Tour de France (Giusto Cerutti 1928)

One hundred and seven years ago (1903) the Tour de France had its beginning and since then has just kept on growing thru two World Wars; they didn’t race during war times but never the less it kept going on after the wars. Men enduring 3 weeks of sheer physical and mental anguish riding there bicycles through France and what ever Mother Nature would throw at them. The early races were extremely tuff they were unsupported meaning the rider had to be his own pit crew no help from anyone; it has changed a lot since then now the riders are pampered, hotels, motorhomes, pit crews, etc, but it’s still a tuff race and I have a deep respect for these cyclists; as for me I just love to ride and work on my bicycles; that’s were this Tour de France poster comes in while looking for tid bits of tour history and pictures I found The Dutch National Archives on Flickr and in there they had a section on the Tour de France.

The picture is from that archive it is small in size and resolution; I do a long and involved process to get the picture to size without a lot of pixilation and artifacts it works well with old photos. Understanding pixels and Photoshop and how the tools function and using your imagination to push the envelope can really be rewarding; sometimes you just can’t get there from that point so you try another avenue, oh well so it didn’t work, hey, you’ll probably find something new along the way and that’s what it’s all about. It’s not just a photograph in Photoshop, it’s an adventure!

The poster I printed is 11”x17” looks good at this size although it could be enlarged to a poster size of 24”x36” I think the picture would suffer with artifacts. I add a little color to bring out the subject Giusto and his broken bike. I usually try to leave Black and Whites alone but some of these old photos look good with a little color, even some people who are Black and White diehards like the look, I try to keep the colors low key. I’m working on some other Tour pictures that might make nice looking posters.



ENJOY, Bill