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The times they are a-changin’

ByTetisheri

It’s hard to know where to start when thinking about the year we’ve just had, and how to look forward. There’ll be a billion other blog posts talking about how awful it’s been (which it has, for many of us), how our lives have changed, and mourning those we’ve lost.

And for those of us in the UK, we’ve had the double whammy of our government choosing to take us out of a 40-year partnership with our closest neighbours to instead try to go-it alone in some grotesque, xenophobic reminisensce of British Victorian colonialism and exceptionalism.

(There, now you know which side of that fence I’m on 😂)

But, for all the shittiness, there are good things too. And I like to remind myself of things that have gone well. It’s good for the soul.

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5 things to consider when buying a camera for museum and heritage-site photography

ByTetisheri

So, you’ve decided it’s time to get a new camera, or – at least – to start saving up. But, good lord, there’s myriad cameras out there. All sorts of shapes and sizes, different names and models and f-numbers and sensors and megapixels and IBIS’s and lenses and this and that and … aaaargh!

It’s overwhelming!

This post will help you think through the most important things you should be taking into consideration when buying a camera to start narrowing down your choices and make your shopping easier and more enjoyable.

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How to add hieroglyphs to Google Docs and Slides

ByTetisheri

Unlike many other scripts and languages, adding ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs to your document is not always a straightforward task.

As well as there being a limited choice of good fonts available, hieroglyphs have the added difficulty of being a non-linear script. In other words, the ancient Egyptian’s habit of creating nice, neat, space-saving groups of hieroglyphs makes modern typesetting much more tricky than if you were typing, say, ancient Greek, or Latin, or even Coptic.

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Telling a story with photos: ceramics conservation for Before Egypt

ByTetisheri

Artefact photography is just one aspect of what I do. Another, at the other end of the scale, is documentary photography.

Unlike my artefact photography, which is carefully controlled and thought out, documentary photography is about working with what you’ve got, and reacting to the moment. Your environment dictates the photography, rather than the photography dictating the environment.

A screenshot of Helicon Focus doing focus-stacking

What is focus stacking?

ByTetisheri

Have you ever looked at those amazing macro photos of flowers and insects by professional photographers, but when you tried it yourself, your photo was grossly out of focus?

That’s probably because the photos you saw used focus-stacking.

Focus-stacking is a technique photographers use when they can’t get all of their subject in focus in a single shot. And it’s a technique that I use almost all the time for my artefact photography.

Photographing flint tools using a lightbox

Photographing flint tools using a lightbox

ByTetisheri

It can be all too easy to think that doing artefact photography is routine, a bit samey and perhaps … dare I say it … a tiny bit dull.

Nuh-uh! Not so. Especially if you’re able to be a bit investigative and curious.

Doing the photography for the Before Egypt exhibition, I needed to photograph some flint tools and stone palettes.