Sydneytecture: Lost Villas of Sydney: Paddington, Bentham Place 1870s

Lost Villas of Sydney: Paddington, Bentham Place 1870s

Original

Today (Google)

On Oxford Street (ex-Old South Head Road), at the corner of Elizabeth Street. From much digging, I found it was built by Mr Perry in the 1830s. The estate was sold by executors for subdivision in 1882, and by 1888 the house was gone and commercial buildings were in its place, fronting the road that was the main route east to Waverley.

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Sydneytecture is more than vintage photos of Sydney restored in colour. The focus is on once-well known places that have been forgotten, and identifying their lost details.

I also geolocate historical mystery photos.

As an old Sydney architecture 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 as I enjoy making these, 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'.]

My image restorations can take days to finalise, ensuring they're accurate to the original for archival purposes.

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 I work

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 Flux2 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.