Portraits of each Justice since statehood line the ground floor walls of the Oklahoma Judicial Center. These photos previously adorned the west wing of the Oklahoma State Capitol. Transfer of the Court to the Oklahoma Judicial Center offered a perfect opportunity to add uniformity and continuity to the historic images. Stuart Ostler, manager of the Legislative Services Photo Division, applied his photographic expertise in completing a multi-step preservation process. Because the portraits had all been printed at different times during the Court’s 104-year history, some were in color, some had faded and many were framed differently. After removing the portraits from the frames, Ostler did high-resolution scans of the photographs, enlarged them on the computer and then matched the tones one to the next, using a warm tone black and white for all the portraits. Not only did this produce an electronic archive of all the portraits, but Ostler also preserved the tone profile for future Justice portraits. Ostler has been taking official portraits of the Supreme Court Justices since he joined Legislative Services in 1995.
