Fellow artifact photographers,

Geomarine in Dallas, Texas has a fantastic method for digital scanning an
artifact that results in a 3-D image that can be rotated in all directions. They
presented this method at the American Cultural Resource Association (ACRA)
Meetings in Savannah, Georgia in 2002. This costs a mere $75 per item, but is
worth it if the item needs to be returned to a property owner or repatriated to a
Native American group. Although I have not had the occasion to send items to
Geomarine, I have it in my mind to do so when the need arises.
In truth, such scans would be invaluable for research and would substantially
reduce stress and wear on the real object.

I too have had fantastic luck with flat objects, like ceramic sherds, bullet
shells, keys, flat embossed bottle sherds, wall paper, and rows of fasteners
by simply placing the objects on the scanner with a small metric/English scale.
Larger objects like bottles, bottle necks, toy marbles, whole or quarter
ceramic objects, etc. suffer distortion and shadows with the scanner. The larger
objects are best photographed with a shadow box against various cloth
backgrounds with slave lamps strategically placed to reduce shadows. Digital cameras
are excellent for this work, but require tripods to maximize sharpness.

Some tricks of the trade for shooting artifacts would be to shoot on black
velvet to absorb the slave lamp lights, place a sheet of glass on two chairs
over a desired background, or placing the artifact on a pedestal with a light
gray cardboard sheet placed 12-18-inches back behind the object. Lighting can
then be focused on the artifacts to eliminate shadow or enhance slight shadow to
illustrate embossing. Again, digital cameras require a tripod for professional
shots. I use a Nikon D100, but Cannon makes some excellent digital cameras
that work every bit as well.

Another trick I have seen is to place the glass sheet over two chairs with
desert sand or grass as the background. When the camera is focused on the
artifacts lying on the glass, the grass blurs to lend an ethereal effect to the
shot. Though I have never attempted this technique, you can check out Malcolm J.
Rogers. 1966, The Ancient Hunters of the Far West, San Diego: Copley Press to
see how it looks with grass.

Finally, I use Paintshop Pro for digital work to clean up the photos. You can
cut out each artifact, move it to a plate page and move them around for
effect in this software program. In fact, you can clone out unwanted items in a
photograph. A good example is a photo I borrowed from an architect to illustrate
the 1930 Hardin House (see www.legacy106.com). The Hardin House photo was very
high quality, but had a modern blue backpack lying on the asphalt street in
front. We cloned out the pack and replaced it with other pieces of asphalt to
make it vanish.

I also have a professionally trained computer graphic artist on my team to
arrange all our report photographs and recommend archaeologists try to integrate
these specialists on the production team and not waste precious time
attempting to prepare report photos. Unless you want to spend a year in some technical
college learning digital graphics, it would be a word to the wise to simply
find a graphic artist to hire for part-time photography preparation.

Ron May
Legacy 106, Inc.