Andrew Karelin himself edited his films and respected the process of printing. His albumen prints always looked natural and saturated enough. As his apprentice – Maxim Dmitriev – used to say, the prints were made ‘in a gorgeous, wonderful way filled with juicy colours’.
During Karelin’s studentship, he was already keen on retouching and colorizing photographs along with his Academy’s friends. He worked for Andrew Denier, famous portrait photographer, and knew exactly how to cope with all the difficulties of editing process.
One day one of the painters who worked in the same studio completed watercolour-based photo editing in just a couple of minutes, which took hours for Karelin to finish; the incident taught future photographer to work as hard and diligently as he ever could.