tinted photo

Hello!

I have a photo (image size 6 3/4" X 8 3/4") of Canadian Lake Louise that has been colored by hand. Normally, when I see photos, they look tinted by what seems like watercolor paints, while this one looks to have been colored by crayons ... the pigment is brightly toned and 'waxy' looking.

Is this normal?

Also, there is a 'blob' in the lake that I think maybe occurred during the processing of the print ... defect in the photo paper, maybe? I can't see that it is a reflection of any part of the mountain ... or even a UFO

I'm getting a 20's - 40's vibe from this .... any other opinions?

 

Probably pastels instead of crayon

 

If waxy looking, could be oil pastels. Maybe the blob is a fish under the surface?

 

Thanks cluttered and Pat ... I think you (plural) are correct in the ID of the coloring medium. Odd, I've always thought of pastels as the chalky sticks I had as a youngster. Woohoo ... learned something today!

 

I don't think it's pastel. Watercolor seems more probable to me, just wet in some places and dry-brush in others.

I had a very similar photo shown near the bottom of the first page of this thread:
https://www.antiquers.com/threads/share-your-antique-photographs-here.3620/
Not the same, but I bet they were taken fairly close together.

 

I wasn't sure how often different media were used to tint photographs so did a little reading. This was included in a Wikipedia article, in discussing tinting of photos in the 20th century...

"Hand-coloured photographs sometimes include the combined use of dyes, water-colours, oils, and other pigments to create varying effects on the printed image."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand-colouring_of_photographs

So it could be that different areas of your photo were done with different materials.

Also, the article states that watercolor had to be combined with other media before application, so I imagine one or more of those materials could cause a waxy appearance even where watercolor was used.