Collections | c u r i o

Avoiding Moiré

March 25, 2014 by lelgin | 1 Comment

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 happen if you’re viewing an image at a certain magnification, but this is easily addressed by changing the magnification. It’s when moiré patterning enters during image capture that you must address it immediately, since it’s difficult to remove without creating more image artifacts.

Moiré patterning happens when your subject has some type of regular pattern – in our case, this is usually regular lines in an engraving, but can also happen when photographing textures on paper or cloth that have a regular weave to them. When the regular pattern of the subject overlaps with the regular pattern of the image sensor, the moiré patterning is born. It’s usually seen as bands of color, or light and dark.

The two images above are examples of both kinds of moiré patterning. The image on the left, with the black-and-white pattern, happened due to image magnification. This image itself was fine, but viewing it at this magnification was problematic. The image on the right, however, shows moiré patterning that happened during the capture process. You can clearly see the bands of color that, rather than being a function of viewing the image, are actually present in the image itself.

Correcting the viewing problem is a non-issue; one must simply view the image on a different monitor or at a different magnification. Correcting the patterning that happens during capture is actually almost as simple: it’s all about the orientation of the original. Because moiré patterning is a function of the relationship between overlapping patterns, all we have to do to correct this is change that relationship; put another way, we have to change the alignment of the patterns. For this object (from our Rider Broadsides collection), I had been photographing all objects in the collection aligned as relatively straight verticals to the sensor. To correct the alignment, I simply tilted the image so it was crooked in the capture (it’s important that this isn’t a 90˚ tilt, but a more arbitrary tilt). This corrected the problem immediately. Below is the final image, as well as a detail of the most problematic area of the object.

“Absolute money”

March 13, 2014 by btylr | Comments Off on “Absolute money”

The Rider Broadsides collection, currently being digitized by the Library, contains unique examples of cultural-political ephemera from the 17th–20th centuries. Shown below are front and back views of an “absolute money” bill, c. 1880, spoofing the period’s Greenback movement. (The majority of materials in the Sidney S. Rider Collection — a wide variety of pamphlets, manuscripts, broadsides, ephemera, scrapbooks and newspapers — are related to Rhode Island history.)

Grossinger’s Natatorium

February 26, 2014 by rness | 2 Comments

When I recently came across an article about the abandoned and overgrown Grossinger’s Resort Hotel, I became fixated on the photographs of the pool within the resort’s natatorium. I recognized the space (but barely) from a collection of ephemera, which we digitized for The Catskills Institute several years ago.

Grossinger’s New Indoor Swimming Pool. “Superchrome” postcard. c.196-

The distinctive, once orderly, deck chairs now stand alone in the muck and moss, or have been tossed like bones into the bottom of the graffiti laden pool, joining muddy strings of blue beaded lane markers. The signature tile work is faintly recognizable under the encroaching moss, and the star burst lamp still hangs from the ceiling. I knew how tragically abandoned the formerly thriving resorts in the Catskill Mountains had become, and had seen photographic evidence of just how overgrown and lost these spaces currently are, but the images of the natatorium haunt; the building sits upon the landscape like a perpetually decomposing corpse. In the mid-century (when the indoor pool was constructed) the resort was thriving, as it had been since the 1920s. Grossinger’s gradually declined throughout the 1970s, a decline which hastened when the property was sold in 1986.[1. Abandoned NY: Inside Grossinger’s Crumbling Catskill Resort Hotel.] Many items of interest pertaining to Grossinger’s, including an Auction notice and contents for sale, can be found in Brown’s Digital Repository. Most of the resort’s buildings have now been demolished, but the natatorium still stands as a ghostly relic; its remnants pointing to fragmented memories, an uncanny space filled with abandoned objects of leisure being consumed by nature itself.

Photo by Pablo Maurer. Abandoned NY: Inside Grossinger’s Crumbling Catskill Resort Hotel

The more things change…

February 21, 2014 by lelgin | 2 Comments

As winter in New England quickly becomes the house guest that has greatly outstayed its welcome, I thought it would be interesting to browse through the Brown Digital Repository for images of snow in Providence. I came upon this image with a view up Williams Street of the Nightingale Brown House. Trade in the horse-drawn carriage for some contemporary vehicles, and it’s not too far from the Williams Street we saw on Tuesday.

* Update: Many thanks to Ron Potvin, for correcting the information about this image. We have updated the post as well as our metadata in the BDR to reflect his insights.

Porcelain Figures from Brown’s Monuments Man

February 7, 2014 by btylr | 7 Comments

Porcelain figures originally commissioned by John Nicholas Brown II (1900–1979) are currently on exhibit at the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. library through April 25, 2014. Brown II was a civilian-status Lieutenant Colonel, Special Cultural Advisor for Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (MFAA) in Europe toward the end of World War II — as well as husband to collector Anne Seddon Kinsolving Brown, the founder of the Library’s military art collection (a substantial part of which has been digitized for online viewing). While the 21 porcelains currently on display in the library were not salvaged works per se, they were commissioned by Brown in 1945 while he was a “monuments man” in Europe.

Thanks to a movie opening on February 7, 2014, directed by George Clooney and loosely based on historical accounts, the “monuments men” have been making a resurgence in both popular media and the cultural heritage community: from features in the New York Times (re: monuments women, as well), to educational reference resources showcasing the retrieved artworks (Scholars Resource set featuring 111 salvaged works), to recent commentaries by associated museums (“In the Footsteps of the Monuments Men: Traces from the Archives at the Metropolitan Museum”).

The image shown below, a porcelain commissioned by John Nicholas Brown II in late 1945 while serving with MFAA, was taken by Digital Production Services for the library’s exhibition publicity. Curator Peter Harrington describes the context of its commission:

While John Nicholas Brown was working with the allied forces in Germany in 1945 reporting on stolen art works, he visited the factory at Nymphenburg in Bavaria and ordered 21 porcelain figures for his wife, Anne S. K. Brown. Subsequent additions to this set came from the Dresden porcelain factory. Today these porcelains form a unique segment of the foremost American collection devoted to the history and iconography of soldiers and soldiering.

Photographing the Break Up of Time

January 16, 2014 by lelgin | Comments Off on 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. All of Brown’s libraries have some incredible spaces – for research, for teaching, for collaboration, and for study – and Brown has been diligent in their efforts to maintain their libraries as 21st-century learning environments. As a result, I often have the opportunity to document the renovation of these spaces, as well as the items in Brown’s collections that are on view in the libraries.

This past October, Brown alumna and generous Brown University Library supporter Elizabeth Z. Chace (’59, PHB ’96 hon., GP ’13, GP ’15) donated Break Up of Time, 2006, by John Okulick. The approximately 6′ x 6′ aluminum, resin, and wood sculpture was installed in our Sciences Library, in a bustling open landing right behind the main entrance.

The challenging part about photographing the sculpture is its location; it’s great for visibility, but it’s tough to get a nice, straight-on shot of it. The sculpture is also lit by three light sources – overhead fluorescent, tungsten light underneath, and window side lighting. Because it’s a fairly high-polish metal, the sculpture is highly reflective and picks up the colors of the light and walls reflecting off of it.

Using my tilt-shift lens, I was able to get a straight-on shot without actually having to be directly in front of the piece. I bracketed for exposure and white balance to get a clean image (when layered in Photoshop). I also took some images that show a little more of the environment around the sculpture, again trying to avoid as much glare, color cast issues, and unnatural skewing of the object as possible.

This image (left) gives a view from the entrance to the staircase, where most people encounter the sculpture for the first time.

“And a glad New Year”

January 13, 2014 by C B | 2 Comments

Ringing in the New Year with this charming carrier’s message from 1893! This is from the John Hay Library collection of Carriers’ Addresses. These addresses were published in the United States by newspapers and delivered by newsboys, usually on News Year’s Day. About 900 of the addresses have been digitized and made available through the Brown Digital Repository, with more to come. You can read more about Carriers’ Addresses and search the online collection here.

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