Before & After Pictures ... With One Surprise

When I took some pictures at the Churchill Archives and when my wife Barbara took a picture of me at Chartwell, our only thoughts were to capture those memories. A website for my book was the furthest thing from my mind.
 
I loved the pictures and cherished the memories, but as I started to build my site, I realized that the pictures were depressingly dark, perhaps even unusable.
 
Of course there are a wide variety of software tools that help you improve the appearance of photographs. All I wanted to do was crop these pictures and, if possible, brighten then a bit. A bit of quick research for a simple and inexpensive tool led me to Adobe Lightroom.
 
As you will see, Lightroom worked its wonders.

I just added a new page to my site – it’s here - that lets you slide between the before and after versions of each picture. The after-versions are not just brighter, you can also see an astounding amount of additional detail, especially in the backgrounds. I have to admit with some embarrassment that until I brightened the picture of the reading room at the Churchill Archives, I had stopped noticing the bust of Winston Churchill that sat ready to peer over my right shoulder as I worked with his papers. The rediscovery of Sir Winston in that picture was almost as exciting as some of my research finds in the archives.
 
Lightroom also slightly leveled the horizontal plane of my Chartwell picture, so the old-to-new transition in that shot isn’t quite as smooth. Still, you will see an astounding transition of detail – especially in the brickwork and the roof tiles of Winston Churchill’s country home.
 
Thanks, as always, for reading. I hope you will take a look at these pictures too.
 
Bill