VENTURA, CALIFORNIA (1874)

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The year is 1874. It’s July 4th in the home of American Photo Colorizing.com – Ventura, California. Ventura, north of Malibu and south of Santa Barbara, is famous for two top surfing spots, The Rincon and Surfers Point. But back in 1874, a mere 141 years ago – the community bore closer resemblance to Tombstone, Arizona and Dodge City, Kansas. One would never imagine that the blue Pacific Ocean is only blocks away, since not one horse or buggy in the photo has a surfboard on top.

Now, here is Ventura today. Many of the old buildings still line Ventura’s downtown streets, but the horse ‘n’ buggies have been replaced by dune buggies and street rods.

QUEEN OF SURF GUITAR (1963)

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The year is 1963. Kathy Marshall was only 13 or 14 years-old – but she was jamming onstage with such surf music luminaries as Dick Dale & His Del-Tones, The Crossfires, and Eddie & The Showmen (shown here). Dick Dale claims to have bestowed on her the title “Queen of Surf Guitar”. Surprisingly, Kathy never formed her own group – nor did she ever record professionally. But, those who remember seeing her perform with top local surf bands, say she held her own on stage with the best surf guitarists of the mid-1960s.

As you can see, the original photo was shot in color. However, the color had degraded so much that I had to not only restore the image presence, but it was necessary to add fresh color to it, in order to get the image back to 1963. Now, HERE’S an image befitting a Queen!

STREETS OF NEW YORK (1899)

Welcome to the American Photo Colorizing.com photo blog! We colorize black & white photos for museums, television, print media, multi-media, and families like yours. A visit to our website gets you started: http://www.americanphotocolorizing.com

The year is 1899. This is New York City at the top of Broadway. The horseless carriage would soon make its arrival on city streets, yet as we see from the tracks in the foreground, trolley cars were in abundance. With the influx of immigrants from Europe, along with the borough of Queens and Staten Island officially joining the city, Gotham’s population had swelled to 3,500,000.

This photo appears to have been taken in the spring. New Yorkers had recently dug their way out from under the Great Blizzard of ’99. In July, the city’s newsboys, aka “newsies”, would go on strike. Just a bit of background behind the lives of the people of the New York City of 115 years ago.

HAPPY 4TH OF JULY (1918)

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The year is 1918. Nobody knows how to throw a parade like New Yorkers. It’s true now – and it was true nearly 100 years ago. Since we’re posting this blog edition just in time for Independence Day Weekend 2015, this parade image from the days of World War 1 just seemed to fit. As usual color was added by American Photo Colorizing (That’s us!).

Have a “safe ‘n’ sane” July 4th . . . Enjoy the festivities . . . and don’t blow yourselves up.