Family • Photo Restoration • 21 • Taci

Here is my latest photo restoration and video editing project, in memory of father, Vaclav ‘Taci’ Dusil.

Collage	14 hours	The concept of this layout came to me a few months ago, one evening just before I fell asleep. The first challenge was to get the black matte just right so that the design would size to my printer. I also needed to make sure the wings would settle neatly within the matte. Next was to group, scale and space the photos to the size of the angel wings.
Photo Montage	72 hours	Video editing was a tedious process. I had to essentially re-size each picture all over again – this time in Adobe Premiere Pro, then animate each photo in sequence to mosaic the wings. The ‘Taci’ animation was done in Adobe After Effects.
Photo Restoration	198 hours	There are 138 photos in total – 69 in each wing. The work spanned two months. Many of the original photos were annotated by my father. I initially used them in the collage, but I felt that the final layout was too messy with the added text.
Passion	∞ hours	My dad maintained a beautiful visual diary of his youth. It’s been a privilege to restore his photos, and create a lasting archive for my family. I’ve joined a group of individuals in the genealogy community, who have felt the emotion from that split second in time when a photo was taken.