FOR nearly 30 years a photography enthusiast has been recolouring historic pictures of Barnsley to bring the past back to life.
Stuart Sykes picked up the recolouring skill when he was teaching computer studies in the early 1990s.
Since then, he has been developing his skills, and over the past year began a popular Facebook page showing ‘Old Barnsley In Colour’.
“The biggest thing is getting the picture to the stage that it wants to be coloured,” he said.
“There’s a lot to do to clean up the pictures – old pictures from the 1900s tend to have a lot of crap in them. Colouring is actually the quickest bit – it’s still takes time, but it’s better than the rest.”
Since starting the Facebook page last year, it has gained around 16,400 members and continues to grow in popularity, though Stuart still has a large backlog of work to share.
“I’ve been doing this long before the Facebook page. But I think it was a picture of the football club with a completely recolourised team which got a lot of interest.
“I plan to just carry on now, there’s enough old Barnsley photos that I think this will last a long time.”
