c u r i o

Imaging rare, unusual, and intriguing objects at the Brown University Library

Via Hot Air Balloon

September 27, 2012 by btylr | 1 Comment

As a part-time employee at the Library, having briefly studied the Paris Commune (1871) some 10 years previously, in 2005 I was intrigued to find myself digitizing an original edition of Le Ballon Poste: Journal du Siege de Paris (1870–1871) for the Paris: Capital of the Nineteenth Century project. At the time, the newspaper was captured on the department’s Phase One PowerPhase FX+ scan-back system, with white paper placed underneath each page view, to enhance the legibility of print on the semi-transparent, very thin India paper.

Shown here is a close-up of the address panel, which gives a better sense of the fragility and lightness of each issue, delivered via hot air balloon.

(The French National Library now also hosts digital facsimiles of the newspaper issues.)

The French balloons are featured in this print held in Brown University Library’s Anne S. K. Brown Military collection, picturing a German soldier becoming distracted by a balloon overhead. The Brown University Library’s digital collections, culled from special collections, currently include over 100 items relating to the Franco-Prussian War, the conflict immediately preceding the Commune.

Hurricane of 1938

September 21, 2012 by Ann Caldwell | Comments Off on Hurricane of 1938

Today, September 21, 2012, is the anniversary of the Great Hurricane of 1938 which struck New England, killing approximately 600 people and causing millions of dollars in damage.

As a typical New Englander who is obsessed with weather-watching, I was excited to find this recording of barometric pressure for the week of the hurricane among the items Digital Production Services has digitized for the Ladd Observatory. The enormous dip in the pressure occurred the day of the hurricane.

Although Brown was fortunate in that it did not experience the same level of devastation which hit much of the state, there was still damage. Here an automobile (can you identify it?) is crushed by one of the stately trees on the campus.

Setting up shop in the Lincoln room!

September 17, 2012 by lelgin | Comments Off on Setting up shop in the Lincoln room!

While many of the items we photograph are done in our studio, we do occasionally need to photograph items or objects where they reside at Brown. This is usually due to their size or other constraints that makes moving them too difficult. It then gives us the challenge to both light the object as well as safely maneuver ourselves and our equipment in a variety of spaces.

This is exactly what happened when I photographed this portrait of Abraham Lincoln by Peter Baumgras. Part of the Charles Woodberry McLellan Collection of Lincolniana at Brown, the portrait is housed in the Lincoln room at the John Hay Library. Beautifully framed, it’s a lovely portrait to shoot.

But it’s hung very high on the wall, at a significant angle, without a lot of space to photograph it without distortion. In came our portable lighting setup, our D-SLR (Canon 5D Mark II with 85mm f1.2 L series lens) and tripod, and Macbook Pro (for shooting tethered into Adobe Lightroom).

While the painting itself is opposite the camera (naturally), you get a good idea of my setup here — you also get a pretty good idea regarding why this is referred to as the “Lincoln room.” Due to the height at which the portrait is hung, I had to actually put my tripod up on a table next to the bookcases. I have two hot lights (tungsten-based) with shoot-through umbrellas, which allowed me to light the entire space without lighting the painting too directly. (The painting has glossy oil paint and a highly reflective frame, so keeping reflections to a minimum was essential.)

A closer shot of the setup shows the camera at an angle. This is not just because the painting is so high – yes, it’s way too high to shoot straight on with the camera, but it also leans forward off the wall by a few inches. It’s not a steep pitch, but enough that it’s easy to get an image that’s just not quite square (i.e. unacceptable).

You can also easily see here that I have the camera hooked up to a laptop for tethered shooting. This allowed me to check the focus, the angle of the camera, the white balance and the exposure all while shooting so I knew I had a usable shot before I packed everything up.

What you can’t see as easily in this shot is that I had to bracket, and ended up using two different exposures, combined into one, for the final image. I used one darker exposure for the bright frame, and a lighter exposure for the portrait itself, which has subtly textured shadows that I wanted to show. In Photoshop, I carefully made a path around the actual painting, and masked out the darker frame. Layered atop the brighter frame, we get the final image, which exposes correctly for both elements of the object.

1. Dark image, exposed correctly for the frame. 2. Light image, exposed correctly for the painting. 3. Detail of layered image, showing detailing in the frame and the painting.

September 6, 2012
by jmancino
Comments Off on About This Blog

Curios are valued for their oddness or rarity, and are generally locked away for safekeeping. Digitizing Brown University Library’s unique collections affords Digital Production Services staff contact with curious artifacts on a daily basis, which can present technical challenges for digitization or description. Items featured here are singled out for their unique properties and for the methods used to digitize them.

Top banner image: in-situ portrait capture in the McLellan Lincoln room, John Hay Library; alphabet stone engraved by John Howard Benson.