I guess soap became unfashionable in the 30s and cleavage was only a thing in the 2000s.
Not unfashionable, just relatively expensive.
Anyway, that first link is interesting. It reminds of me Postmodern Jukebox, which is great.
The photos by eras aren't great in terms of her styling. I don't find any of the ones from the decades in which I was alive convincing at all. The colour palettes of the photographs, and the lighting, are wrong, too.
The first couple it looked like she was going to have a go at making the images look like they were shot using the techniques and gear of the period. But the 1920s ones look like 19th century wet-plate and/or tintype negatives, and the rest are not convincing at all.
It is a cool concept, though.
Looking at the MET stuff is an exercise in trying to work out how they are doing it, for me.
Link anonymised:
http://anonym.to/?http://bav.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/items-to-be-digitized-early-printed-books
http://anonym.to/?http://bav.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/items-to-be-digitized-hebrew-manuscripts
http://anonym.to/?http://bav.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/items-to-be-digitized-greek-manuscripts
Anything with a green tick against it you can click through and view it as it's been done. Context at the main site.
On the tin-type/wet-plate thing, it's easy to fake the imperfections of the process [from the collodion]. It's harder to fake the cool things that it does. As modern wet-plate stuff has amazing resolution, and sharpness. It's almost surreal.
Some examples:
http://www.tintypestudio.nl/2013/02/amigos/
http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/michael-shindler-tintype-portraits
Or, someone holding a physical one:
http://www.tintypestudio.nl/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/ATI8926-kopie.jpg
5: How they are doing it in terms of . . .? They're inputting their collections data into TMS and linking their images to the appropriate records. I think (but don't know) that then use a heavily customized version of eMuseum, the web publishing tool from the same company that makes TMS, to drive selected data fields and images to the web, updated regularly as they add more stuff. I have some guesses about their image management practices, but no real information. That's probably not what you're asking, though.
The Met has long had a collections search feature online, but for many years it sucked (and the quality of images was not as high as these). In part that's because Philippe de Montebello, for all that he is praised, eliminated the central cataloguing office at the Met when he became director. The result was a retrenchment into curatorial departments; as collections databases became a thing, it meant that each department was running its own, inaccessible to other departments of the museum. Not good for searching or data consistency.
Tom Campbell, as a young curatorial staffer, worked with the guy who would later develop TMS. His appreciation for these issues was quite different from his predecessor, and when Campbell became director, integrating the Met's collections databases, establishing uniform standards, and publishing their data became a bigger priority. I remember hearing the Met's manager of collection information talk about all this at the TMS conference held there back in . . . 2010, I think.
God, I'm so jealous. I busted ass to get 2/3 of the collection of my last place digitized, and we lacked the resources to do anything nearly as nice as this. It was still a huge advance for us, though. Now at an academic art museum at a secular but Jewish university outside of Boston (. . . by any other name . . .), I have no photographer, few staff capable of handling art, a collection of gigantic paintings, a very modest database, and almost no photography. And our collection is almost all under copyright. But I need to get it digitized anyway, and find partners on campus to help me do it. All while organizing multiple exhibitions, including traveling ones, outdoor sculpture installations, and whatever other crazy stuff we dream up.
re: 7
The image storage/preservation/viewing, mostly, which is my own personal area of speciality.* Even though, in this instance, the performance isn't anything amazing. But I always want to know how institutions with money are doing it in case there's some tool or technique I don't know about. Although I'd be curious about the photographic process, given the labour involved with art works and 3d objects.
* are they pre-generating tiles, using jpeg2000s, pyramid tiffs, etc. how are they getting them to the browser? What server stack(s) are in use? etc
. . . And I was debating whether to do this, but since the topic of collection digitization has surfaced here all on its own: a young woman I hired to manage the digital and analog photo archive at my last job is trying to raise money to attend (and be a speaker at) a conference in Vienna:
http://www.gofundme.com/8zfvm4
Yes, it is a little extravagant. But once you get beyond that (and her self-admitted nerdiness) her approach is really good--much better than the job a great many art museums are doing (and which is causing them increasing problems as they develop more and more digital assets). It's similar to what Yale is doing, and what I believe the Met is as well, but in some ways better thought out. And she's doing it by herself at an under-funded, rather chaotic, mid-sized museum. She's really good. She's also pretty good at German, and is planning to do her talk with a fair amount of bilingual material--it would be a really good gesture for an American museum staffer at her level to do this.
The museum can't afford to send her, and wouldn't give the money to a staffer at her level anyway. She's not paid nearly enough to afford it (she works two jobs to pay her bills and student loans). Since she's giving a talk, registration is free, but still. I've donated (both under my name and anonymously), as have others, but she's got a way to go.
Anyway, it's been years since I've commented regularly here, and I have no claim on any of you. But if you can, consider throwing a few bucks at her. It would mean a lot. If we could all gather together to get ripped off by a Mexican who blew our money at the French Laundry, I'm sure we can give her a hand.
8: I'm not close enough to them to know the details (though I'd guess tiffs are their preferred images for the high quality ones), but this may be of interest:
http://www.pnclink.org/pnc2008/english/slide/05_PP_Strategies%20for%20Development_0900.pdf
I think I've seen this guy do a talk. There are similarities to what he's talking about and what my former assistant does.
The photographic process for art is something I know more about, although in my experience, everyone does it a little differently. Some of that is photographers and their habits, some of that is the nature of collections and the parameters you have to work in (medium, space to work in, expertise of staff, a lot else), some of that comes down to price point. To get started at my current place right now, I'm likely to buy a pretty basic but good camera and train up a young staff member to do copy stand work on relatively straightforward black and white prints. It won't be great, but as long as we're careful and get the lighting right, it will be decent, and I can use it to leverage interest and resources in doing something better. How I'm going to photograph the 10 foot tall, 17 foot long Sam Francis painting (all raw canvas except thin strips of paint around the edges, the bastard), I don't know yet.
though I'd guess tiffs are their preferred images for the high quality ones
Well, that'd be standard for archival masters. It's not generally what people use for delivery, though.
re: last
Stitching would probably be the only way to do it. There are various approaches out there for doing that.
The collections website I really like is the Yale Center for British Art. Example:
http://collections.britishart.yale.edu/vufind/Record/1669217
It's just so clean, so well-catalogued, so much good content. Really like it.
I didn't look, but I was under the impression that they (like the Yale example I just posted) were making tiff's available to the public for objects not under copyright. People are slowly giving up on the whole rights and repro stuff. It's just too much bother, and the money earned scarcely justifies the effort.
re: 13
I meant that no-one uses tiffs for delivery because browsers don't usually support them, and the file sizes are too large for usability. Lots of people do offer them for download, through a separate process from their usual collection viewing tools.
We are making most of our stuff, where it's not under copyright, available via CC [non-commercial, with attribution].
Ah yes, I see. Sorry, I thought the reason people were excited about the Met was because they were moving yo that kind of publicly accessible model for their high res images. For the access images on the page, I've mostly seen them use very good jpegs, although part of their increased activity may be to deliver things even larger through other means.
I don't think the eras are very well done. A number of them look like retro modern blouses, instead of actual antique clothes. The only ones that look plausibly antique to me are 30s and 50s-adventurous. And the hair is mostly unconvincing.
It's my impression that she did this more or less using clothes that were already in her closet, and instead put her effort into hair. ttaM's (s'ttaM?) right about the 20s photographic technique. So, clothes from her closet and no research into anything.
One of my favorite paintings not on display is here:
http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/40508?rpp=30&pg=1&ft=zhao+mengfu&pos=3
I think the high point for my current institution's collection online was being included in "Great Art in Ugly Rooms" Twitter feed:
https://twitter.com/jgleduc/status/445983871679889409
But the hair isn't very well done, either.
re: 20
Same eyebrow styling, too.
And lipstick. She could have done a serious bowtie mouth in the 30s/40s and ultra-thin eyebrows. 80s could have had a lot more blush. 60s eyes are not well done.
Not researched, just based on her ambient understanding. But, you know, she did work on her hair, and one presumes she got it to look how she wanted it to look.
Jesus Christ you guys she's a 16 year old kid doing a class project.
*cough* Soft bigotry of low expectations *cough*
Heebie is saying what I thought. She missed the opportunity for dark winged eyeliner, bright red lips, ironed flat hair, big teased hair, etc. Also, 60s is almost two different five-year periods - Camelot and Vietnam, and I feel like she got the latter without the former.
You don't have to defend the kids anymore, L. You're about to get married and become a woman yourself. I mean, I hope she's not reading these comments, but it's not like "different lipstick" is just too advanced for a 16-year-old. Great idea, kid; do better next time.
Also, 60s is almost two different five-year periods
I've always thought that fashion seems to transition on the half-decade more than on the decade.
29: Agree. I originally thought that was why there were two photos per decade, which would have been really clever.
Making images available for scholarly, noncommercial use is not the same as giving up on licensing. The Met is very clear that they want you to contact them for commercial, non-scholarly use.
I was curious about the 2000s and the 2010s (where she might have some expertise). The floral print dress was part of which 2000s counterculture? And the 2010s "counterculture" girl looks like she comes from the alternative universe of the 1990s to me, whereas 2010 "culture" is a sweater look that seems cool but not ultra mainstreamy. But ever since the restraining order I haven't had much contact with 16 year old girls, so who knows.
(Also, the initial part of this comment thread was at a higher than expected interest/sophistication level, so thanks!)
31: True, but Yale has given up on licensing, and they are setting the trend (I know of others who are on the verge, quietly or not, of doing the same). For the Met, which has a larger business in that area, the concerns are somewhat different. But they and a handful of other institutions are the exception. Even at my former employer, a mid-sized independent museum, the number of requests for images that were for some sort of commercial enterprise was dwarfed by those that were scholarly or non-profit in nature. And even then, the $15,000 or so a year that licensing brought in was significantly eroded by the amount of staff time it took.
Yeah, I'm finding the ttaM/JL discussion super-fascinating. (I assume this is basically the opposite of when we all talk about Python and everyone who doesn't give a crap about coding wanders off to Fresh Salt for a drink.)
Same eyebrow styling, too.
She does change the eyebrows - look closely. Not enough, maybe, but she's definitely got the idea that the eyebrows are done differently in each era.
I think our standards for this stuff have gotten kind of ridiculous because of the internet - it's easy to find some young creative class type who does this kind of thing as part of her "hire me for lots of money" portfolio, or some wealthy style blogger who gets a lot of her clothes and make-up comped, and then because that fancy content is also free to us, we have inappropriate standards for a kid who has, after all, put some work and thought into it but who obviously doesn't have enough money or time to replicate the professional stuff.
I add that if anything, this kind of photo set is a good reminder that, like, the clock didn't click over at 12am on January 1 1980 and all of the sudden everyone trashed their seventies wardrobes - which were all polyester, of course - for preppie or post-punk stylings. We don't have a lot of style photography of regular people prior to maybe the eighties, so there isn't a really good record of how slowly fashions changed, or how regular people would mix new things with old. For instance, when the New Look came in, women were still mixing in their older blouses and skirts and so on - only the very well-off could switch totally to the new style right away. In one sense, this set probably looks a lot more how actual people looked - that is, a mixture of things tending a certain way rather than a perfect total look.
I admit that I am confused by the styles of the 2000s, though. I was there for the whole thing, and still young enough for youth fashion for much of it, and what she chose is still unclear to me. Maybe that's because she herself was just a little kid at the time and so her memories are more of a mixture. Also, we wore way more and way darker lipstick in the nineties.
(Lots of forgotten nineties fashion, too - that grunge/florals/plaid thing had a strong parallel mini-skirts-lingerie-as-outerwear-and over-the-knee socks look and then segued into a sort of seventies mod-ism by 1996/97, and I have the platform boots to prove it. Plus there was a LOT of really, really purple lipstick.)
It's not that everyone doesn't give a crap about coding, it's that the entire vocabulary of coding is an incomprehensible foreign language.
We don't have a lot of style photography of regular people prior to maybe the eighties, so there isn't a really good record of how slowly fashions changed, or how regular people would mix new things with old.
We... don't? There's loads of street photography to look at, in which people are almost always wearing clothing.
We... don't? There's loads of street photography to look at, in which people are almost always wearing clothing.
I'm talking about photographs where you can really see the details of clothing, hair and make-up, not just get a general impression, and where the focus is on one working class person in everyday (but not uniform) garb and hairstyle. There's not as much as you think - I have a pretty interesting book of newspaper photographs from the 1900s through the 1970s, and while they picked out ones with fashion interest, they themselves point out how few they have of this kind. It's true that a lot of stuff is getting digitized now and is available online, but the "my regular going to market outfit circa 1937" is actually not that common.
To continue selfishly for a moment: one thing I wonder as I contemplate starting a new digitization effort in a new collection is, what else can we do? A bright shiny collections database is great--for us it would be a huge advance. I'm crippled by copyright restrictions here, though, and while we're pursuing non-exclusive rights agreements with people, that's slow and uncertain work. James Cuno, among others, has been beating the drum for different approaches to digital art history (see the top results here, for instance), but I don't know what that looks like. Most of the talk seems not-there-yet, and I imagine would require digital assets and platforms at the same level across a wide range of institutions. I mean, I've got one great de Kooning, one great Lichtenstein, a couple of great Kellys; what you want is the ability to do . . . something with a bunch of great de Koonings, etc. Some people (the Fogg Pieta project, for instance) are doing work of reassembling groups of objects (from a given altarpiece or church, or by a certain painter, etc) by collaborating across institutions, but it's still something that requires a great deal of coordination.
I know the basics: to get the best, largest images I can, to manage and catalogue them properly, to embed metadata, etc. But I'd like to find another angle for outcomes. Not that the basic searchable database is bad, by any means, but it would be nice to have another hook. I have no translator research program!
In one sense, this set probably looks a lot more how actual people looked - that is, a mixture of things tending a certain way rather than a perfect total look.
No way, because all of her clothes are from 2010 or more recent. If she were actually wearing vintage clothes, yes, she'd probably mix 1958 with 1954 in an unconsciously accurate way but that is not at all what she did.
I add that an awful lot of fashion resources are either photos of people very dressed up (particularly prior to the late fifties) or advertisements, fashion magazines and clothing patterns. And many of the "regular people in their regular clothing" photos that I see online are the ones posted for laughs - "look at these ridiculous people in 1975" kinds of things. (There's that great early eighties mall set that was going around a few months ago - I wish I'd saved the link - but that was so widely linked precisely because it's the kind of thing that's a bit rare.)
I'm reminded, too, that I saw some stills from Mad Men and was really surprised by the mid-sixties summer leisure clothes - I hadn't seen anything really casual from that era in my various vintage fashion books.
There are tons and tons and tons of photos from the past hundred years, Frowner. I'm having trouble following what on earth you're talking about. Go to "my parents were awesome" or flickr and browse the scanned personal photos for undoctored authentic outfits and make-up galore.
Street photography, newspaper photography, Picture Post, Life, etc. Vast archives of 'vernacular' photography.
I didn't realise she was 16, though [I thought college]. But still, internet and all: it'd have been fairly easy to take a look at both the prevalent photographic style, and the prevalent women's dress, hair and make-up styling. She's clearly tried, but not based on much research.
re: 33
In our case, we are only allowing non-commercial use, and we want attribution. We don't necessarily have a huge amount of choice on that for much of our most commercially in-demand material [T/ olk /i 3n, for example], as we couldn't offer it without licensing, even if we wanted to.
Surely the first museum to allow people to digitally manipulate cat photos into the middle of great paintings will achieve Internet dominance.
For the 90s I would just compare the career woman and the DiFranco-esque teen from The Langoliers.
I mean, this is totally fine for a high school project. I'm assessing it on whether or not it deserves to go viral: no, it doesn't.
re: 39
Are you aware of the IIIF?
http://anonym.to/?http://iiif.io
The APIs are specifically designed to enable cross-institution sharing of material, and let lots of institutions view content from other people's repositories without tooling up new viewing apps, or having to do massive amounts of work. If people have IIIF image and metadata 'endpoints' you can just pull their content in and assemble it together with your own in any way you like.
People are reassembling collections that have been broken up, putting together manuscripts that may have been dis-bound and scattered across libraries and museums, etc. It's exactly for the kind of use case you describe.
This may not true everywhere, but here practically every store seems to sell local historical photograph collections (so we have this one and another about our town that actually has a picture of our house) and I love seeing the very normal styles of the past in a setting I know well.
I agree with heebie's 46. I preferred the high schooler who did president selfies or on the professional level the campaign.
I do think it's interesting that 2010' "counterculture" could have been the slightly rebellious, rock and roll chick in a high school cafeteria at any time between 1970 and the present.
47: I've read about it but not delved into it (too late to do so at my last position, too soon at my current one). I have had some experience with similar initiatives that didn't pan out as I had hoped. I know it's the sort of thing that is being worked on, but it always seems (for art collections, at least) to be just over the horizon. In a way that is the lucky side of where we are now: we are so far behind, we at least have not had years of wasted effort poured into things that no longer meet standards.
re: 50
There's a fair amount of weight behind it now, as an initiative, in the library community. Half a dozen national libraries, lots of big academic research libraries. Less on the museums side, although Yale [for what it's worth] are involved.
(Lots of forgotten nineties fashion, too - that grunge/florals/plaid thing had a strong parallel mini-skirts-lingerie-as-outerwear-and over-the-knee socks look and then segued into a sort of seventies mod-ism by 1996/97, and I have the platform boots to prove it.
I've noticed this sort of thing--fashion trends that only last for a year or two seem to be quickly forgotten. (Presumably they're more industry driven than longer lasting ones?) I remember pleated plaid miniskirts being a thing in 2003/04ish but they've been comparatively rare since then and I haven't seen any evidence that this wasn't just a teenage fever dream. Or is there some obsessive fashion history site out there that would cover this sort of minutiae, and my googlefu has failed me?
That Met collection is nice for finding things I havn't seen before. Winslow Homer could paint the fuck out of a palm tree.
Not surprised. Libraries are always ahead. I was just emailing someone at Yale, I'll see what they're saying about it. Thanks.
And: thanks to those of you who contributed to my former colleague's fundraiser linked above. It is much appreciated, good for her to keep momentum. Her hope is that if she reaches withing shouting distance, the museum will relent and kick in the rest. I think there's a pretty good chance, so thank you for getting her that much closer.
Winslow Homer could paint the fuck out of a palm tree.
Nice. Alice Walton once paid a visit to my former employer to see the Homer watercolors. As we opened the boxes, she looked around and said, "Oh, yes, this is what I would like to have." It made people a little nervous.
re: 54
I can put you in touch, specifically, with the people at Yale [at the Digital Collections Centre], if you need a name.
52: fashion trends that only last for a year or two seem to be quickly forgotten.
Catsuits in 94-95 or so. My sister talked me into buying one when I got back from the Peace Corps, and I swear it didn't look insane -- it was dress-up-sexy clothes, but it was something people were wearing. But seriously, like a superhero leotard. I have seen no evidence since they went away that they ever existed as ordinary fashion.
Your sister successfully pwned you and you still haven't realized.
That would be cool, thanks. I've dealt with (and was emailing today) the guy who runs visual resources at their Art Gallery, but don't know anyone at the DCC. I see on their website that they do RTI, which we used to do at my old place, very cool. Anyway, email me at this address and I can get you my regular one.
"pwned" s/b "punked"
We didn't have pwning back then.
She had one as well, and looked remarkable in it.
(And the catsuit, as well as staking out a position on his couch and refusing to go home, finally got Buck off the dime. So, ridiculous, but effective.)
I refuse to read 61.2 in anything but a strictly literal manner.
Anyway, pictures in the pool or it didn't happen.
Huh, another example, also falling in the sexy things ladies wear category, which perhaps has higher turnover--there really needs to be a site that catalogues this.
Ridiculous sexy clothes are often ridiculously effective.
My sister-in-law came perilously close to buying a catsuit from the local vintage clothes store; perhaps it was a relic from that trend.
You know, I bet there aren't any in the world. That was long enough ago that they would have had to be film, and people really weren't taking pictures all the time.
re: 57
I give you [PJ Harvey, on-trend in 1995]:*
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQnp4gvz-Lo
* fucking rocking like fuck, it has to be said.
Mine was grey wool, with a demurely high neckline. And integral shoes -- it was footie-pajamas with heels. Most psycho garment I've ever left the house in.
I also wonder how much of fashions are regional. I've read some stuff about regional fashion in the UK (mostly mentioned in passing - an interesting observation that platform shoes were apparently much gaudier in the provinces than in London, for example) but not much about elsewhere.
Like, I cannot imagine catsuits being a thing in Minneapolis except maybe in the sort of social circles who were really, really into clubbing. I used to go out dancing back then and never saw any such thing.
Plaid miniskirts were all the go in about 1991 - I had one that year which I'd bought at this sort of odd fashion-conscious yet independent shop in my suburb that had obviously been there since the late sixties or early seventies. (It was called "Honey" and the logo was really, really dated - but dated in a sort of posh way.) I did not notice their fashionability in the early 2000s, but if memory serves I was mostly wearing really odd tight shirts and fatigues back then to irritate my academic supervisors, and then I had a "retro early eighties silk blouse" phase.
I was with you until 67, LB. You weren't in a catsuit; you were in adult footie pajamas.
God, I am so old. How did this even happen?
69 probably explains it. I can't imagine catsuits being a thing either.
Like, the lightest possible wool fabric you'd make a men's suit out of, with some lycra for stretch. I have no explanation at all for the integral high heels. I would never never have bought it if my sister hadn't twisted my arm, but I did look spectacular in it, albeit kind of insane.
JL, if you can't publish images, or at least not hi-res images, you might be able to do something interesting with linked data/metadata that other people could make use of. I know YCBA is doing something with that too, but I don't know any of the details.
69, 73: Yeah, there's serious fashionista fashion, and then there's what makes it out to civilians in the street. And while I don't know that it happens all that much, I wouldn't be surprised if there were some trends that make it out of the serious professional fashion world onto the streets of NY, because we're right here, but don't take strongly enough to really spread.
re: 69
Sure, fashion in the UK is definitely regional. Stuff diffuses, eventually, but styles often emerge in one place and then diffuse gradually.
FWIW, I remember catsuits being a thing, albeit on a fairly small scale. But I dated a girl once who turned up in a leopard skin one. This was also be about 1994.
Like, the lightest possible wool fabric you'd make a men's suit out of, with some lycra for stretch.
I had a really rather fetching sub-fifties-Balenciaga trapeze dress in this kind of fabric. It came with a matching long opera jacket and was, somewhat inexplicably, originally from Eddie Bauer. (I got it at the thrift store.)
Eddie Bauer's odd like that. Mostly camping stuff, but occasionally something surprisingly pretty in a classic kind of way.
Oh, okay--that sounds, if not exactly reasonable, like a coherent and hot look. I was briefly imaging you looking like whatshername from The Avengers (could apply to either Avengers, really) but your outfit was knitted.
In the early 90s, lots of stuff was from Eddie Bauer.
I'm at work and can't do this myself, but people who aren't should be able to google wool (mohair?) catsuits and get some really alarming Russian fetish photography. There used to be a knitting blog that mocked those things.
48: Those Images of America books seem widely disseminated. But the ones I've looked at seem to be overwhelmingly architecture or wide shots of groups. Not much in the "Humans of New York" vein.
I was looking at a book about the Twin Cities at the thrift store last year that was published in, I believe, 1988 or so. Definitely later than '85, at any rate. And there was a shot of people at the old "Taste of Minnesota" festival at the State Capitol. It was a medium shot of a working class guy who looked like he hadn't bought any new clothes in 10 years -- too-tight '70s t-shirt, polyester shorts, way-too-high tube socks, etc. So I think Frowner's larger point here is correct -- people don't recycle clothes & accessories immediately, and in fact, lots of people tend to hold on to things way past the time they should have been retired. Is this photo set a great evocation of that principle? Sort of. If they were full-body shots, it would be easier to talk about the relative accuracy.
The other thing, of course, is that at any point from the late '40s to now, you've got a set of tropes that continually reappear, especially in counter-culture fashion. Chuck Taylors, leather jackets, Levi's, engineer boots, plaid shirts, Yankees caps -- essentially the ur-grammar of classic US workwear/casual wear.
Pace 52, one thing that seems to distinguish the current style universe (at least so far as I can tell) is the super-specific mini-trends that don't even make a big enough splash to have a style article about them. My favorite example is the ultra-wide wale corduroy trend from 10 or 12 years ago, with odd colors. At least around here, that seemed to pop up and disappear within about 8 months of whatever year it was.
I remember catsuits!, because just then I had access, to the Style section of NYT, at work. I remember the story, about how they were for the "aerobicised" Can still visualize the page--probably because not overwritten by subsequent features of the same kind.
61.2 is charming.
I was briefly imaging you looking like whatshername from The Avengers
early 1960s Diana Rigg? [Be still my beating heart ...]
Catsuit sounds like sexy fort Knox with the high neck, buck succumbed to the challenge of storming the fortress...
Of course fashion is regional. I mean, even leaving aside the obvious stuff like cowboy hats versus those warm hats with the flappy ears, you only have to watch Jersey Shore to see stuff that would be (and is) mockable in most of the country.
I finally got a warm hat with flappy ears. I decided it was more dignified than a stocking cap.
82: (Googles) That's one hell of a rabbit hole. The stuff I found was close to the (my) funny/creepy/hot triple-point. Some of it was what you'd wear to a night out at Echo Base.
85: (Googles) Yes, very much that.
88: "Stocking cap" is not in my idiolect and I was disappointed to find it didn't mean phrygian cap.
It's actually quite common around here for some subcultural people to wear a stocking cap year-round, pushed back on their head, such that it often approximates the profile of a phrygian cap.
So, ridiculous, but effective
Ridiculous sexy clothes are often ridiculously effective
Because in a situation like that one, they make intention clear, even to the point of vulnerability. Which is often necessary to get off the dime
Not because it hasn't occurred to him--it's what he wants most in the world--but because he doesn't want to make a misstep.
"Stocking cap" is not in my idiolect
It wasn't in mine when we immigrated. We called them toques
Funny, I don't think I've seen this one on one of those regional dialect quizzes. I think a toque/stocking cap is a watchman's cap, but modern knitting patterns want to call it a beanie.
I've never heard the term "toque".
I mostly say "watch cap", but my father says "stocking cap" almost exclusively.
People in the punk scene here said "toque" a lot in the past, but I haven't heard it as much recently.
Remember, when it doubt, google image search decides. These are all subtly different hats.
92: Pretty much this. Stupid fragile masculinity.
93: I've heard toque and say it when I want to use a Canadianism or sound classier, but I naturally call them "beanies." Apparently (according to wiki) that's a more general Commonwealth thing to say, and in the US "beanie" usually refers to a slightly different kind of hat; however, I don't distinguish between the two.
whatshername from The Avengers
Like this?
Pwned by Ttam, but I provided a link.
98: I'm waiting to get home before I google the terms. I'm still afraid of the great Russian yard fetish community.
And according to my grandfather, the university of MN student shopping district of "Dinkytown" gets its name from the freshman beanies or "dinkies" that were worn in the '20s and '30s. Never heard that anywhere else though.
Remember, when it doubt, google image search decides.
You could also try the DPLA timeline search.
I finally clicked through to the Met site and unless I'm missing something, the download format is jpeg, not full-size tiff.
Stupid fragile masculinity
No, I disagree. I think this situation very normal and natural, that he won't make a move even, perhaps especially when in love. I think this situation is ancient and proverbial, although its modern terminology, what he thinks is holding him back, is often couched in feminist terms as he's assimilated them, perhaps wrongly.
Anyway this expedient, or some other way of putting herself in his way to resolve his doubts about her receptiveness is also proverbial. Comedy, I mean comic drama since antiquity would lose a lot of its subject matter without this.
The sad situation, which must happen all the time, is when two people who might get together don't find a way to do it.
My mother tells the story with a kind of unconscious wonder of how she and my father started. Her mother, born 1885, and the girl who sat next to her in the wartime secretarial pool, who thought my mother's inhibitions ridiculous--Jewish girl from Montreal, first my mother had ever known--both nudged her to give a sign, which she somehow did although I'm not sure what it was because she's not clear about the details. But she is still bemused to think it might have been necessary, and about my father's telling her when she asked that he might not have asked without her giving a sign. She doesn't know why that should have been necessary.
Re: 104
The Yale site that JL linked does offer tiffs. However, the couple I looked at weren't what I would consider full-sized (i.e. 300-600dpi at 100%). Good sized, fine for ordinary print reproduction at 'domestic' sizes but not preservation masters.
Who is the mystery commenter?
(I'm just skimming the thread, will it be clear if I read slowly?)
106: do you scan at higher than 600? In my limited experience with archives scanning, 600 has usually been the highest default unless there was a special reason to go higher. Of course regular paper stuff isn't necessarily worth doing at a higher quality. Or do you mean the Yale site isn't offering downloads at that quality? I guess I could wait until I'm not on a phone to check.
There's loads of street photography to look at, in which people are almost always wearing clothing.
Yes, but no one cares about those.
If any of the Burghedtariat were actually from Pittsburgh, they'd know that they're called tossle caps (presumably a weird pronunciation of tassel). OK, I guess that, without the puffball on top, they're not tossle. Anyway I almost always wear a Navy watch cap, rather than any other style, so it has a name.
Oh, and BOGF totally deployed a catsuit in her seduction of me. She had a background* in modern dance and hung out with a ton of acting students, so maybe that's where she got it from.
*that sounds overstated, but she did it in HS, possibly a bit in college, and had studied it a lot
Yes, but no one cares about those
Here in Chicago, we keep discovering great photographers who were working away without exhibitions for years. Latest is Vivian Maier, whose stuff was discovered after her death in 2009. Google her and have a look.
Hrm. Maybe I meant stupid fragile human ego, combined with weakly-specified culturally specific courting rituals that prefer certain steps to be performed by the male. I think in our specific time and place--and also your parents'--that probably interacts with how we view masculinity in ways that I find annoying, even if they've served as useful dramatic starting points through the ages.
110.1: You have a complicated relationship with Pittsburghese.
Re: 108
No downloads at that quality.
We do shoot higher than that, although less than we used to. Policy used to be to fill the frame. So, if an item is quite small that might be way over 600, especially in the past using 5x4 scanning backs. If very large, under 600, or in very rare cases, even under 300. However, re-jigging cradles on a per item basis is quite labour intensive, so we don't do it as much as we once did.
FWIW, Library of Congress guidelines do specify more than 600 for some times of material, but not much.
All posters except posters about posters being prohibited are prohibited (Apparently the Swedish civil service hires philosophy grads)
I'm not surprised that the Yale tiffs are at 300 dpi because the sort of publication use that they would suit is exactly what they are being provided for. I'm not sure what standard they are using for their archival masters, but I would guess that they are not allowing general users direct download access to their archival masters even if they were at the same size--I wouldn't want those files accessed, or potentially accessed, so readily.
I'd also note that Yale's images are not just free for the ones available for download; if you want something that's not been shot, you can request it at no charge. It may take some time to get through the system, but it will be free as well. They used to charge, but decided it was unfair to make the first user of the image bear the cost when future users could request it for free.
That said, 300 dpi tiffs are in fact used quite widely as archival masters for many museums. I think some of this may be the difference between art museum digitization and that done by libraries. While I think most people want the biggest files they can get, doing 600 dpi tiffs wasn't something many people were talking about outside of the largest museums until recently (and even then not so much). This place was down the street from where I used to work. We'd get together now and then to talk digitization, but it was two different worlds. The sort of thing we were doing was a small sideline to them, but the type of massive digitization at 600 dpi tiffs of entire groups of texts was foreign to us. It can take a chunk of one day to shoot one painting; depending on the nature of the work, maybe more, and with anywhere from one or two to a half dozen or so staff involved. In the rather melodramatic but still accurate phrase of a former colleague, unframing an old painting can be like defusing a bomb. You don't know what you are going to find. That takes time, getting the lighting right takes time, the color adjustments, plus the multiple images for marks on the back, the frame, the stretcher, etc. A good reason to take the best quality shot you can so you don't have to do it again, but not something many places were doing at that file size.
We'd save both DNGs and tiffs, for that matter. But a lot of people differ on that as well.
107 Maybe someone who's changed pseuds so many times, just going blank is the reasonable option?
114: Surely a poster reading "Posters are not prohibited" would be OK, right? It really should be "All posters except posters prohibiting posters are prohibited."
So...the poster that they posted is the poster that prohibits all posters that do not prohibit themselves. It'd make Frege cry.
114: Huh, here I tthought art museums would shoot at a higher resolution partly because they generally are going to take fewer shots overall. There was a debate on the LC digital preservation blog over whether 600 is worth it, given the limits of perception. I think the anti-600 arguer still advocated ~400 as a default minimum for preservation.
As for access copies, you can wall off your preservation storage and still provide public access to a copy that matches the preservation master.
120: how many shots depends on what you are shooting. For a print with nothing in the reverse, you may only take one shot. For a Japanese scroll, you might have eight; one of the scroll and mount, another just of the scroll, and then six for each side of the box if they all have marks. Possibly more if other features need to be documented. A painting might be two, front and back, but you might need to do every collectors mark and label. It varies, which makes the process had to streamline. And I'm not even thinking of details, as what people want in that regard can be too hard to predict.
It's my sense that the overall image standard is increasing as the capacity of the equipment improves as cost of it and storage declines. But I very much doubt most institutions have the main body of images at that file size. For one thing, it's hard to do all this photography, and people often are still dealing with assets created two or three or more years ago they have yet to revisit,
I assume Yale is doing something along the lines of 120.last.
Re: 122.last
Yes. I have had brief conversations with their tech people on this issue. They have a much harder divide between public facing content and archival repository than most. Details left purposefully vague, as it isn't my info to give out and it's possible I'll misremember or misrepresent.
Ttam, is it ok if I email you about your institution's setup? My current job is more or less repository work at an institution that doesn't have one yet (and is much smaller than a university).
Yes. The first 7 letters of my surname @ googlemail will getcto me.
Thanks!
For those still interested, this is the blog post I mentioned above about scanning resolutions. Bonus content: two part post about image formats.
I like how the early part of this thread demonstrated that you are all monsters. I'd long suspected.
127 It is known.
I wished I'd included a bit in there about how the vampire used to go on all the time about the revolution, saying, "the streets...will run...with blood. Bwahahaha."
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Is this the right thread for an irrelevant comment? Because I'm happy I managed to track down this one piece of traditional Chinese instrumental music whose name I'd forgotten. I'm also a bit surprised, because I remember it being sprightly and cheerful, but it is so different on the recording, where it is performed in what is presumably the proper style... and really, WTF? How does one take a cheerful melody and destroy it so completely?
(The recording begins with a slow, unstructured contemplative-gazing-at-the-lily-pads introduction, so there's no melody at all until 1:20, and when the melody does show up, it's in a different key that thoroughly moderates any cheerful sentiments... and so we carefully step through it all the way until 6:10, when in spite of everything it sounds like the performer is starting to have a good time, and then 20 seconds later the piece is over. Like I said, WTF, traditional Chinese culture? Why must you suck the fun out of everything?)
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