Yeah, not so much.
Christine thought it would be a good idea if we just practiced a bit so we started off with some Xerox copies of a newspaper that had no other existing editions and honestly no one's really sure where it came from. Any who it was placed on the floor on top of a black poster board. But as Laura played around with the camera's settings (because honestly I had no idea we had to set up the camera, just thought the camera would figure that all out...I'm really not as tech savvy as I thought I was) she also came to the conclusion that the tripod given to me would not allow us to take decent photos of an item on the ground. We also realized the lighting had to be just right for this to work. We didn't have enough lamps laying around so Christine called her husband Dr. French (you all should know him as one of the coolest history professors at UCF) who was kind enough to bring us extra lamps. After we had the light situation fixed we had to admit to ourselves that none of us knew what we were doing with this camera. Christine decided to call her father, Ruben, who was a retired photographer.
Before I go on any further with my story let me just pause here to tell everyone how cool Christine's dad is. He's this adorable, little old man who the moment he walked in the door got all business like and said, "Where's the problem?" I mean he was so interesting, sweet and funny that I had to take him to lunch. You don't meet cool grandfather's like that every day and NOT take him out to eat. He's my BFF he just doesn't know it yet. It's fine though, I'm sure he'll be cool with it.
So anyways, Ruben has all his equipment, camera, tripod, and all these extra parts for his equipment because come on the guy is totally a pro at this. To make a long story a little shorter after using his camera, trying to teach me how to use my camera and using every trick in the book that he knew we could not take a proper photo of the fine text on any of the documents that we used. He spent over an hour with me (as did Laura) trying to get a photo where the print was not blurry when I zoomed in. To say that it was frustrating was an understatement.
After an hour of trying everything, both Laura and Dr. French left, and the only solution I could come up with was to use an iPhone and see if that made a difference. Surprisingly enough, the photo came out perfect. When you zoomed in the letters were not blurry and totally readable. Finally, I was relieved. I decided to take a few more shots and emailed Laura some of the photos to see what she thought of them.
Fast forward to the next day and as excited as I am that we made a breakthrough with these pictures I get an email back from Laura that kind of deflated me a bit. Before I go on in no way, shape or form do I blame Laura. This isn't her fault, she's just following protocol. But first I found out that the photo needs to be at 600 dpi (our photos were no where near that) and it had to be set to .tiff (our photos were still in .jpg). I was definitely disheartening because Ruben and I had worked hard to get a hold of something that would work. Christine and I talked the next day and realized that for now we should wait a bit until we had a better game plan. So on Wednesday I spent the entire day finishing up my work on the database and the collection.
But you know what honestly it is okay. It was a learning experience. It was also so cool to have a group of people helping me out and that Christine was able to call reinforcements and how they came through for her and I. So thanks to Dr. French for taking time out of his day to come over and bring some much needed light. Thanks to Laura for coming all the way from Orlando to help me out. A really big thanks for Ruben (aka my BFF) for being super patient and not giving up as well as showing me the ropes on how to take a proper photo. And of course thanks to Christine for not leaving me in the dark and leaving me to figure out this mess on my own. Having friends in the right places is always helpful. I definitely learned that this week.
So that's it for now and if you look below you will see some photos I took of the group. Until next week folks.
- Ambar the History Student
The man with the camera is Ruben and the pretty lady in the white top is Laura
The man in blue is Dr. French and Christine is on his right. They were both reading something and honestly I have no idea what it was. However I'll bet you 10 bucks that it was something probably historical.
Laura, Christine and Ruben
Ruben (the BFF) and Christine (no idea what she was looking at)
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