This portrait is one of the only extant images of Alexander Nesbitt, co-founder
(with his wife Ilse Buchert Nesbitt) of the Third & Elm Press, during that time period. The print
had been directly edited at some point, presumably by a printer. Normally, our archival digitization
workflows aim only to capture the originals as accurately as possible, but this was a special case
for this particular collection, so we decided that we would keep two copies of the scan that I’d made.
We kept one version that included the original retouching, and a new version where I eliminated the
halo, and attempted to recreate as best as possible the image underneath.
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 and is a fairly high-polish metal, so it's highly reflective and
picks up the colors of the light and walls reflecting off of it. I photographed it with a tilt-shift lens and bracketed
for white balance.
I photographed this bottle, from the SJ Pereleman papers, when workers in the Archives found that a box was leaking.
Inside was a bottle of wine, which had been safely housed in the Hay’s vault for decades; at some point, however, the cork had become
unstable and had begun to leak wine. I photographed the bottle and the process of opening and emptying it for conservation. After mitigating
the reflections off the glass bottle, I photographed bottle, the wine inside, and the label. To afford users a full view of the label,
I combined three different shots of the bottle into one.
This portrait of Abraham Lincoln by Peter Baumgras is 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. I did have to use two different exposures combined into one for the final image: a darker exposure for the
bright frame, and a lighter exposure for the portrait itself, which has subtly textured shadows that I wanted to show.
While I generally work with objects and texts from Brown's Special Collections, I
also work with images for the instructional image collection. This image was part of a collection
in the personal collection of Brown alumnus Seth Cohen, lent to Professor Dietrich Neumann for use
in his lectures. These postcards - representing a range of locations and time periods - look at first
like ordinary postcards, but illuminate in specific areas in the card when backlit. This is an animated
GIF and will change automatically!