Conference Tour

One evening there were tours of one of the facilities at RIT.  It is called the Image Permanence Institute and they  provide cultural institutions, preservation scientists, and consumer preservation industries with significant research, publications, and tools to enable the preservation of image collections and materials.  In this room there is an experiment which involves the changes in objects that absorb moisture, and how they change with temperature.  So this is really cool - there are two small video cameras photographing these book binding from the left and right, so that the resulting stereo movie shows the bindings over time as they move around with the temperature.  Please click on the photo below to see all the white spots that have been painted on the bindings which the movies record.

This is another part of the tour in one of the laboratories.  It was fascinating to hear all about the experiments the institute is conducting, all to make sure that our books and photographs, and movie films will last for generations.

Scenes From a Conference

I spent three days at a conference in Rochester called "Photo History/Photo Future," and it was amazing.  It was mainly for photographic historians, researchers and archivists.  There were an amazing number of presentations and we had to pick one room or another - there were speakers I wanted to hear but instead picked the other room.  There were speakers from Switzerland, New Zealand, and Italy.  There were even speakers from New York!  So here are a couple of scenes of the speakers.

At the end of each day, there were tours of RIT and of the George Eastman Museum.  More on that in subsequent posts.  Stay tuned.

The Ovid Farmhouse

I have been photographing this abandoned farmhouse for years and years.  I stopped again today on the way home from Rochester.  I stopped because the house is looking worse every time I pass it.  A year or so ago the roof of the rear extension of the house had caved in.  This time I noticed that the roof of the main house has caved in as well.  I keep expecting to see the entire house collapsed one of these days, but this old building soldiers on.

This is a different view of the house from what I have shot before.  My eye caught sight of the open window as seen through the front door.  If you want to have some fun, go to the search box in the upper left hand corner of the web page, and put in "Ovid" and then click on the magnifying glass, and it will retrieve other posts, going back to 2007.

Bald Eagle!

Vince hollered down from upstairs, and said "You have to come see this!  Quick!"  We raced up the stairs and looked out the window, and there was a Bald Eagle sitting on a branch in a tall pine tree!  Wow!  We had binoculars and a spotting scope, but the bird was still really hard to see.  I moved to the back yard, and everyone else was in the front yard, and fortunately I was focused on the eagle when it took flight!  Don't kid yourself, this was just plain luck, not skill.  But I got the shot!

This view of the eagle on the branch is much clearer, and easier to see, cropped from a telephoto lens shot, than it was when we looked with the naked eye or binoculars.  What a thrill to see this magnificent creature in the back yard!

Eeeek! There's an Elephant in the Room!

I have been at a conference at RIT for two days, with one more to go.  As part of the conference we had a reception at the George Eastman Museum tonight.  I have been here many times, to see exhibits, but it has been YEARS since I toured the house - probably 20 or more, and so I did that tonight.  When I first went to Eastman House in 1960 there were photographs from the collection displayed in each room.  Now they have furnished the rooms as they were when George Eastman lived here.  This is a view from a balcony on the second floor of the solarium, with an elephant's head that George Eastman shot as a trophy and had mounted.

Beautiful Decay

There is a really interesting exhibit, (actually, several interesting exhibits) involving movie film, at the George Eastman Museum.  For the first 50 years or so, the movie film base was made of nitrocellulose, which is the same chemistry involved in gunpowder!  The problem with this film is that because it is organic, it can decompose in storage, with sometime terrible effects.  In 1978 there was a fire at a storage facility at the museum, and a vault containing the original negatives of 327 early feature films, short subjects and cartoons was destroyed.   There is a slower way that this material decomposes in storage, and as part of the exhibit, they showed a number of clips of two frames from each film, showing the beautiful decay at work.  It feels as if each of these could be enlarge and hung on a wall as abstract art.

Owego

I love driving through the town of Owego, NY.  I have been driving through there since 1966.  I have posted photographs from here before.  If you are curious there is a little magnifying glass icon in the upper left of the blog page.  Type in "Owego" and you will see the buildings that hang out over the river and the steel truss bridges.  There is wonderful architecture in Owego.  This is one of those interesting buildings, and it is sad that it appears empty.  I almost think this could be titled "American Landscape IV."