Yes, Karin's query does raise an urge in myself to give advice, because
like every other senior zooarch. person reading here, I've spent forty
years taking photos of bone specimens. However, if I may, I would add that
being the official "scientific illustrator" for a couple of University
natural history museums along the way has also added to what I think one
needs to know. So has the fact that I've now illustrated over a dozen
books, all of my professional papers, and a couple of hundred popular
articles for horse magazines. There are three reasons why a knowledge of
scientific illustration will help the student take better pictures:

(1) The VERY FIRST thing that must be considered, before ever touching the
camera, is the intended medium of reproduction. Are you shooting a photo
that is going to be reproduced AS a photo? Or are you going to use the
photo as the basis for an illustration, i.e. either tone or line? It makes
an enormous difference, because if the former you'll need to take more
care; if the latter, you can get away almost with murder in terms of
lighting and even focus -- so long as you have your specimen handy at the
time you're making the drawing, so you can refer to it if there is any
doubt. Quick and dirty shooting saves TIME, which is one thing most
students have very little of.

(2) The next consideration is to know the size that the image is going to
be in the actual publication. If you are shooting a photo in order to make
an illustration from it, you should plan on working (in Photoshop or
Illustrator) at 2X to 3X the expected published width -- NEVER work at X1
or smaller, because every glitch and glop of your pen (graphics pad or
physical ink, doesn't matter) is going to show, and your line quality is
going to look horrible.

If you are shooting the photo to be reproduced as a photo, even then you
should work 2X or 3X published width, because almost certainly you are
going to have to strip ("drop") the background, and this is just as much a
hand-driven operation on your graphics pad as making a line drawing would
be. That is, BE FOREWARNED: there is NO AUTOMATIC WAY to drop background,
magic lasso or no magic lasso.

(3) The converse of point (2) is that you can only go SO FAR with
reduction before the image begins to break up into pixels and/or lines too
fine to print. This was a huge consideration back in the day when no
commonly available printing press could crank out detail greater than 200
lines per inch, but even with today's digital printers there is a limit.
For example: let's say you're working on a drawing with line-shading in
Photoshop, and the finest pen diameter you use is 5 pixels. If that image
is reduced by 50% for final publication (note that I told you to work at
least at 2X in point (2)), your 5-pixel line will be 2.5 pixels wide after
reduction, and that's the absolute lower limit that I would bet on:
anything finer and it's liable to break up into a chain of little dots,
which may or may not look good. Equally you must think of the gutters
between parallel lines and/or the spaces between dots if using
stipple-shading: they can't be narrower than about 2 pixels or the area
will "close up" with graytone, and may upon printing bleed entirely
together as a gray or black blob.

So much for layout considerations. While I respect what's already been
said here about the actual taking of photos, I disagree with some of it.
To wit:

(1) A medium-quality, reasonably-priced digital camera in the 12 megapixel
range is plenty sufficient. I very rarely shoot at the highest level of
which my Nikon is capable, because I normally do not really require a
photo the size of a bed sheet which, when I run it up into Photoshop, is
going to eat half my RAM. If you don't believe me, I invite you to try a
'rotate image' or 'flatten layers' function on a file of 200 megs or so,
which is what one of those huge images is going to be; even with a fast
newer computer it's going to take up to a minute to crank through, so I'm
saying that this is another way to waste your time. You do not need
needless fidelity! And neither do more megapixels equate to better photos.
Good photos come primarily from the photographer being able to "see" the
final, printed product from the first moment, as she shoots through the
lens (that's an Ansel Adams aphorism).

Remember that you'll be lucky (or else your name is Alfred Sherwood Romer)
if your image gets reproduced in the journal at more than column width,
i.e. about 4 inches. Thus, 99% of the photos you will ever work with will
do very well if they begin as about 17 inches wide at 72 dpi. When you run
them up into Photoshop, you can then bump them temporarily to the same
width at 300 dpi, which is just perfect for dropping the background. (And
by the way: if the image you have to "go around" is much bigger than this,
you're going to spend three weeks cutting that first stripe to drop the
background -- ANOTHER enormous waste of time).

One you've finished your background drop, then you save the image "for
archival purposes" at ca. 17 in X 300 dpi as a .tiff (NEVER as a .jpg or
any other algorithm involving compression). From this "archival" copy you
then make your reductions to column-width and transmit them as .jpg's or
.png's, which is what the journal will require of you.

The MOST important consideration when you purchase the camera is its macro
capabilities, and whether it will allow you to turn off the
rangefinder/autofocus (if it won't, you will be driven insane trying to
focus on stuff the electric eye does not want to see, for example the awns
on grass or a cow shot through hogwire: the camera "wants" to see the
wire, so the cow will always come out blurry and out of focus. Ditto for
shooting through glass, i.e. shooting into museum cases: you have to be
able to turn both the flash and the electric rangefinder off).

(2) Lighting is almost totally unimportant, because digital cameras are
insanely sensitive to light. In fact, it's sometimes difficult or
impossible to take a good photo of a specimen outdoors or under
'photographic lights' because they provide WAY too much light -- every
shot will come out overexposed or burned, and your shadow/highlight
balance will be so contrasty that you won't be able to fix it in
Photoshop.

When you buy your camera, make sure you get one that has a jiggle-damper
or motion-damper; turn that function on, and you can shoot in incredibly
dark spaces (so long as the subject is not moving, i.e. the way the camera
compensates for low light is the old-fashioned way, by opening the
aperture and lengthening the exposure time). When shooting the specimen,
just be sure you aren't inadvertently casting your own shadow over it --
sometimes in a lab setting with overhead fluorescent lights spaced at six
or eight-foot intervals in the ceiling, you may have to drag your table
around to find a spot where the light is uniform and you're not in the way
of it.

If the light is really poor, brace yourself on something to keep the
camera as still as possible, or use a tripod (pain in the ass and slows
you down, but I'll use one if I can't brace sufficiently using the camera
strap). With a digital camera, the better the light, the sharper will be
the focus and the less grainy the image.

When I need 'special' lighting to 'fill' some dark recess on the specimen,
depending on the size of the specimen, I might use one of those little
'bug' LED lights with the flexible arms; or I might equally use an
ordinary desk lamp, especially if it has an incandescent bulb (nice soft
yellowish-white light). Handy to be able to move the lamp around on the
tabletop too, or tilt it over or whatever. Also, be aware, you can usually
suck detail up on the dark side of a specimen -- so long as it is not too
contrasty -- by using the 'bleed' slider on the image adjustment curve in
Photoshop.

(4) Yes definitely get the black velvet. This makes dropping backgrounds a
lot faster, especially under certain types of light, because once you run
the image up into Photoshop and use your Magic Wand, it will "see" large
areas of the velvet as dead black, and thus save you having to designate
them by hand. Be sure to get real French velvet, not velveteen or felt;
there's something about the little fibers in fresh, uncrushed velvet that
disperses the light so as to effectively 'damp' it to total blackness.

Once in a rare while I'll use a gray sheet. This would either be for a
specimen that's stained very dark, or because I need to make the specimen
look like it's floating in space, which you do by taping the gray paper to
the table and then bending it upward in a curve; rest the vertical part
against a couple of bricks. Again you need something that will disperse
and dampen or soften the light, so I would never use white. Gray paper
used to be sold at photographic stores, but since there are no longer any
of these, just go to the hobby store and buy a biggish sheet of rather
fibrous gray paper, such as might be used to mat the back of a framed
painting.

(5) PLEASE don't use one of those dumb hand-made checkerboard kind of
scales. The line quality on those things is so bad, most of them might as
well be made of goat hair. Don't use shiny metal or clear plastic either,
because even without a flash they will reflect, and they may also (with
some cameras) fool your rangefinder so you can't get focus. Bar-none the
best scale I've ever found is a matte black plastic ruler printed with
thin white marks and numbers, costing all of $1 in the stationery section
at your local grocery store.

Understand that you are NOT going to keep the scale you actually
photograph in the final image that you send in to your editor. The scale
that appears in the photograph should always be re-drafted in Photoshop
(very easy to do with the line and text tools). 99% of the time, you're
dropping the background too, so re-drafting the scale is just part of
that.

(6) Last but not least: PLEASE take diagnostic shots. Diagnostic shots are
images that somebody could actually use to make specimen comparisons when
they read your magnum opus in the actual publication. My favorite example
of FAILURE TO VISUALIZE THE FINAL RESULT in Zooarch. papers is the dog
skeleton which is laid out on the floor of the lab. They put the head at
the top, line up the vertebrae behind that (never mind how they tilt all
crazy), spread the ribs out to either side, and then have the four limbs
splayed out -- more or less the configuration of roadkill. Then they go
get a ladder, climb up to the top with their camera, and shoot down,
capturing a photo of the entire skeleton in one shot. Trouble is, once
it's printed, the skull is 0.8 in. wide, and we get only the dorsal view.
Were the teeth important? Why don't you show them?! Was there something
diagnostic about any of the limb bones? If I'm working in the same taxon,
I'm going to want very much to be able to SEE it!

So, you learn to take photos in the mode that has long been considered
standard for zoological and paleontological publications: skull dorsal,
lateral, ventral, and if diagnostic occipital too; limb bones in three
views at least, and with inset enlargements of the proximal and distal
ends; closeups of the toothrow/teeth; closeups of any other diagnostic
part. In my own publications, I try to work with editors to achieve this,
and generally they have agreed, because I try to present to them beautiful
work which complements and enhances the text, which is the overall bottom
line that I think we should all strive for.

Write back again, Karin (or anybody) if you want to talk Photoshop. I'm
always amazed there isn't as much dialogue on the Zooarch. list about
Photoshop and illustration techniques as there is about using PAST! Surely
there is an equal need for good illustration and photography! Cheers --
Deb Bennett



> Hi Karin
>
> I’ve been photographing, or attempting to photograph, bone and artefacts
> for years (like many archaeologists I am Jack of all trades and master of
> none, with the possible exception of archaeology of course) and all I can
> say is get hold of some good equipment (a good digital SLR and studio
> lights), some advice from a friendly professional photographer and learn
> some Photoshop basics. All the same, I still often give big jobs to my
> friendly professional photographer who inevitably does a better job than I
> can in a much shorter time. That is probably not an option for a student
> though.
>
> If you do have Photoshop, shoot in RAW and correct the RAW file in
> Photoshop. If you don’t know what I’m talking about it’s a fairly steep
> learning curve.
>
> The main thing is to make sure your lighting highlights the features of
> importance and that the background contrasts with the object, i.e., use a
> sheet of black velvet for light objects, or a sheet of white paper for
> dark
> objects. And always use a scale.
>
> Mat
>
>
>
> *From:* Analysis of animal remains from archaeological sites [mailto:
> [log in to unmask]] *On Behalf Of *Karin Scott
> *Sent:* Tuesday, August 16, 2016 7:38 PM
> *To:* [log in to unmask]
> *Subject:* [ZOOARCH] Photographs for publication
>
>
>
> Dear all
>
>
>
> Does someone have a guide or standard operating procedure how to take
> photographs of skeletal material (fresh and archaeological) for
> publication
> or dissertation/thesis.  Basic standards that should be adhered to?
>
>
>
> Any assistance will be appreciated.
>
>
>
> Thanking you in advance for your assistance.
>
>
>
> Karin Scott
>
>
>
> Never Argue with a Dragon
>
> For thou art crunchy
>
> And goes well with cheese
>
>
>
> *I don't make typos. I do, however, periodically disrupt linguistic
> hegemonies by way of unintentionally subversive alternate spellings. – *S
> Academics Say
>