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Hello contributors, I have a close friend that I'm helping with an interesting collection of historic negatives. The negatives came from the 3 major military portrait studios in San Diego CA. during the 1940's-1950's era. These studios located on Broadway in San Diego did a thriving business in this military town, producing very high quality portraits of young sailors and soldiers on liberty. The collection has been archived and stored safely, the negatives from every sitting include the name address and sitting number in its own envelope. The sitting book/ledger from each studio is included. Times changed and the studios closed thier doors and one man purchased all the negatives from all three studios and they disappeared for decades. Recently the negatives surfaced after much research and a bit of luck. My friend has a long history in the old style photography business and we both are trying to understand the digitizing process of older historic negatives and the marketing of Historic Stock Photography. I believe we are leaning towards trying to estimate the true value of this collection and finding a buyer or possibly putting the collection up for auction. I was hoping we could get some honest input and direction from contributors that would help point us in making good decisions. We are all ears, please tell us what our options are and how well would these images be for generating income online if we decided to possibly team up with someone to digitize and manage this collection if this is the best choice. These photographers really knew thier craft and this collection is of amazing quality and the B/W negatives are well preserved and organized. Thanks to everyone that gives thier opinion and views on how to handle this collection. I will post post image examples as soon as I can figure out how to turn an image into a URL? Or you can send me an Email address if your interested and I will send you images from this collection, Thanks Respectfully Robert G. Hill San Diego , CA. 619-916-7734

Can I use post-processing to make a photo look old? For instance - I have a photo of a paddle-wheel boat and I have made the photo look as if it was from the Civil War Era (tin type, scratches, faded) - Would that be accepted or rejected? Thanks, Kmahaffy