Digitization projects with museums and libraries are excellent employment opportunities for photographers. Not only are these jobs ongoing projects that provide steady work, which can be a rarity for a photographer, but the subject matter is often fascinating and the work itself presents its own interesting photographic challenges (and these projects usually have some great equipment to work with).
If you are seeking employment, here are a couple of great resources that may be off your browser's beaten path:
The New York Metropolitan Library Council has a great Job Bank mostly for librarians, but also for digital photographers.
The New York Foundation For The Arts classified section has a Job Listing section for artists of all kinds, including photographers.
For example, I see that The Metropolitan Museum of Art is seeking an Associate Imaging Specialist.
So, if you are seeking a photo-gig, check out digitization projects.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Friday, February 25, 2011
The Orchid Show - On Broadway March 5–April 25, 2011
I am excited to go to the New York Botanical Garden's annual Orchid Show. This year is a Broadway theme with Tony Award-winning set designer Scott Pask, image-maker Drew Hodges, and Botanical Garden curators designing the exhibit. After this winter, it will be a nice way to start Spring!
List Folder Contents
Making a list of the contents of a folder can be one of the more frustrating activities.
I was doing it by opening the Command Prompt (Start Menu-Run cmd) and entering:
Dir /b [pathname] > [pathname]\list.txt
for example
Dir /b I:\MasterFolder\Subfolder\jpegs > I:\MasterFolder\Subfolder\jpegs\list.txt
This would put a text file called "list" in the jpegs folder.
Doesn't seem too hard, right? But when the pathname is long, or you have several folders you want to list, this process can be very time consuming. Mostly because you can not copy/paste into the Command Prompt and I would have multiple typos, folder names could not have a space in them, and there is something about the "\" key that confuses me.
Fortunately, there is freeware that makes this task unnecessary. I found DirPrint at http://www.softpedia.com/get/File-managers/Dir-Print.shtml
All you have to do is open the application, select a folder and you instantly have a list of the contents. Phew!
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Image Quality Control Using Adobe Lightroom
Image Quality Control requires that each image be visually inspected for content and, well, image quality. At NYBG there are several Curatorial Assistants shooting photographs of specimens every day, producing hundreds, if not thousands, of images. As a result, I am very interested in efficiency just to keep up with production.
I am familiar with using Adobe Photoshop for image editing, but with Photoshop I am limited to working on one image at a time. When it comes to working with large numbers of files, Adobe Lightroom is a better option.
In the past few days I have QC'd thousands of photographs - this just wouldn't have been possible using Photoshop. Lightroom is still new to me, so I am learning new tricks every day. Here are the steps to image quality control that I use at the New York Botanical Garden Herbarium:
(I am also fortunate to have a dual monitor set up. This allows me to see a lot of information at a glance.)
Because of the orientation of the camera and copy table, the specimens are photographed horizontally. In the thumbnail view on the left, I can quickly rotate all of the images so that they are right side up.
I am familiar with using Adobe Photoshop for image editing, but with Photoshop I am limited to working on one image at a time. When it comes to working with large numbers of files, Adobe Lightroom is a better option.
In the past few days I have QC'd thousands of photographs - this just wouldn't have been possible using Photoshop. Lightroom is still new to me, so I am learning new tricks every day. Here are the steps to image quality control that I use at the New York Botanical Garden Herbarium:
(I am also fortunate to have a dual monitor set up. This allows me to see a lot of information at a glance.)
Because of the orientation of the camera and copy table, the specimens are photographed horizontally. In the thumbnail view on the left, I can quickly rotate all of the images so that they are right side up.
Thumbnail view
The three main factors in image quality are exposure, focus, and color balance. I check these before I check content.
While it is easy to see if am image is too bright or too dark, the histogram in the upper right hand corner of the Library provides confirmation, making it easy to see if an image is properly exposed. Thanks to the overlapping color channels in the histogram, I can also easily confirm color balance.
Histogram
I can get a good sense of whether or not the image is in focus using the loupe view on the right hand monitor, but to check critical focus, I zoom in to 100% magnification, or 1:1 view on the left monitor.
1:1 Magnification
Every specimen is cataloged and bar-coded before it is photographed. In order for the image to be searchable in the collection, the file name must match the bar code number. I use the Navigator window to find the bar code in the image (this also gives me a good view of focus).
Navigator
I match the bar code with the file name, which I have displayed over the window. And finally, I confirm image content in the view on the right monitor. I am looking to confirm that the whole specimen is showing, that all the specimen labels are visible and legible and that the color bars and ruler are included in every shot.
Confirm content
I use the arrow keys on the keyboard to move on to the next image.
I also use Lightroom to process RAW files to Tiffs and Jpegs. There are several considerations in image processing that will be discussed at length in future posts.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Under Attack
Before we get to photography, it seems that a certain congressman from Virginia is out to cut funding to non-federal museums, the Goodlatte Amendment #471.
Robert Goodlatte (R-VA, whose name is Latin for expensive coffee that's mostly milk anyway, why are you even bothering with pretending it's coffee) who thinks that nature is only good for shooting is out to balance the budget - but don't be fooled, he's not doing this for you. TheMiddleclass.org, an online resource for holding Congress accountable, give Goodlatte D's and F's across the board when it comes to protecting the interests of the middle class.
The American Institute of Biological Sciences has set up a form letter opposing Goodlatte Amendment #471 and has made it easy send it to your Representative. It only takes a second, please write your congressperson.
Robert Goodlatte (R-VA, whose name is Latin for expensive coffee that's mostly milk anyway, why are you even bothering with pretending it's coffee) who thinks that nature is only good for shooting is out to balance the budget - but don't be fooled, he's not doing this for you. TheMiddleclass.org, an online resource for holding Congress accountable, give Goodlatte D's and F's across the board when it comes to protecting the interests of the middle class.
The American Institute of Biological Sciences has set up a form letter opposing Goodlatte Amendment #471 and has made it easy send it to your Representative. It only takes a second, please write your congressperson.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Welcome to Digital Photo Repro
I began work at the New York Botanical Garden Herbarium as the Information Manager for Digitization in January. This blog is intended in part to be a personal journal of my work as well as a forum to discuss topics related to digitization.
The Herbarium houses over seven million plant specimens and has been cataloging and digitizing them since 1998. The goal of the Virtual Herbarium is to provide electronic access to specimens for biodiversity research projects; to preserve specimens by reducing handling where digital images may be sufficient for study; and ultimately to link specimens with additional data such as photographs and drawings, manuscripts, published works, microscopic preparations, and gene sequences.
My role is to make accurate photographic reproductions of specimens. This entails ensuring that the Herbarium complies to best-practices for digital image capture, quality control and image editing, and archiving.
What constitutes best-practice is open for discussion. In the ten or fifteen years that digital photography has been practiced, technology has evolved: standards have changed, formats have changed, and the internet has changed.
The Herbarium houses over seven million plant specimens and has been cataloging and digitizing them since 1998. The goal of the Virtual Herbarium is to provide electronic access to specimens for biodiversity research projects; to preserve specimens by reducing handling where digital images may be sufficient for study; and ultimately to link specimens with additional data such as photographs and drawings, manuscripts, published works, microscopic preparations, and gene sequences.
My role is to make accurate photographic reproductions of specimens. This entails ensuring that the Herbarium complies to best-practices for digital image capture, quality control and image editing, and archiving.
What constitutes best-practice is open for discussion. In the ten or fifteen years that digital photography has been practiced, technology has evolved: standards have changed, formats have changed, and the internet has changed.
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