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Rescued Photo from the Archive

On October 4, 1993, I paid a visit to Groveton, NH to photograph this NHV GP9 working trackage around the old paper mill.

It was a dark morning, so I was working with Kodak E100 LPP Ektachrome that was rated at ISO 100, two stops faster than my staple color film: Kodachrome 25.

Despite the faster film, I badly miscalculated exposure and the resulting color slide was too dark for presentation. For more than 30 years, it sat in a Kodak box labeled ‘Seconds’ along with a host of other rare photos, including an Alco RS-11 passing the ball signal at Whitefield exposed earlier the same day.

To rescue the Groveton photo, I made a multiple-pass scan using a Nikon LS-5000 scanner driven by VueScan software. I significantly increased the sample rate to minimize the loss of data. Then I imported the RAW file into Lightroom, where I made a variety of heavy-handed adjustments to lighten shadows and hold detail in the sky in order to make for a more pleasing photograph.

Here, I’ve posted bothe unadjusted ‘dark’ photo, and my post processed version aimed to restore the scene so that it looked more like I recall the light on that morning many years ago.

My original scan of my slide as it appears without adjustment. This is more than a full stop underexposed.
My rescued version of the same scan. I lightened the photograph, adjusted shadow and highlight areas, while making localized improvements to various areas of the scene, and adding saturation and contrast controls.

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