I've done several restorations. However, some things are necessary for the restored photo to appear correctly. Facial features are a necessity. Without those, these would be impossible. The first was a contracted restoration. The second was for exercise.

The first one was literally my first attempt at a restoration. That ended up being published in a book on photo retouching and restoration. One of the authors of the book sent me, upon request, the second one to have a bit of practice.

http://malarz.com/services/as/index.html
http://malarz.com/services/sailor/index.html
--Bob

In the almost 4 years I’ve been a member of this forum I’ve come to realize most members seem to be “mature” individuals (over 60). In addition virtually all of the people in my camera club are over 60. Now I realize these groups certainly dont reflect the entire photographic world. However It does bring a question to mind. Is it possible that younger people are not as interested in becoming “photographers”, professional or recreational as we are?
Virtually every person walks around with a smart phone in his/her pocket. Not only does a smart phone contain a camera, but that camera has rapidly become almost as good as any DSLR. I have a feeling that for most people popping a smart phone out of their pocket to take a picture is much preferred to carrying 20 pounds of camera equipment around. There’ll always be a certain portion of the population that is old school and feels you need a good DSLR, lenses, tripod etc. to take good pictures. As the years go by that group will become smaller and smaller.
So in my mind the real question is not where will new photography equipment come from but where will new photographers come from?
Does this make any sense or am I all wet .

Tonight I realised I was running out of disk space so decided to do some photo reorganisation. This involved moving everything that wasn't 'current' to an external storage device thus freeing up room on the primary drive on my laptop. While doing this I came across the photos I took on a holiday to S.E. Asia a couple of years ago. This was when I first started to explore 'serious' photography. Here is a small sample of some of the images I took.

Since I took those photos I've gone from the original camera I had (D3100 with 18-55mm kit lens) to a D850 (with a plethora of f/2.8 and faster lenses) and an X-T3 with another plethora of lenses. If I was to be perfectly honest with myself I'd say I've wasted my money. I reckon I'm perfectly happy (from a technical standpoint) with those photos and I doubt my current equipment could do better.

This is not to say that the acquisition of new camera and lenses doesn't provide its own joys but from a picture taking perspective I doubt it adds much...

Does anyone else ever get this feeling?

I saw a bunch of them in a forest in Tn too. But, there are only one or two reported true Asian Giants found in Washington State. BUT, there is a cousin slightly smaller that is actually a Europeon Giant Hornet, just not quite as big or deadly. But deadly to honey bees from what I understand. We are in such a state with lack of honey bees that I have to manually fertilize the blossoms in my garden. The Asian honey bees have developed a defense by creating a big ball of bees around the wasp and heating it up to kill it. The american bees have not figured that out yet.

Went for a Sunday drive today to a new wildlife management area near Palm Beach that I've never been to before and once we arrived, the thundershowers started and never let up. Oh Well, that's Florida.

On the way home through Okeechobee we passed a game farm. Drove down a side road to see if we could see what type of critters they had. No idea of what these are other than some exotic deer and maybe goats other than they are definitely NOT native to Florida. Skittish and as soon as the car stopped, they became very wary. First five photos varied between 100-150 yards and the last one was over 300 yards. All taken at 600mm hand held and heavily cropped. Best viewed in download. Beautiful animals though.