News

The conference is upon us, for further details please click on the conference link in the menu on the right.

We look forward to seeing you there!

The Committee

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This year’s conference will take place at the RAF Museum in Hendon on13 November. Members are invited to submit proposals for talks. Talks on any aspect of photography, new media or image management related to the business of culture heritage will be considered. Please send proposals or abstracts to James Stevenson, Chairman j.stevenson@vam.ac.uk or to any members of the Association committee, see under 'Contacts' in menu.

A new feature of this conference will be the opportunity to present a short topic in the form of a poster display. This format is common to many scientific and other conferences. The form of this poster display will be as an A2 or similar size single-sheet poster to illustrate a particular topic or process. This could be a form of research, or a photographic technique. As an example the V&A will undertake a poster on the technique it has developed to reconstruct colour images from black-and-white separation negatives from the archive of the photographer Curtis Moffat. There will also be another poster on the new digital x-ray equipment recently installed. It is the intention to display these posters during the lunch period. Authors will explain their work in an informal manner to delegates who in turn will have the opportunity to browse the posters at their leisure. This will be a new item for our conference and I would encourage members to participate and take the opportunity to show their work in an informal way.

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Job Title: Photography Assistant

Job Description: Maternity Cover on a freelance contract

A vacancy has arisen at the Richard Green Gallery (www.richard-green.com) for maternity cover of the post of Photography Assistant.

The successful candidate will be entering a Fine Art Photographic Department that specialises in high end colour perfect reproductions of a variety of paintings needed for catalogues, advertising and archiving.

You will need to have an excellent understanding of digital photography, Photoshop, and digital image reproduction and retouching processes as well as a working knowledge of RGB and CMYK colour spaces. It is alsovery important that you have an excellent eye for colour.

You will need to be Mac and PC literate and be able to work with computers confidently and with enjoyment as you will regularly have to work with IT specialists in various areas, including bespoke database and working with Printers.

Candidate must have a good sense of humour and be able to work in a busy and sometimes stressful environment.

Please send CV and covering letters to Eve Tudor at evetudor@richard-green.com

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The results and analysis are now in for the Digital Survey carried out earlier this year, they can be found by clicking on the Digital Survey option on the right.

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We regret to announce the death of Mike Kitcatt, 1950 – 2008

MIKE KITCATT was for thirty years a photographer in the Photographic Studio at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. During his time at the museum he photographed almost every conceivable type of object held by the museum and was consequently very experienced in the photographic interpretation of the cultural object. Mike had a natural and instinctive style with his lighting and with the minimum effort was able to show an object at its best.

Mike followed a classical photographic training for his time. He took an art foundation course at Guildford School of Art and then basic photography at Isleworth Polytechnic. When he obtained employment in photography he did the usual thing of doing his City and Guilds 744 as day release from work. He did the course at the then well known and respected Paddington Technical College. This formative photographic training took place when he was employed by David Page Photography in Hatton Garden in the City of London where he worked for over seven years.

He left David Page to join the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments in Savile Row. It was during his time here that he gained a love of the English countryside, something which grew on his many walking holidays with his family. He only spent a few years with RCHM because he found himself spending most of his time in the darkroom, processing and printing, and he considered his talents were being wasted. The opportunity to work at the V&A opened up the possibility of being more actively engaged as a photographer.

Mike was a very popular photographer at the V&A. All of those colleagues he worked for have commented on his easy-going manner and the pleasure he was to work with. He was completely self-effacing when it came to his own abilities and would never have considered his work superior to anyone else’s. It was evident, though, that, without any apparent effort, Mike’s work could match any made in the V&A. He was quick to have a laugh, especially at himself and he would always shrug his shoulders with a grin when anyone commented, ‘That’s a nice shot, Mike.’

Mike’s work is well represented in fine art publications made by the V&A. Among many of the books he illustrated are: Palace & Mosque, Masterpieces of World Ceramics, The Furniture Machine, Art of Drinking, Arts of India, Furniture from British India and Ceylon, Indian Ikat Textiles, and A Golden Treasury – Indian Jewellery. There were many more which he either completely undertook or to which he contributed as a member of the Photographic Studio. In recent times many of his pictures became a large part of the V&A website. Here they are available to an ever wider audience, the potential size of which Mike never considered remarkable but just thought of as another part of the job.

When he applied for employment at the V&A his application form contained one very simple statement as to why he wanted to move to the museum: ‘I would like to undertake a little more photography than at present.’ His wish was more than adequately granted. Although it is difficult to estimate the true figure, it is fair to say that he produced many tens of thousands of images of museum objects, events and activities during his time. All these images are well looked after in the archives of the museum and his pictures will continue to be preserved and, more importantly, used for many years to come.

He is survived by his wife Ruth and daughter Susan.

Mike Kitcatt, died 1 July 2008. Donations may be made to the British Heart Foundation, www.bhf.org.uk

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The PCF has recently advertised for photographers to participate in its programme of cataloguing the nations’ paintings in public ownership. From their website: http://www.thepcf.org.uk/

“The Public Catalogue Foundation is a registered charity based in Covent Garden, London. It was set up to photograph and record all oil, acrylic and tempera paintings in publicly owned collections in the UK. This includes works in museums (both on display and in store) as well as paintings in council buildings, universities, hospitals, police stations and fire stations. It is estimated that there are some 200,000 such paintings in the UK. However, at any one time some 80% of these are hidden from public view, being either in storerooms or public buildings in official use.

“The aim of the Foundation is to improve public access to these paintings by producing a series of affordable colour catalogues on a county-by-county basis. These will later go online allowing the public free access to the works they own. The benefits to the collections are considerable and include free digital images, improved records, an income stream for painting conservation and education, and improved publicity. These benefits come at no cost to the collections, many of which face severe financial constraints.”

The V&A was selected as one of the volumes for the PCF and this has recently been published. I would like to offer the experience of the V&A Photographic Studio during the production of this catalogue.

The V&A has approximately 2,800 oil paintings in its collection. Of these the Photographic Studio had to photograph afresh 1,800 for the PCF catalogue. These were located around the whole of the V&A estate; on display, in offices, in stores, in workshops and on loan. Paintings were also of all possible sizes; from dolls house paintings one-inch square to monumental group portraits; on all types of media from plaster from Pompeii to sides of Italian cassone. One of the most difficult aspects to overcome in this exercise was access. Many paintings in stores had less than three feet either side of the painting to place lights; often lights could only be placed on one side of the object. Frequently paintings had to be photographed at an angle and straightened in software, a less than ideal approach but the only possible way to get an acceptable image with the resources that we had available. We had access to object movers for approximately 45% of this project so in many cases paintings could not be moved off racks or office walls.

The PCF are quite demanding in aspects such as the way images of the canvas are removed from the frame. They have little awareness of the complications of lighting a glazed painting of a very dark canvas, in a deep frame where the space available compromises the direction the lights can be placed.

If the timescales for the individual catalogues were realistic then resources could be provided to undertake the work satisfactorily.

For the individual undertaking photography in similar difficult circumstances then the figure of £6 per image should be questioned. It is a difficult calculation to determine whether reasonable work can be done for this figure. If you are faced with a wall of easily lit, easily accessible paintings where 60 or 70 could be photographed and finished in a day then you could possibly make a reasonable day rate. To drive to a remote location for one or two paintings hardly seems worth the expense. The danger with this approach is that it may attract enthusiastic amateurs for whom the money is of little value against the opportunity to have their work in a national catalogue. Work of this nature should be the province of the professional. It would be interesting to hear from any members of the Association who have undertaken work for the PCF and hear whether they have made a reasonable return for their work.

James Stevenson

V&A

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I am briefly listing the essential requirements for undertaking photography for the PCF (Public Catalogue Foundation).

The PCF is a national inventory of all publicly owned oil paintings; this is being undertaken on a county by county basis.

The project has been running for over five years and it is envisaged that all photography will be completed by 2012.

We are therefore looking for photographers who can undertake the remaining counties.

1. You must have a suitable SLR digital high-end camera; we are aiming to have finished processed files of around 30Mb.

2. You must have electronic flash equipment, minimum of two heads, light stands and barn doors, etc.

3. Computer - PC or Mac with Adobe Photoshop and preferably with a calibratible monitor and a basic understanding of Photoshop skills.

4. Full Car Driving License

5. You will be required to obtain Public Liability Insurance of £5 million (if you do not already have Public Liability Insurance this can be obtained for under £200p.a. at your expense.

6. It is preferred although not essential to have Fine Art Photography experience. You will be working along side a county co-ordinator and working within Museums, Art Galleries, Council Offices and Hospitals, so good communication skills and a pleasant demeanour are essential.

In return the PCF will pay you £6 per processed image. This price is inclusive of expenses incurred, i.e. petrol, parking etc.

Counties typically range in volumes from 800 – 2000 paintings.

As this will involve some travelling candidates should be based within the regions requiring photography. These regions are the North West, South West, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland.

If you meet with these criteria, then please email me back with the Subject Title: CRITERIA MET and I will contact you in due course.

Regards

Andy Johnson

PCF Lead Photographer

Email: andy@ajphotographics.com

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Shareware—try before you buy and Freeware—totally free to use softwares have been around a long time but I only discovered them when I retired and was suddenly separated from the top-line programmes I enjoyed in my company working environment.

While large institutions generally provide staff with up-to-date digitals tools this may not be the case with smaller or cash-strapped departments or, for that matter, students, so this paper is directed towards individuals and photographers in small museums or cultural heritage departments. For these groups the use of freeware is ideal and should result in significant budgetary saving that can then hopefully be applied to other projects.

It is worth mentioning that Freeware comes in either stand-alone or plug-in form compatible with the cheaper Photoshop Elements or Corel Paintshop Pro-type programmes

A list of plug-in-compatible programmes can be found at

http://www.filtermeister.com/wiki/index.php?page=Plug-in+compatible+hosts

Most of the software discussed here is for PC but Mac users can go to

http://www.freemacware.com/mac-freeware-for-photography/

Additionally, while Freeware is free to use, no strings attached, authors are always happy to accept your donations to help with further development. Such discretionary donations will perhaps encourage more programme authors to release software they wrote for themselves to a wider public.

People unfamiliar with the freeware concept can first go to http://www.freeware-guide.com and the forum http://groups.google.com/group/alt.comp.freeware/topics for lots of information. See also this big site http://www.photo-freeware.net/orange-photo-editor.php for a range of free stuff.

TRIAL AND EVALUATION SOFTWARE

Many people download and use evaluation shareware for small projects that can be completed within the 30 days or so allowed before the user is asked to purchase a product licence but from a moral point of view I don’t think we should abuse evaluation shareware. Freeware is more appropriate especially as free no longer means low quality, quite the contrary, because these programmes increasingly provide creditable substitutes for expensive commercial software.

No doubt users in large institutions will find some of these programmes useful additions to their standard software but, like me, they may come up against their institution’s IT policy of no independent departmental downloads and have to make a case for using free programmes.

FREE PHOTOSHOP-TYPE PROGRAMMES

My first task was to find replacements for the main programmes I used at work such as Photoshop. I now use The Gimp http://www.gimp.org/ A Windows version of a popular Linux programme, a slightly steep learning curve but works well when you learn it and Virtual Photographer, http://www.photo-freeware.net/download_win-eng.php?id=220. Others to try are Photo filter, a complete image-retouching programme, which performs simple or advanced adjustments to your pictures and applies a wide range of filters to them.http://www.download3k.com/Photo-Graphic/Digital-Photography/Download-Portable-PhotoFiltre-Free.html Helicon free filter is another fully featured photo edito, with powerful retouching, RAW conversion, noise reduction, chromatic aberration, vignetting correction and other pro features. http://www.download32.com/helicon-filter-free-i17302.html

FREEWARE VIEWERS

ImageXtender a free application that teaches your Windows XP image viewer to understand more than 200 image formats. It uses the standard Windows image viewer for viewing files of nearly all image formats in three standard Windows modes—Preview, Thumbnails and Filmstrip. This is the first programme to display such outdated formats as *.msp, *.gem together with really rare ones, such as *.cals, *.dpx.http://www.imagextender.com/

IrfanviewOne of the best around can be found at http://www.irfanview.com/ it has a very fast thumbnail viewer and lots of other features. Picasa programme http://picasa.google.com/ see also the free pack below Google is to be praised for releasing this programme as freeware.

Fx Foto http://www.fxfoto.com/fxdownload.htm, a good fully-featured programme can be downloaded as viewer or full programme with additional upgrades available.

Xn view http://www.xnview.com/ view, organise, convert

Othershttp://www.wega2.vandel.nl/http://www.pixort.com/download.htmlhttp://www.snapfiles.com/download/dlcam2pc.html

BATCH IMAGE CONVERTERS

http://www.download.com/Batch-Image-Converter/3000-2192_4-10805264.html?tag=lst-0-10http://www.robertstech.com/software.htmGamma Tweakhttp://www.robertstech.com/software.htm

ExposurePlot (former FocalPlot)http://www.wega2.vandel.nl/

Image converterhttp://www.nchsoftware.com/imageconverter/index.html

IMAGE CONTROL SOFTWARE

Shift N http://www.marcus-hebel.de/foto/links.html simulates large-format camera movement perspective corrections. See also http://research.graphicon.ru/image-processing/gml-image-undistorter-2.html

Noise control http://www.imagenomic.com/download.aspx noiseware standard plug-in that works very well. More advanced versions are available .http://absolutedenoiser.free.fr/index.php

DUST AND SCRATCH REMOVAL SOFTWAREhttp://groups.google.com/group/alt.comp.freeware/topics

The Polaroid company’s great software suitable for PC and Mac—a very good substitute for the Photoshop utility.

IMAGE RESIZER

http://picturetray.com/download.htm

GRABZILLA SCREEN GRABBERhttp://www.freetoall.info/downloads.htm

FILTERS

Great free set from http://www.flamingpear.com/goodies.html. See also a good black and white converter http://www.photo-freeware.net/download_win-eng.php?id=919

GOOGLE FREEBIES

http://pack.google.com/intl/en-gb/pack_installer_new.html?hl=en-gb&gl=uk&ciNum=11Web Picture creator http://www.snapfiles.com/download/dlwebpicture.htmlPhoto stats http://www.snapfiles.com/download/dlsmartphotostats.html

PAINT AND IMAGE-PROCESSING PROGRAMMES

Paint star http://www.freewarefiles.com/program_3_36_19504.html

PHOTORMIN IMAGE EDITOR

http://www.freewarefiles.com/downloads_counter.php?programid=38260

WORD PROCESSING PROGRAMME

Open Office, an open source programme that is constantly being updated and can completely replace Microsoft Office and PowerPoint whilst still being compatible with existing Microsoft files http://www.openoffice.org/

* Take note: Thank you to Terry for a very thorough run through of software available, but I would also issue a word of caution; Some unscrupulous individuals use Freeware/Shareware as a means to infect your computer with Spyware and/or Viruses, so please make sure that your computer is protected with up to date anti-virus and anti-spyware software before downloading and installing any software from unknown or untrusted sources.

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Terry Dennett has been a committee member and is a former editor of the association’s journal.

He has been involved in scientific and institutional photography and the recording of heritage material for 38 years.

He started his career as a darkroom technician and then spent a period as a photo-micrographer and gross specimen photographer before becoming the staff photographer at the Institute of Zoology in London. In that capacity he was finally able to indulge his interest in archives and photographic history after being assigned the task of printing and indexing the Zoological Society’s entire collection of historical photographic negatives. Through this work he also developed a special interest in archival processing, photographic chemistry and the antique processes.

Following his recent retirement he is now involved with exhibition curation.

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Kodak says new CDs will last 200 years, and DVDs 100 yearsClive Akass, Personal Computer World 05 Jul 2007

Kodak has developed a new range of archival CD that it claims can last up to 200 years –twenty times the life you can expect from a standard CD. DVDs using the same technology are said to last 100 years, as measured by standard accelerated-aging tests.

Archival media have become big business because of the legal requirement on companies to retain files. But home users too are coming to realize that their precious family snaps will go the way of all flesh if they are not stored well.

DVDs and CDs designed for archiving have used a gold layer to protect the data but they tend to have very slow write speeds, according to Max Buck, of Kodak Media Products.

The company has developed a new protective coating that allows higher write speeds than gold, though it is still gold coloured.

Five products are being launched using the new technology: printable and non-printable CD-R and DVD-R disks and a zero-defect DVD called a Digital Master Disk, for professional audio and video use.

They will be available in major photographic shops in five- and ten-packs, with prices starting at around £2.50 a disk.

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