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Hi Caitlin,

We're in the middle of doing pretty much the exact same project, only with Norwegian and Norwegian-American Folk Art. Many of the objects in our collection have these kind of collection management photos in Past Perfect that are pretty much just suitable for museum staff as they're working in the collection. Many of these photos document condition issues and include rulers and color scales. They're purely functional photos and we'd cringe if anyone outside of the museum saw them. We wanted to dramatically increase the quality and quantity of photos. In early stages of designing the project, we talked a lot about whether we wanted to have our photographer take new "access" photos for collections staff to use in Past Perfect. We decided against it for the following reasons:

1. It would mean two different sets of images for each object, and double the amount of storage space on the server. If you're shooting low res jpgs for your Past Perfect photos, that's probably not a big deal, but if you're keeping full resolution jpgs, raw files or tiffs, then that will eat up a significant amount of storage space quickly. Your file management also gets more complicated too. 

2. The photographer we hired knows how to take excellent photos (which is why we hired him), but he doesn't know enough about museum collections and condition reports to know what he should document for each object. We decided it would be a better use of his time to focus on taking amazing portraits of our collection rather than try to teach him what he should look for in creating condition reporting photos for Past Perfect.

3. We opted not to include any rulers, scales, or accession numbers in the photos (see #1) mostly because we ​rely on the dimension fields in Past Perfect to see how big an object is, we know what the accession number is because the photo is linked to that accession, and we're relying on our photographer to get accurate colors in his photos by using color balanced and calibrated studio lights and a neutral grey card to adjust white balance in processing.

4. The new photos would be high enough resolution that we could zoom in on any condition issues.


Here's our workflow and file handling process for doing this photography project, in case you find it helpful.

1. Collections staff select and prep the object for photography so that the photographer (and/or) his assistant doesn't actually handle any of the objects. We typically get about a day's worth of objects ready to shoot and line them up on some tables. 
2. Photographer takes a photo of the accession number prior to taking the sequence of photos so he can correctly name the files after he's done editing them. 
3. Photographer takes 6-7 shots of each object. We opted not to take 360 degree views because the user interface for these viewers is still really clunky and cumbersome and we think our users will prefer higher resolution images prepped for deep-zoom rather than a full 360 degree view of the object
4. Any condition issues are noted by the collections staff member as they return the objects to their storage location.
5. Photographer edits and delivers two sets of photos - one set as a .DNG (which is a open access, uncompressed RAW file format) and another set as high resolution jpgs. These photos are named with the accession number, and then numbered sequentially. Naming/numbering is really easy to do in Lightroom or Photoshop, but REALLY time consuming to do if you have to re-name individual files in windows explorer. We opted against tiffs, thinking that they could be made off of the original .DNG files if we ever needed them
6. We move these photos into the appropriate folders and then add them to the Past Perfect records.

Ultimately, our goal is to upload as many of these objects (and their images) to our online collection portal as possible, but, because of COVID, we lost pretty much all of our interns who were going to be dedicated to working on this project. So we haven't gotten to that stage yet.

Here's an example of a few photos he's taken of one of our objects:

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Zach Row-Heyveld
Exhibitions Manager
Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum
Decorah IA
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Original Message:
Sent: 10-08-2020 04:05 PM
From: Caitlin Clay
Subject: Collections Management Photography help

Good afternoon everyone, 

I need some suggestions and advice in regards to collections management images. 

I recently received a large IMLS grant to digitize our Mexican Folk Art collection. The first year of the project will be devoted to photographing the objects and the second year is for creating the PastPerfect files. We are hiring a professional photographer who specializes in photographing artworks and his assistant for the project. The main goal is to have a set of images that can be used for an online collections website, a future catalog, and other promotional materials (print advertisement, social media, postcards, etc). 

If possible, I would also like the photographer to take a second set of images that would be used for collections management. These would be taken at the same time as the "nice" images, so that the artworks won't move too much. We currently don't have a good set of images to use for conditioning purposes. I would like to include a ruler (to demonstrate the height and width of each object), the accession number, and a color scale. 

My questions are:

1. Does anyone have suggestions for what else I should include in the collections management photos? 

2. Can anyone suggest where I might find a specialized scale/ruler for my purposes? Is there something else that works better, like a ruler printed on a backdrop??

3. Would anyone mind sending an example of one of your "collections management images" from your database so that I can show our Director and new Curator of Collections what we should aim for?

The Mexican Folk Art collection numbers about 460 artworks. Some artworks can include multiple pieces (one sculptural installation has close to 160 individual pieces), so this is a big project that I want to do the right way, the first time we do it. We do not have the staff or funds to get it wrong and start over. I realize it is very ambitious to want to get two sets of images, but after discussing it with the photographer, I think it is entirely possible. 

I was not trained in collections management, so I have learned a lot from this forum and from doing my own research (I have been the acting registrar/collections manager for the last year and a half and was recently promoted to curator). I always try to take pictures of any breaks, losses, damage, etc. to our permanent collection objects and to save those images to PastPerfect with notes. However, over the past few years, we have had several registrars who have also not been trained in collections management. Subsequently, we lack good images of many of our permanent collection objects to use for conditioning and reference purposes. 

If you would like to reach out to me privately, my email is cclay@amset.org. I really appreciate anyone's advice on these matters. 

Sincerely, 

Caitlin Clay

Curator of Exhibitions and Collections

Art Museum of Southeast Texas

500 Main Street

Beaumont, Texas 77701

www.amset.org

Email: cclay@amset.org

Phone: (409) 832-3432

Fax: (409) 832-8508