Outsidedown Productions

This month - June of 2024 - marks 9 years that Outsidedown Productions has been in business. A big thank you to all of the customers who have trusted me with their projects!

So, I am working on some audio tape today. Someone decided to bake a sticky tape, but actually put it in an oven (thankfully at very low heat). So the plastic reel is quite warped, and the tape still on the reel is clinging noticeably. Not sure how all of this tape got off of the reel - it came to me in the box (never pull sticky tape off of the reel!). My mission: I am baking it for 'reel' this time, which actually means dehydrating with very low heat for a long time. Then I hope to take the rest of the tape off of the reel, mount it on an intact empty reel, spool it up, and see if I can get some audio digitized for my client. Magnetic tape should be handled with cotton gloves, and not with bare hands. If the tape becomes 'not tacky', as it likely will (temporarily), I should be able to retrieve the audio and convert to digital. This yields a good result the vast majority of the time, although there are no guarantees. The trickiest part will be to untangle the mess carefully and get it back on a reel.

I recently finished a restoration on this 1969 photo. I have about 6 hours into this photo. Most photos with significant damage can be restored within 2 hours. It really depends on where the damage is. On this particular photo, parts of the thumb / hand are missing. Some shirt trim detail on the right side is missing, as is some detail in the space between the two people (shoulder area), which includes hair, clothing, and background. The missing parts of the curtain in the background and the hair it joins were complicated. There are many long cracks, some running through hair. This requires both creativity and patience. Sometimes the 'surgery' on a damaged part starts to go down a path that is not yielding a good result. As I work on an area, I often 'back out' to see how it is looking in a larger context. If it isn't working, I have to back up a number of steps and try a different approach. I do many repairs and restorations on photos, but a restoration with this much repair and detail is unusual. A big 'thank you' to my client who gave me permission to share this...

Outsidedown Productions has added Kodak disc negative scanning to the ever-growing list of formats & services. This technology was new in 1982, and the negatives were manufactured until the end of 1999. There are millions of these little discs out there waiting to be rescued and digitized. I have a custom template for scanning these, and got some practice in on the process. There are 15 negatives on a disc. They are very small, difficult to keep dust free and align accurately on the scanner. I can scan a complete disc (15 photos) in roughly an hour. The photos will need cropping and work done after that (optional). Call or e-mail Jef today to plan your next project...

This testimonial will print soon...and it's true - the Bargain Hunter has been really good for Outsidedown Productions...