Tom Alderman

Georgia native Tom Alderman confesses to being addicted to trains all of his life. He began modeling and hand-painting diesel locomotives in his college years and collecting black & white photographs of early diesel locomotives from his favorite Southeastern railroads. He soon discovered that color photos from the late 1930s and 1940s were all too rare. His interest in photography eventually led to an early career in the photofinishing business, where he began experimenting with colorizing black & white photos for fellow photographers Shelby Lowe and David Salter. With their encouragement, Tom began experimenting with digital colorizing on his home computer using photo editing software. In the process, he developed what he refers to as his “pseudochrome” technique for producing slide-quality colorized images. Tom credits his experience with hand-painting model trains for developing a color palette producing photorealistic images with stunning color detail. His catalogue has grown to more than 600 images, and a grouping of his very best colorizations have been curated for this album.