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How to hand-colour your photos :: Photocritic photography blog

I recently had a conversation with Bob Keefer – a talented photographer who has decided to hang on to some traditional techniques in a world which is accelerating at full speed toward better, faster, stronger… His party trick is impressive: Take a black-and-white photograph, and colour them. By hand.

Creating gorgeous, real-yet-unreal photo-based art which redefines how you’ll think about photography and digital retouching? Obviously, I had to catch up with Bob to see what, how – and perhaps, most importantly – why…

From the beginning of the 20th century, right up through the 1950s or so, commercial hand colouring was relatively common. Today, there are a few photographers who keep the spirit alive.

“I’m old enough to have grown up with some old hand coloured photos around the house when I was a kid in Alabama.”, says Bob. “There was a beautiful hand coloured portrait of my grandfather, a genuine Southern rogue, in our family album. One of my early baby pictures was hand coloured as well.”

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