More Adventures In AI-Assisted Photo Restoration

Before & After

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After: enhanced portrait
Before: original portrait
BEFOREAFTER
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Yes, once upon a time your host had a beard. It was the first and only time. Now I want to grow one, but I no longer can. The radiation of 23 years ago for my first cancer made quick work of the follicles on my cheeks and jaw, and once gone, they never grow back. Still, I have my memories…

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There’s Nothing Worse…

…than going through your photo albums in search of a particular photo that for whatever reason is missing from your digital archive—and realizing along the way that there are dozens of photos that either never got scanned or have gone missing as well.

I guess I have a new project.

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Am I The Only One Who Misses This?

Damn it! Another AI generated image that isn’t immediately obvious.

At first image this looks like a real photograph. But then I noticed something was off about the CDs in the racks. They weren’t square, nor were they in the long-box packaging that briefly flourished in the 90s to thwart shoplifting. Then I noticed the generic posters hanging over the racks and then the shopper’s feet in the foreground.

Here’s a real photo of the glory days:

Amoeba Records, Haight Street SF, August 1998

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You Can Never Go Home

I was responding to this post on reddit when I thought I could do one better than just driving by the house. We actually had the opportunity to go in the house the last time it was on the market and took the naturall took lots of photos. Apparently that sub only allows one attachment per post, so I had to assemble the photos I had in mind into a single image.

(Yes, there was a bit of Photoshop restoration work done on the two photos from the 70s.)

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In An Alternate Universe

Prompt: Age the person in this photo 45 years. Give him a shorter haircut and a full beard.

The Butterfly Effect. Different genetics, different timeline, different struggles.

But since we’re playing around today…

This is the eternal me, the forever 28-year old guy that lives in my head.

And that guy who never thought to grow a beard until it was too late to actually do it.

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HOW Does It Know?

Prompt: Cleanup, sharpen, and colorize.

It got the color of the patchwork suede jacket almost exact. The flannel shirt was indeed red, and the t-shirt underneath was navy.

As my dad used to say, “How do it know?!”

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Happy Equinox!

And in honor of the day, the morning soundtrack:

Jean Michel Jarre – Equinoxe (1978)

And once again I am twenty years old, skimming over a vast sea of golden dunes in my landspeeder under a double sun in a hazy, wheat-colored sky…

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Random Photos From SF

North Baker Beach

Just a few photos I discovered on my hard drive in a folder called Scans (to be sorted). Looks like most of them are from 1988-89.

Marin County Artillery Embankments
Dave on Yerba Buena Ialand
I Have Always Been Incorrigible (on the Ferry to Sausalito)
View of San Francisco from Yerba Buena Island
View toward Twin Peaks from my apartment on Folsom in 1989 (shortly before the earthquake)
Home improvement. Or something.
Kenny and your host.
The view of downtown from my place on Fell Street, aka “Hell on Fell”
First brief domicile in The City on Haight Street. “The City will chew you up and spit you out.”
Point Bonita Lighthouse, Marin County
From Coit Tower
The curved escalators at Neiman-Marcus. Maybe. I think it was Neimies..
SF and Alcatraz Island
Your host drawing medicine wheels at Black Sand Beach, Marin County
The medicine wheel itself. Lots of symbology for what I was going through at the time.
A modern “Victorian” that caught my eye.
Our first place in The City where our name was on the lease: 1738 Laguna Street
Mid-span of the Golden Gate Bridge
Your host at Battery Crosby
Rory at Sutro Heights Park
Dave at Ocean Beach
Point Bonita, Marin County
Harvey Milk Candlelight March
Pride Parade, June 1987
Pride Parade, June 1987
Pride Parade, June 1987
Pride Parade, 1987
Jim, Pride Parade 1987
Point Bonita Lighthouse
Dennis (RIP 1995), Sutro Heights Park
Playing with my pussy
Sasha, my pussy
Downtown from Twin Peaks
Leo and Lee at Kenny’s Golden Gate Bridge 50th Anniversary Party
Your Host at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor
Sasha
Palace of Fine Arts
On the Ferry to Salsalito
333 Market Street, one of my favorite buildings downtown
Marty (RIP 1995)
Dennis (RIP 1995), Sutro Heights Park
Your host, Ghiradelli Chocolate Factory

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Suburbia, 1973

Lit up like the Poltergeist House

That caption isn’t too far off the mark. We swear—even though it was brand new construction on a former onion field and we were the first owners—the place was haunted.

We’d all be downstairs in the family room (or me in my bedroom which was also on the same level) and doors would slam up in the bedrooms upstairs, even though there were no windows openand noting else to cause a breeze.

Once, on the verge of sleep, I found walking up the stairs that went from the lower level to the ground floor. I looked over my shoulder and saw myself asleep in bed. I turned around and was greeted by what I can only call a shadow figure (gives me chills now jsut remembering it). I knew he wanted into my body. He lunged at me. We wrestled, tumbling down the stairs. I got up the literally dove back into my sleeping body.

After I’d gone off to college, Mom took to sleeping in my bed downstairs because Dad’s snoring had gotten too insufferable. That was, until one night when she was violently shaken out of the bed. “Never again,” was all she said of the incident.

I mean look at all those smiling faces. What kind of entity would bear that family any ill will? (Taken at the grandparents’ place in Sun City later that year (probably Thanksgiving or Christmas).

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50 Years Ago

Navajo Hall dorm room. One month after starting at the University of Arizona.

Oh the places you’ll go. The things you’ll see. The men you’ll love…all of which will ultimately transform you into who you are now.

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Oh Well…

I don’t know how people get such stunning lunar eclipse photos with their iPhones. I’ve never been able to master it.

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