My name is Kelsey Resh, and I’m an undergraduate student at the University of Central Florida studying History with a minor in Strategic Communications. This is my first internship and I’m so thrilled to participate in the Howard digitization project! I’m actually a graduate from Howard Middle and I love learning about digital methods of historic preservation, so I was excited a project combining the two things existed at UCF. Howard has an almost 100 year history that I’m looking forward to learning more about as we get more into the scanning and recording.
This week we got started in CHDR where I formally met Matt, the current graduate student working on the Howard digitization project. He began showing me how to use the scanner and camera the internship team has been using, along with all of the tools and computer technology that goes along with capturing images of each piece of memorabilia. The scanner is completely different than anything I’ve ever used before! This past year I took a class at UCF that was all about the use of structured light and terrestrial laser scanners for historic preservation, so I have experience using those types of scanners. However, the scanner we’re using for this project is much larger and utilizes an overhead camera rather than a laser. The machine has a table that removes air from underneath any object placed on it, such as a banner. This ensures that the object is as flat as possible when photos are taken.
The first thing Matt showed me was how to set up the camera with the photo processing software. Because it’s a camera, you have to get it in focus and correctly balance the contrast in the pictures before you begin. The process involves placing a color bar underneath the camera and altering the settings in the computer, then setting all of the color/white points. This process also makes sure that the camera is focused while in the position it's in. While we were working, if we needed to adjust the height of the camera, we found that we needed to repeat the set up process so the camera would still stay in focus. The camera is very detailed and when we scanned cloth or books, you could zoom in and see individual stitches and fibers in great detail! It was really cool.
The last thing we did during our meeting was scan a banner from 1977, which would have been 7 years after the school became a middle school (or a Jr. High School). Last semester, there were issues scanning this particular banner because photos had to be taken in multiple shots and there wasn’t enough overlap to put all of the images together. We ended up taking around 16 total shots of the banner! It was great practice to using all of the technology together and was actually pretty fun when we got a system down.
I’m very excited to continue working on this project! I loved my time at Howard so this project is near and dear to my heart. I can’t wait to see what other memorabilia we can record.
- Kelsey R.