Sydneytecture: College Street 1859

College Street 1859

Original

Today (Google)

Looking south from Hyde Park, we can see by the opposite embankment that the road has been regraded to make it flatter, as were many Sydney streets in the mid-19thC due to the city's hilliness. Many of the longer or steeper streets we see today are different from the original topography of the land.

In this pic, which is from the stereograph series by Hetzer, a German who was one of the earliest photographers in Sydney, is the then-newly built Australian Museum, with Sydney Grammar College further up, and Burdekin Terrace beyond.

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Sydneytecture is about more than just vintage photos of Sydney then and now in newly realised colour. The focus is on once-well known places that have been forgotten. And especially, identifying the interesting details in lost, anonymous images.

I also geolocate old mystery photos.

As an old Sydney buff, I wanted to see how life really looked to our ancestors in these faded black & white photos. But just colouring the old-tech wasn't enough, so I strive to make each photo as realistic as if it was taken by a modern camera. And for historical archival purposes, I ensure each is accurate to the original.

I do these just for my own enjoyment, and I thought I'd share them here for anyone who's also interested.

[*It's important to know that there are websites on YouTube and Facebook which claim to show vintage photos of Sydney "come to life". However, they are auto-generated AI, and are just totally fictitious cartoons, full of errors and false-invention, nothing at all 'real'.]

Each restoration can take days to craft, to ensure they're true to their original. (The main page here shows low-resolution previews, so click to enlarge for clearer detail.)

Google Street View is usually linked, so you can check out how each scene is today.

All photos are from Trove, and all dates are confirmed via Sand's Directory and Dove's Maps.

I regularly upload new posts.

How it's done

As an amateur, I work the manually-intensive way. First, the monochrome source image is enhanced in Photoshop to identify the various elements that require work, along with other areas for concentration. Next, I run any necessary elements through Flux or Nano B2 for primary colouring. The next stage is layer work and assembling in Affinity. The final stage is PS again, where all the fine work on light levels, contrasts, colouring, toning, and refinements are done. Most importantly, everything is constantly cross-matched with the original source image to ensure accurate replication.

...And yet, as AI engines improve, within a year or two all of this will be redundant, as their image-generation capabilities will no doubt be on par.