Why can't museums take good images?

[Spartancrest]

I recently copied the entire collection of tsuba from the Walters Art Museum. [don't worry they are all in the public domain] What struck me was just how dark the images were - it is almost like they are trying to hide them! [probably from people like me ] and why do some museums make it so difficult to find the next item in line? Some museums will comeback with "no results found" even when you know darn well they have a huge collection? There are also the museums who persist in taking images at such odd angles as to make it near impossible to see the design. Is it funding or just lazy documentation? Surely the object of a museum is to show off it's collection - why then are so many so bad at it?

 

[1kinko]

I completely agree. They’ve got some very nice fittings but absolutely failed at photography. If you figure out a way to print them please let us know. Dany Chan is supposed to be in charge of that collection (at extension 612) and as you know Laura Seitter is supposed to be in charge of photography. Maybe they should talk?

[1kinko]

And then there are the museums who want $250 to show the ura side.

[rkg]

That's a can of worms.  On top of the usual stuff (images were shot that way due to their publication process - diatribe omitted), the reasons can run from museum policy (they have only a few lighting setups they use so all artifacts are shot consistently) to lack of interest by the curator in the artifacts (so they let the intern do the shooting if they bother to image them at all), to their staff photographer/curator not "understanding" what they are shooting (so they use an inappropriate setup), they use the low bidder on the project (don't forget that museums are businesses - which explains the fees, but I digress), etc etc etc. 

 

 

rkg

(Richard George)

[Stephen]

Same with some big auction houses. Need to hire a professional.

[Spartancrest]

8 hours ago, 1kinko said:

If you figure out a way to print them please let us know.

 Done just that - but now the print quality is again out of my control - - you really can't win! 

https://www.walmart.com/ip/The-Walters-Art-Museum-Collection-of-Tsuba-Volume-1-Hardcover/2235429940?wmlspartner=wlpa&selectedSellerId=0

https://www.walmart.com/ip/The-Walters-Art-Museum-Collection-of-Tsuba-Volume-2-Hardcover-9798211483842/3414915852

 

I am not advocating Walmart/Amazon/Barnes & Noble - long list of others they are all price gougers. These guys amount to doubling the cost of books, simply for redirecting the shipping for Print on Demand publications - Just how expensive is digital advertising? Photo quality publishing would more than double the costs again. As my fiend Stephen King has pointed out to me, the cost is not so high considering the number of pages [over 800] but I still baulk at giving middlemen a bonus for doing - what?

[1kinko]

No previews available for these either. I’ll see if I can use my B&N account to return it if I don’t see what I’m interested in. Have you thought of selling pdfs online? That way I could print on photo paper.

[1kinko]

Richard- I’ve been holding back on this for far too long but I seems that most Asian art connections are curated by Chinese, not Japanese. For instance when the Bushell netsuke collection was housed in the DeYoung museum, they were available for view and rotated. Now that collected is part of the Asian Art Museum that largely shows Chinese and Indian art. The relative size of the different populations could also play a large role. It sure would be nice for a Japanese art museum to open in the US (Japantown, SF? and have all these collections available on view.

[Spartancrest]

39 minutes ago, 1kinko said:

Have you thought of selling pdfs online?

I always figure if you are online why not go direct to the museum? No copyright on the Walters collection, you can print out directly from them exactly what you want. I just like the feel of a 'real' book.  

You might run into problems printing from a published PDF - not from me, but from the company that sells them, Blurb in this case. Blurb won't even let me have a PDF of printable quality unless I pay for it.

 

Some of these pages ended up with slight changes but you can get the idea. Many of the designs are backed up by reference to Joly's book "Legends in Japanese Art"

 

[Brian]

I vote for a pdf too. Browsing to a website every time I want to look through pages takes time, data and effort. I would much rather just open a pdf that I can quickly scan through and search and print pages etc. I'd read your pdf, but browsing their website just seems too much effort when daily life is so hectic. If you decide to do a pdf, we can work out something beneficial to you I am sure. And I think you'd be surprised at the interest.

[Steves87]

There are some interesting research papers on the resurgence of hard copy text vs electronic text out there on the scholarly databases. It seems that the initial rise of electronic texts has flattened and there is now an equally steady consumption rate between hard copy and electronic media.

Both Dale and Brian made good points there, I prefer hard copies for long stints, .pdf for a quick reference, and I cannot stand the current navigation on most museum websites (specifically the MET, they had a good system and then they "modernised" it)

[Alex A]

10 hours ago, Stephen said:

Same with some big auction houses. Need to hire a professional.

 

I have this theory that a lot of the time its intentional, too honest a description and images wont help with online sales 

[Spartancrest]

There is one big issue I didn't touch on about pdf's - they can be easily copied and traded. That is great for the consumer - not so great for the people who made them. Where is the guarantee that the writers get something back for their efforts?  

I have given away quiet a few pdf's to many members of this forum and am still happy to do so but it is my choice what and to whom they are given, this is not the case when pdf's are available to buy, some people are very happy to become proxy sellers - easy money in their pocket for no effort.  [I make it sound like a big profit making venture but in reality there are no big sums to be made - the profits of seven years selling books would equal less than a single week's wage - you won't get rich.] 

 

[Brian]

I agree, pdf's are easily given and shared. It's something that will always be a problem. But I think when it comes to low value docs, it is up to the integrity of the owner and sometimes we just have to acknowledge that some will be shared.
Yeah, I do get you. No easy way to get around that. But I think if the prices are low (and they are) then many would rather support the author. The fact that there are free pirated electronic versions of books such as Fujishiros, Hawleys, Koop and Inada, Haynes and even Connoisseurs hasn't slowed the sales of those books I hope.

[1kinko]

My interest in pdfs is really an interest in the highest resolution. Most printed books simply don’t have high resolution, and the older they are the worse the image quality. Of the 50 or so tosogu books I own, only 5 show the detail level I want. So maybe the split between economic reward and high resolution is including a DVD of the plates, at additional cost of course.

[Baba Yaga]

Maybe the "mausoleum" just wants you to see them $ physically.

[kissakai]

When I took the pictures in the Birmingham museum

I asked I could use the light tent and additional lighting

No I couldn't this was set up for professional photographer

So I spent about an hour under fluorescent trying to mitigate shadows and harsh lights

I then had to take photos without any pauses just like being on a conveyer belt

Anyone who has seen my books are very complimentary about my photos albeit from an amateur (we have some wonderful photographers on the NMB)

Strange with all this equipment they still turn out rubbish images!

 

 

 

[zanilu]

12 hours ago, Brian said:

I vote for a pdf too. 

Me too! Easy to search, browse and mainlyto carry around!

If available I prefer to buy pdf also to save space at home. I only buy paper books if no electronic option is available!

 

Regards

Luca

[Spartancrest]

9 hours ago, 1kinko said:

So maybe the split between economic reward and high resolution is including a DVD of the plates

Great idea, one that I have seen in the past for a Botanical book  [pre-internet] - Convincing publishing houses to do this is near impossible these days. I would have to organise a private print run, like those early editions such as  A.H. Church Collection.  A print run of two or three hundred books - but I don't have the tens of thousands $ that this would cost. How about a link in the book to a Cloud data base with images? But then again you can always look up the image from the book reference number from the online museum collection and get the high resolution.  I think it still works out just as many clicks with the mouse. 

 

The next edition I think will be entirely in Braille. - -  but this will only upset the blind limbless people, so maybe a talking book? No the deaf people will have a whinge. - -  How about not buying any form of book and just imagining the whole subject - everyone will be happy! 

[1kinko]

Funny you should mention the A H Church limited editions. I own one and it is one of the few old books with high resolution printing (not that the Ashmolean online images aren’t better). So it seems we are back where we started from- if I want high resolution images from the Walters Museum, I’m stuck with looking at images that are too dark to be useful. You, sir, know more about this subject than I do, by far, and I applaud your goods works and intentions. But I’ll pass on the braille edition.

[Spartancrest]

Darrel I was not having a go at you at all. I was merely venting at the fact you can't please everyone. Besides your idea was a good one, why are things like the DVD no longer a viable option? We could all afford them in the Eighties. How far have we really fallen in this digital age. I did have one extra thought, our technology is getting so out of control, how long will it be before you can down-load the coordinates of every museum piece and 3D print your own collection?  My goodness what is the future going to be like for counterfeit copies - will the landfill ever keep up! 

[1kinko]

I didn’t think you were going after me, just explaining the difficulties of what I had suggested. And I do really mean that I respect your knowledge and the good works that you do and share.

[Spartancrest]

59 minutes ago, 1kinko said:

Funny you should mention the A H Church limited editions.

I have copied the entire A.H. Church collection as well as all the other tsuba in the Ashmolean museum [Oxford] and turned that into a four volume book so I can sit up in bed and read and look at the pretty pictures - that was a fun three or four month project. I can't sell the books as the images are still under copyright of the museum - but I sure can use them for research.  I did talk to the museum about releasing a book, all profits going to them, but when I pointed out the sales would not make them rich they declined the offer. 

 

PM me if you want a bootleg edition  

[Guest Simon R]

Don't get me started on museums. Apparently, in the mid 80s, Nottingham Castle in the UK had a pretty good collection of undisplayed Japanese swords and fittings stashed away in its basement. All rusting and rotting away with utter neglect - apart from the ones which were permanently 'borrowed'.

[rkg]

E-books have an awful lot of potential.  I played around with creating one or two in the past.  You can start with a "book" containing the typical verbiage and images but you aren't bound by the space in a physical book (pun intended) so you can do all kinds of other stuff - use huge images you can zoom waay into to see minute details, have links to many images of an item/additional information, video, vr image sets, 3-d images, audio commentary, video clips, etc etc etc.  Buuut...  there's little money in creating specialty books to begin with(you're lucky if you break even usually if you include your time, etc), and people are cheep/and most don't think twice about making bootleg copies of any kind of IP in any kind of electronic format ensuring that it is -really- just a labor of love.

 

A few museums (like the Met) will actually eventually put up pdfs of their exhibition publications for public consumption, but that is rare - as I noted earlier they are businesses and they can't stay in business if they don't have money coming in the door to continue operating and it can cost a fortune to do a book "right" - and if there's no return...  Its not gonna get done.

 

rkg

(Richard George)

[rematron]

The person who figures out how to protect e-books from being pirated is going to make a lot of money.

[Brian]

You can't. Because the same intelligence used to create these anti-piracy methods are matched by the guys looking to undo them. Even password protected pdf's are instantly decrypted using forensic software. And of course that software is available already cracked and free. Sometimes we just have to rely on the few good people out there that are willing to pay for effort.

 

[OceanoNox]

7 hours ago, rkg said:

A few museums (like the Met) will actually eventually put up pdfs of their exhibition publications for public consumption, but that is rare - as I noted earlier they are businesses and they can't stay in business if they don't have money coming in the door to continue operating and it can cost a fortune to do a book "right" - and if there's no return...  Its not gonna get done.

This is getting off topic, but I would like to see museums (especially if funded by governments) as non-profit / education / research institutions (like schools, universities, and libraries). I'd say we all benefit from relatively unrestricted access to culture and art (obviously, there needs to be some money going in to keep them going).

As an aside, I have the same feeling towards research papers. The funding for research comes mostly from taxes, so it's insane to me seeing the prices from research journals (and seeing the piss-poor editing and websites makes me want to scream). Some journals even keep selling old articles (50 year old!) at 30~50 dollars each!

[1kinko]

I remember attending a scientific conference and meeting up with a colleague then a post-doc at the University of Wyoming. He told me about a new method of sharing data between universities electronically. I don’t recall if it was called the internet but it cost nothing to use on campus.  Soon the internet was proposed to make the sharing of information and data free to all users of the internet. It was going to revolutionize the advancement of science. I guess the journal publishers had a different idea.

[Spartancrest]

1 hour ago, 1kinko said:

 Soon the internet was proposed to make the sharing of information and data free to all users of the internet.

Yes we were supposed to have "paper free" offices by now as well - where did that go wrong! 

PS. Where is my personal robot and flying car - fifty years and still waiting!  - "They lie to the fishes" favourite quote from "Falling Down"