Must be senior discount day.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Major.
Wow, nice restorations! Is that a trash can peeking around the potted plant? Such a happy color and is it encouraging us to waste, please? I can't read it. And if it isn't a trash can it should be.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the hard work, Major.
Zach
Major, nice work on the touch-up here. Both pics are significantly improved and the new versions are not just good, they’re good enough!
ReplyDeleteI will question the dating of photo 1, based strictly on the two plain green trash cans. We know from other dateable pics (based on attraction posters and propers house shows) that the green cans began to be replaced by fancy cans, starting with Town Square in mid-1957. I think photo 1 is much earlier than 1961.
Photo 2 is harder for me to date since the hip-roof model cans (consisting of a plain green can with a fancy “hat”) seem to have been in the Castle courtyard from the very beginning. The example in the photo is rendered in an odd mustard yellow, which must be a result of the color correction, since we see this can (or its sibling) in other pics in the same pale green as the original cans.
I think both pics are very entertaining, thank you for your great efforts!
JG
Nanook, I’m sure you’re right about the folks in photo #2 being born in the 1880s or 1890s, it’s incredible to think about. Then again, my niece thinks that the 1960s, when I was born, is “ancient history”.
ReplyDeleteJB, I liked “Asteroid City” a lot (in fact I like almost every Wes Anderson movie a lot - I recommend “The Phoenecian Scheme” if you haven’t seen it) and the color palette was strange but great. Those turquoise blues! I agree that the second example turned out better as far as color restoration goes, but it still isn’t perfect, as evidenced by those too-magenta roof shingles. This was another example of “if I fix that, then something else goes off”, so I had to pick a happy medium. I could have spent more time on it and made it more perfect, but at some point I lose patience. I think that “Doc Brown” looks more like Judge Doom! I do have more “before/after” slides, but I don’t know when you’ll see the next examples!
TokyoMagic!, ha, I noticed the “extra text” on this Merlin’s sign too. I wonder how many versions of that sign were made over the years? Perhaps only two. My grandma was born in 1905, and it always amazed me to think that her family had a horse and buggy, and she lived until space travel and personal computers.
K. Martinez, in those early “slow seasons”, it was the retirees that kept Disneyland going!
zach, good eye, yes that is a trashcan, I think it says “Please” and “Waste Paper”. I wonder if it was placed there because guests tended to litter in that exact spot?
JG, ha ha, “good enough” is sometimes all I can hope for! I don’t have the slides in front of me (since they were scanned many months ago), and it is always possible that I made an error in dating, but I generally try to be somewhat careful with that. I’m pretty sure that the mustard-yellow can is accurate and that it was not green, it even looks yellow in the faded version.
Major-
ReplyDelete"I’m sure you’re right about the folks in photo #2 being born in the 1880s or 1890s, it’s incredible to think about. Then again, my niece thinks that the 1960s, when I was born, is “ancient history”.
And those folks born in the 1880's and 1890's probably thought the same of people who may have been born in the 1820's and 1830's. And so it goes...