Friday, April 4, 2008

Photo restoration via Second Life

AM Radio is an avatar who is restoring photography by moving across platforms, from Real Life, to Second Life.

For those of you who are new to this concept, allow me to explain. AM Radio is actually a man with a degree in Fine Arts who sits at his computer and "operates" an avatar - a representation of himself that he has created - in an immersive 3-dimensional world. He is also a content creator, because in Second Life he uses the tools that are available to him there to build things.

That said, he has done something rather novel that could prove significant in years to come, insofar as photo restoration is concerned.

"This is a photo of my great, great grandfather delivering bread in North Reading Massachusetts. It was in sore need of a restoration. A new scanner allowed for a nice hi-res source in Photoshop. The original photo is huge. It is 24 inches across. If anyone knows how such a photo was created at the turn of the century, let me know. The paper is applied to a cheese cloth type material and the emulsion on the paper is very thick and fragile," said AM.

He continued,"The wheel was easier to recreate in Second Life than to draw the missing parts of the wheel from scratch. I did post production of the color and texture in Photoshop."


Photography provided by AM Radio

There is a lot more that impresses us about AM Radio, which you can begin to learn about here and here.

1 comments:

Unknown said...

Thanks for the encouragement Bettina!

This has spawned some ideas for more artistic pursuits with Photoshop from AM Radio. Look for some 2d ("flatland") art work soon.