A Portrait
I purchased this particular cabinet card because the back had some faint and faded words written in pencil and I was intrigued by the challenge of finding out what those words were. Thankfully, by changing the exposure, contrast and sharpness, I was able to bring out the following:
Letter on the back
Bits of it are still difficult to make out, but I think it goes a bit like this:
“55 years old
Good by reeds
this is for your ??? are
Leaten’s picture now do
answer my letter
no my dress hasn’t
torn (?) just a mistake
in the print of picture
to match shade you see
of face & hands now
answer my letter please
we have return to
??? can’t rest hardly
but ??? for them thats
taken last spring”
If you can make more sense out of it, please do!
The Hutching’s Railroad Photo Car was a train car studio that allowed the photographer to travel all over the country, taking photos and seeing the world at the same time. For other Hutching’s photographs, click the category Photographer / Hutching’s.
UPDATE: I realized some people might want to see the original scan of the photo back, below:
Faint writing
Who Were They? 
I am curious… What was your general procedure in scanning this?
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I use an Epson Perfection scanner (old but a workhorse) and I scanned at 300 dpi in color. Then I took the image into Picnic on Google+ and played around with the levels, sharpness and contrast to bring out the writing. The back of the card really is pearl white like the front of it.
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I assume you tried scanning it in gray scale?
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Yes, in gray scale it did not resolve well. The pencil is just too faded.
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You did good..the pencil is sometimes so hard to see:)
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