Hello fellow ballers,
Over the last while I've acquired a few vintage 1950s "Learn to Water Ski" brochures/booklets put out by a couple of outboard motor companies at some cost on eBay. I scanned a few pages from them in order to create some posters for my cabin which has sort of a vintage water ski & vintage outboard theme going on. The original images were pretty low resolution so to get them to where they look nice printed out at a way bigger size and much higher resolution took a TON of work and a fair bit of know-how in Photoshop. I spent several hours working on each of the three images I scanned to get them to where they are now. The SIA ad explains why it was so much work it in a little more detail. I have printed these images out to make 11" x 17" posters and the results are very pleasing and the images are fun.
I'm barely asking anything for the images which you can take and make your own posters from for display in your cabins or man caves, etc. I'm thinking that if a number of people are willing to pay a little for each of them I MIGHT make minimum wage for all of the hours I put into cleaning up, doctoring and bringing these images to a high enough quality for printing at small poster size. But that's not the main point really. The main thing is to make the images available to the water skiing community so others can enjoy them and maybe get compensated a little for all the work that went into creating them.
There are three images and the price is $4 USD each or all three for $10 USD. Fellow Canadians get them for the same price but in CAD. (Got to look out for my homies, y' know!

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Here's the link to the SIA ad if anyone is interested to take a look at it
ski-it-again.com/php/skiitagain.php?endless=summer&topic=Search&category=Misc&postid=50057
Comments
Below is a before and after of one of the images to give people an idea of what I had to do to make the scans look good enough for printing at 11" x 17".
The brochure I scanned this from was only 3.75" x 6.5" so just a little more than 1/8th the size of the targeted print size (area). The first image is the original scan. If you can, zoom into just about any of her skin areas and also the underside of the ski tip and the water spray around her feet. Can you see all the purple color noise there? That all had to be removed. Also notice the dull color, the stains the ratty edges, the grain, etc. All of it had to be cleaned up too.
The second image is a medium quality half size rendition of the final image. Look at the same areas on that image and you can see that the color noise is gone. Notice also that the image's proportions are quite different? I had to "add" image that wasn't there on all four sides to give the final image the correct aspect ratio for printing at 11" x 17" and pad the edges a little so that nothing important in the image will get covered by the frame which typically covers about 1/4" on each side of the print.
Before...
After...
An amazing amount of difference hey?
What cracks me up about this image is the one hand size tow rope handle she's using and what's with the other hand pointing back behind her? I guess that's for style points. Man, skiing has come a long way since 1956.
These are great for displaying in your ski cabin, workshop, mancave, etc. They might also be great for a ski club or even a ski store maybe.
ski-it-again.com/php/skiitagain.php?endless=summer&topic=Search&category=Misc&postid=50057
I can imagine it was a real PITA trying to get a hold of one of those handles if you ever happened to drop one while skiing. The thing would keep bouncing off the water and would be really hard to grab a hold of.
https://ski-it-again.com/php/skiitagain.php?endless=summer&topic=Search&category=Misc&postid=57943
Here's the current link to the ad on SIA for the posters
https://ski-it-again.com/php/skiitagain.php?endless=summer&topic=Search&category=Misc&postid=57943