Darwin Day

The other day Ragesoss showed up at my user talk with a reminder that Darwin Day happens next month: the two hundredth anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth. Could we have a featured picture for the occasion?

I'm a sucker for that kind of request.

When it comes to online image archives for that kind of purpose, the Library of Congress website has everybody else beat hands down. Site architecture is chaotic, things can be hit or miss, but when they get it right they really get it right in a way nobody else does. Because what's needed for this kind of endeavor is a hefty TIFF file made from a well-curated original on a really good clean scanner.

A lot of people who don't do restoration come along with an 80K file and expect something to be accomplished with it. Sorry: I can't restore information that isn't there. 2MB is about the minimum, and that's pushing it. 10MB is more like it. I don't call a file large until it's at least 100MB, and one of the images in my current workpile is over half a gigabyte.

The Library of Congress knows how to create and host this sort of material. Also wonderful: they don't try to claim proprietary control over information that's in the public domain (a surprising number of museums and archives do assert such claims, but that's a story for a different day). So after trotting over to the photographs collection and running a search, a serviceable rotograph turns up at a decent 23MB. Here's the page. Not the most famous likeness, but the technical quality is far better than is likely available anywhere else.

Five or so hours later the restoration was complete. Practice makes this sort of work go quickly. The full sized restoration is a nearly 5MB JPEG file (Wikimedia software doesn't allow for TIFF uploads) and available here. It's enjoyable to be able to help out in an event as important as Darwin Day.

Yet it's a shame that for such an iconic figure of British science, the best source for a portrait is a foreign archive. Surely British archives have better quality original images. This is their heritage, their history. I wish more countries brought their collections into the digital age the way the Library of Congress has been doing.

Heartbreakers

With the new year and more people searching for historic images, it's time to write up a bit of how this works. Basically there are two ways to get started:

Easy:
Tug on the sleeve of somebody who has more material than time to restore it.

Hard:
Go looking for material yourself.

Most of the newcomers seem to prefer the hard way so here are a few words from experience.

Overall, only about 1 in 1000 archival images has the right technical parameters to consider for featured picture candidacy. Many of the others may be encyclopedic or interesting, and worth using at Wikipedia. It's a lot of work getting one image restored so I usually focus on material that has the potential to go all the way. Yesterday I blogged about Toni Frissell's portrait of Tuskegee Airman Capt. Edward M. Thomas. These are a few of the things I wanted to use along the way to locating that portrait.

The first of several attempts was Booker T. Washington. I had recently restored a portrait of George Washington Carver, who had been a contemporary of Booker T. Washington at Tuskegee Institute. That prompted the thought that maybe we could get a featured picture pair. Unfortunately that idea didn't turn out well. Ran into problems like the one above: it's available in a 25MB version, but it's too heavily damaged across the face to really work with.

He must have been a superb public speaker. The Library of Congress has several images of Washington speaking outdoors to crowds, and in every one of him both he and the audience look very engaged. Again--and I call these things heartbreakers--the only one that's available in a reasonable 12MB resolution is one of the weakest of these. The postures of the men near the steps are priceless: the nearest ones leaning forward, mouths open in laughter, while others farther away fold their arms or scratch their chins skeptically. Unfortunately the uneven fade on this image means Washington's face itself is barely visible, the lower right corner is lost, and a partial figure in the left foreground distracts from the composition. There's simply no way to crop the problems out.

These are images I'd love to see in higher resolution, but they aren't available online any larger than this. One lists the location as New Orleans; another, Mississippi; the last one is captioned 'I want our people to have homes.' Wikipedia has one clip of him speaking. You can hear his voice here.

What's frustrating is to get this close to something--so close I can almost hear the cicadas of a sticky Gulf Coast afternoon--and miss the shot. I could restore his home or his wife (although neither would be quite good enough for featured picture either even if they had as much encyclopedic value). Wikipedians who notice my image work usually see only the successes, but this is a glimpse of what's behind that. A whole lot of searching; a whole lot of things that are nearly good enough but just won't fly; a whole lot of material that has the encyclopedic value but not the right technicals.

There's nothing to be done but get used to it and keep on looking. Sometimes you can write and request a better version, but most of the people you'll communicate with don't understand the technicals and the new file--if you get it--may still be unusable. The gems are out there too, and when one finally turns up it's worth all the effort.

And thanks to Moni3, who's working hard to get started, for inspiring today's post.

Cleaning dirt

One of the greatest fears of serious restoration work is that somebody will come along and suppose it was all done by hitting three buttons in Photoshop. Actually it was two days into this one getting the background to a natural tone when the thought occurred 'I'm cleaning dirt.' Why care that much?

The Tuskegee Airmen of World War II were the first African-American pilots in United States military history. This particular image caught my attention because of its composition and the expression in the subject's eyes. I had been searching for portraits of Booker T. Washington, then Marcus Garvey, then Doris Miller. Archival searches yield a lot of heartaches: the photographs that looked promising weren't available in high resolution and the high resolution images had serious technical flaws. Then this turned up. And it was a pleasant surprise to discover it was taken by Toni Frissell, the official photographer of the Women's Army Corps. It isn't often one finds a technically superior image on a significant subject that counters two kinds of systemic bias. Overall, only about 1 in 1000 archival images has the technical parameters to consider for featured candidacy with restoration.

Yet there were serious problems ahead. When the full 25MB TIFF file downloaded it became clear that this would be no easy cleanup. Thousands of tiny white flecks populated the image. This was unusual for a photo less than seven decades old and the problem was probably a shortage of fixative in the original emulsion.

Fortunately the face suffered relatively light damage compared to other areas, but this close-up gives some idea of what resulted. This is culture. This is history. Yes, the restoration took two days: hours on the grain in the cheap plywood wall at left and hours more getting photographic degradation out of the dirt. On an image like this I don't consider the work done until I view the thing at 300% resolution and can't see the flaws, but the labor was worth it. It's worth preserving his face; it's worth preserving his eyes.

It would be interesting to locate enough information about Edward M. Thomas, the man in this photograph, to justify a Wikipedia biography entry. He came from Chicago, Illinois, reached the rank of Captain, and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. This is the text of the citation:

For extraordinary achievement in aerial flight P-51 type aircraft in the Mediterranean theatre of operation. Lt. Thomas’ outstanding courage, aggressiveness and leadership enabled the formation to inflict damage upon a heavily defended airdrome in Athens, Greece. On October 6, 1944, Lt. Thomas flew as a flight leader in a formation of 14 aircraft assigned to strafe the heavily defended Totoi Airdrome and the surrounding terrain. Upon approach of the formation towards the airfield, Lt. Thomas’ aircraft was hit by flak. Disregarding all thought of personal safety, Lt. Thomas courageously pressed his attack to a deck level and destroyed two enemy aircraft and damaged another. Due to his exact judgement, skill and aggressiveness, a total of 11 enemy aircraft was destroyed or damaged without loss to any aircraft of his section. Flying over treacherous, mountainous terrain, under adverse weather condition and against severe enemy opposition, Lt. Thomas flew 81 hazardous combat missions for a total of 205 combat hours. His outstanding courage, judgement, unquestionable devotion to duty and professional skill have reflected great credit upon himself and the Armed Forces of the United States of America.

Captain Edward M. Thomas did not survive the war.

Quoth the image: "Nevermore?"

Interesting how the digital age has altered encyclopedias. During the 1990s--when Encarta was in its heyday--publishers oriented toward expanding media content rather than scope: it's expensive to use color illustrations in a paper and ink publication, but that cost drops with digitization and new options become possible: sound and video. Where Wikipedia innovated (aside from its open edit structure) was in terms of scope: the economics of dead trees publishing had kept encyclopedias to a certain size. Encarta's premium edition is barely over 60,000 articles. Wikipedia kept adding more articles. Things have come full circle, though, and Wikipedians turned to devaluing media.

A recent example was the featured article candidacy for the biography of United States President Benjamin Harrison. Awadewit reviews featured article candidate images for copyright compliance (bless her for that) and suggested I might find a portrait to restore for featured picture candidacy. So I toddled over to the Library of Congress website where the first charming thing that caught my eye was a caricature from Puck. Lovely, but a bit small even at full size for consideration. Unfortunately none of the formal photographs had the right technical parameters for featured picture consideration, but three lithographs did. Awadewit suggested putting the selection to the article's editors. So I posted to the article talk page. Any one of the three would be an enormous undertaking--they're all over 200MB. And with featured article candidacy underway, editors are at their most eager for any improvement to a page.

How much response did that offer bring? Not one murmur for six days, until an IP weighed in. Thank you, IP editor. To the rest I don't know what to say.

Let's face facts: when people browse Wikipedia they don't skim to the third section and look for brilliant copyediting. They notice the lead image and the caption. If the media elements are interesting they're more likely to stay and read the rest.

I've also located an audio file of Lyndon Johnson's speech when he signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In light of this month's events it seems fitting to nominate it for featured sound. The candidacy should go live soon.

Fortunately this year's WikiCup has brought new interest in featured pictures and featured sounds. So might as well announce this openly: winning ain't everything. It ain't even that important. But getting more restorationists is. I've been passing out suitable material to about half a dozen participants and would gladly help more, including follow-up with technical assistance. Shoemaker's Holiday, who restores using different software, is glad to assist new restorationists also.

If we had 100 restorationists each doing 2 restorations a week, Wikipedia could gain 10,000 featured pictures in one year.

Which would be really cool for the project. And would be a lot of help to a lot of smaller language editions of Wikipedia. When you consider that over 180 language editions don't even have 10,000 articles yet, good media content can be quite a boost. It's far easier to translate a caption than to translate a full article.

And in the longer term we're looking to gain access to more national libraries and archives. We want to restore the world's history, not just Benjamin Harrison.

Dendodge's brilliant observation

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