SMS Moltke

Staxringold asked me to collaborate with him on this restoration of the SMS Moltke at Hampton Roads, Virginia in 1912.  There was a difficult repair in the foreground on this image, which was 147 MB at full resolution in uncompressed TIFF format.  At preview size the area looks like two white marks in the waves about two-thirds of the way to the left.

This image was digitized from a glass plate negative.  Glass plate photography was developed in the mid-nineteenth century and was widely used until the early decades of the twentieth century when photographic film was introduced.

One of the problems with this format, though, is that the photographic emulsion is prone to damage.  Once damage occurs the emulsion can peel away from the glass.  That's starting to happen in this section.  The challenge I faced was to reconstruct the appearance of choppy water.  The sequence you'll see below was the progressive work on this area that I showed to Staxringold so he can do this type of area himself next time.  The following sections are screen shots at 200% resolution.

 

 

If it seems a little nutty to work at 200% resolution on a 147 MB digitization of a negative that was no larger than 5" x 7", maybe it is.  But glass plates are a high resolution format.  Film gained dominance in the consumer market because it was less fragile and easier to work with.  Glass plates remained in use for technical purposes such as astronomy and medical imaging until digital technologies took over at the very end of the twentieth century. 

All in all, that makes a pretty good useful lifespan for a technology that came into wide use during the American Civil War.

D-Day

 

Occasionally digital restoration raises new questions.  This photograph depicts a synagogue in New York City on D-Day, 1944.  The Library of Congress didn't identify which congregation.  A Wikipedian who edits under the username Pharos has identified it as Congregation Emunath Israel on West Twenty-third Street.

I've requested this to be Wikipedia's picture of the day for June 6, 2010.

It would be really wonderful to make contact with this congregation before that day so they know about it.  A few of their older members might even be able to name who these women are.  Unfortunately they don't have a website or publish an email address.  Their telephone goes directly into a voice mail system.

So if you live in New York City or know a friend who does, would you be willing to help contact this congregation please?  I'd really appreciate the help.

This stinks in Cologne

The fourth largest city in Germany actually is quite beautiful.  The photograph here was taken by a German Wikimedian named Thomas Wolf and it is featured in three languages.  The thing that stinks is that the city's archive building collapsed last year; Cologne's archive had been one of the very few that had survived World War II completely intact.  Last March the city was constructing a subway on the same street.  Then suddenly the archive tumbled.

Two people died.  Thousands of documents going back nearly 1100 years were in rubble.  Half a million photographs were housed there.  Disasters such as the Cologne archive collapse demonstrate why it is important to digitize cultural records. Digital versions help protect and preserve a heritage.

So with thoughts of Cologne, here's a photochrom print circa 1910 of the Eisenbahn Bridge at Cologne from the Library of Congress collection.  I haven't restored it yet; maybe someday.

Looking ahead

Congratulations to Coffee on his first digitally restored featured picture: a nineteenth century whiskey advertisement so politically incorrect it's almost quaint.  It really is wonderful and rewarding to help new people such as NativeForeigner and Coffee learn digital restoration.  Yet tutoring is very time consuming.

So today's post is brief: it's time to scale up this digital restoration work.  One way to do that is to collaborate with art schools.  What I'd like to do is get this incorporated into the curricula of advanced digital editing classes with the best student work to be selected for exhibition in museums.  We have the contacts on the museum side to make that happen.

If you have contacts with an art school, please put them in touch with me: nadezhda(dot)durova(at)gmail(dot)com

Beginner's luck

Would you believe that this image is not only an editor's first restoration, but his first digital editing project of any sort?  NativeForeigner asked me to help choose his first project a few days ago.  After discussing several options I pointed him to a series of lithographs about the Crimean War.  The Library of Congress owns a wonderful set created by William Simpson in the mid-1850s that's been well preserved.  He installed GIMP and Skype, we traded screen shots and shared ideas, and he performed most of the edits himself.  Here's a view of the unedited original.

NativeForeigner inspired me to think of this when he showed an interest in Roger Fenton's Crimean War photography.  The Simpson lithographs make wonderful beginner projects.

So today we'll share a few highlights from the collaboration.  NativeForeigner's first question was how to address the area in this screen shot.

How many of these marks are intentional, he wondered?  I sent back a draft edit of a suggested first pass to the section.  The key concept here is that it's easier to take away than to readd data.  So when something is uncertain, leave it for later and work on the easier material while you grow more familiar with the image and gain an understanding of its context.

NativeForeigner trusted my advice and did the first three passes himself.  He only really needed to pause for advice again to address a stain at the lower left corner: a dark spot surrounded by a fainter orange mark.  He corrected that problem with clone stamping.

After his third pass I found a damaged portion in the sky at upper right, which he corrected.  Then he transferred the file and I gave the image a pass to correct for scratches, creases, and subtle stains.  Then a Curves adjustment and a color balance provided the final touches.

We're creating the featured picture nomination together at Wikimedia Commons as I write this post.  Once it goes live we'll add the image to articles on Wikipedia.  This illustration, which was published in April 1855, shows the conditions that Florence Nightingale confronted when she arrived at Balaklava in late 1854.  Her work to improve care for the wounded and sick during that war established her reputation.  In many ways that turned nursing into a modern and respected profession.