Tag Archives: Fun with PhotoDoc

Fun with VideoDoc: Lining a Oversized Map (Edition 3)

Before treatment photo, map with cloth lining.

A couple months ago the lab received an oversized map from the Public Library’s collection. The map is from 1863 and depicts the businesses of downtown Cincinnati at the time. The Public Library would like to digitize the map, however when it arrived in the lab it had a variety of creases, stains and losses. It was also previously lined with cloth. Conservator, Ashleigh, and Sr. Conservation Tech, Catarina, began the work of removing the map from the prior cloth lining, washing the detached sections of the map to assist in removing the prior cloth lining adhesive, and locally humidifying and flattening the creases and distortions in the paper (caused when the map was previously lined).
Next up, lining the map with kozo fiber tissue and a mixture of wheat starch paste and methyl cellulose. For this, Ashleigh and Catarina created a make-shift light table, since the Lab’s was not large enough and began piecing the sections of the map back together. I couldn’t not document this climactic part of the treatment, so I went a little crazy, threw my go-to documentation equipment out the window (i.e. our Nikon DSLR), grabbed my iPhone and made a little video to illustrate the process. I hope you enjoy it!

*Please note, portions of this video have been sped up to shorten the length of the video…Ashleigh and Catarina work quickly, but not THAT quickly!
Jessica Ebert (UCL) – Conservation Technician

Fun with PhotoDoc – Edition 2

I’m back for another edition of “Fun with PhotoDoc”. If you missed the first edition you can check it out here. Originally I had planned for that to be a one-off post, but then I thought it might be fun to make this into more of a series, sharing interesting facets of photographic documentation (aka PhotoDoc) as they come up. Really, it just gives me an excuse to share all the things about PhotoDoc that I think are just plain cool and to make gifs out of treatment documentation photos, which is so much fun!
This time around I wanted to share some interesting before treatment photos of two War Bond posters from the Public Library of Cincinnati & Hamilton County’s collection. For both of these I photographed the posters using normal illumination and then used raking illumination to highlight tears, cockling and bends/breaks in the paper.

With this War Bond poster the raking illumination really shows off that large tear that extends from the center to the bottom of the poster. And while the normal illumination allows for better visibility of the water damage in the bottom left hand corner, raking light better highlights the resulting cockling and distortion of the paper in that area.

With this War Bond poster the raking illumination really shows off that large tear that extends from the center to the bottom of the poster. Under normal illumination this substantial tear gets lost in the pattern of the female subject’s dress. Also, while the normal illumination allows for better visibility of the water damage in the bottom left hand corner, raking light better highlights the resulting cockling and distortion of the paper in that area.

For this poster, raking light really highlights all the undulations and cockling that have been caused by the poster being partially adhered to a piece of board. You can also more clearly see the fairly large tear located under the word “Hun” under raking illumination versus under normal illumination.

Jessica Ebert (UCL) – Conservation Technician

Fun with PhotoDoc – Edition 1

Since I am the conservation technician who carries out most of the photographic documentation in the lab I think that pretty much all PhotoDoc is fun. With all the different tools in the toolbox it really doesn’t get much better than when you get to bust out the ultraviolet radiation to reveal something that is otherwise not so obvious under normal illumination (like a stain, handwriting, etc.). And then when you can transform those normal and UV before photos into a gif…well, that just makes for a fun Friday, if you ask me!

This photograph is part of the Henry R. Winkler Center for the History of the Health Professions collection and arrived in the lab with the original glass broken and partially attached to the photo. It is obvious under normal illumination that the photograph endured some kind of spill or water damage, but under UV florescence you can better make out the path that the water or perhaps beverage created and even note splotches of possible mold damage (which flourese purple). Now that’s it’s photographed I’ll turn it over to Ashleigh, our conservator, to determine what’s happened to this poor thing and the best course of action when it comes to treatment and storage.

Jessica Ebert (UCL) – Conservation Technician