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It’s time to make the targets!
It is standard practice here in Digital Production Services to include a reference target for tone and color reproduction in each digital image capture. The target is retained in the master TIFF file,...
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360 Degrees of Advent
Advent Calendar – main view Although I generally photograph books and flat documents, I occasionally have the opportunity to photograph three-dimensional objects. Depending on the type of object (this...
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Interior Designs
Much of the work that we do here at DPS involves objects and items from the Brown Library’s Special Collections. These are housed in the John Hay Library, which just recently celebrated its Centennial....
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Napoleon’s Death Mask
While the bulk of my work involves the digitization of two-dimensional documents, or straightforward photographs of pages from books, I also photograph other types of items – like the 360 degree...
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Illuminating Postcards
While I generally work with objects and texts from Brown’s Special Collections, I also work with images for the instructional image collection with Karen Bouchard, the Scholarly Resources Librarian...
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Weaving Lives, Scanning Slides
Santa Maria, Guatemala Girl weaving on backstrap loomSan Antonio Aguas Calientes, Sacatepéquez, Guatemala Picturesque landscapes, village life, and intricate hand-woven textiles are predominant...
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Ninety degrees of separation
When I joined Digital Production Services as a photographer in 2008, one of my first projects was a 15th century bible in the collection of the Providence Public Library. The PPL has a significant...
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Garibaldi Returns
In late-summer 2007, the Brown University Library contracted with Boston Photo to photograph both sides of a unique oversize panorama scroll depicting the life of Garibaldi. After the initial...
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From Brown and Back Again
On June 1, 2013, Brown’s John Hay Library — built in 1910 and now home to the Library’s special collections — will close its doors for a major renovation of the first floor. (Updates on the project can...
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Photographing Clara
As a followup to last week’s post about John Hay, I thought it would be a good time to discuss photographing the portrait of Clara Stone Hay. The wife of Brown alumnus John Hay, Clara Stone Hay’s...
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Studio on the go
The library Annex: known for housing a vast collection of books not stored in our on-campus libraries, it’s also home to an art vault for Brown’s portrait collection. During the slower summer months,...
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No tannins at all, and very little fruit (part I)
Perelman Papers, Box 11 Such was the assessment of a leaking bottle of wine from the manuscripts collection (by a library staff member who dared to take a sip). There’s more to this story, and I was...
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How do you solve a problem like a foldout?
When assessing how to photograph a book, we must first make several determinations. The key to photographing books well – by which I mean providing well-lit images, in good focus, without damaging the...
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Photographing the Break Up of Time
While the vast majority of my work involves photographing items in collection, it may also have become clear in my blog posts that I’m occasionally asked to document library events and library spaces....
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Avoiding Moiré
Because we photograph a great deal of prints and engravings, moiré patterning is an issue that we must consistently keep an eye out for. Moiré patterning often occurs during image capture; it can also...
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A more typical look at the camera room
Since I often concentrate on more involved or difficult setups, I thought it might be good to take a look at a setup that we are most likely to encounter at DPS on a day-to-day basis. This image shows...
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Streamlining Broadsides
Over the past year, Digital Production Services has been working on the digitization of one of the Brown University Library’s extensive collections of broadsides. The Rider Broadsides Collection...
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Digitizing the “mirror with a memory”
As we celebrate Brown’s 250th anniversary, Digital Production Services has been asked to digitize many historical university materials. Some of the earliest photographs in the university’s extensive...
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Photographing the Edwards Cane
Shortly before we left for our holiday break, I had another opportunity to photograph historical materials and objects from the Brown University Archives. We’ve had a number of interesting objects come...
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Capturing the Transit of Venus
Recently, as part of Brown’s 250th celebration, my colleague and I were asked to photograph a selection of the many historical objects at Brown. Among these was the Transit of Venus telescope, a...
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