High Quality Photography – Cultural Heritage Digitisation Service

Published April 11, 2024 by CHDS

Skene, Societies and Swedish Serendipity

How often do you walk past a 1000 year old rune stone? The answer is every day, if you work or study near the Main Library!

Earlier this year I completed a project photographing James Skene’s Album of Sketches in greater detail. When I came across his runestone illustration again I was intrigued and did some research, making the surreal discovery that the subject was a 3 minute walk away. At 50 George Square behind the Scandinavian Studies Department, stands a Swedish runestone with a curious history. This 1.3 tonne granite stone found its new home here at the university in 2019, having been moved several times prior.

Cultural Heritage Digitisation

CHDS cultural heritage Cultural Heritage Digitisation Edinburgh High Quality Photography James Skene leith runestone Scotland Skene Album sweden Swedish

Looking Ahead – Our 2024 Project Preview

Published February 8, 2024 by CHDS

Looking Ahead – Our 2024 Project Preview

A photograph of a highly decorative manuscript with art of flowers, insects, and birds — *Esther Inglis Manuscript – Photo by Anna Pike, Project Curator*

I began working with the Cultural Heritage Digitisation Services team last November, as a Digitisation Operator. Before joining the team, I was digitising plant specimens in the Herbarium of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. I am also a photographer, with my work most recently appearing in the Accidentally Wes Anderson exhibition which opened in London December 2023.

2024 is shaping up to be an exciting year, with several projects in the works. Some of these have been in the planning stages for a long time, and we really couldn’t be more eager to finally get started. With that in mind, we thought it might be fun to provide a ‘movie trailer’ of sorts, with a short preview of each project we plan to tackle in 2024:

Cultural Heritage Digitisation News Projects

CHDS Cultural Heritage Digitisation Digital Imaging Unit Edinburgh Esther Inglis High Quality Photography LGBTQIA+ Lothian Health Service Archive LUNA Lyell Notebooks Scotland Sir Charles Lyell The Witness Newspaper

Published June 30, 2023 by CHDS

Queer Photography Archive

For the first few months of 2023, I have been using medium format photography to document a collection of zines, posters, photographs and booklets from the Lothian Health Service Archive. The material all relates to the epic struggle to educate on the topic of gay lives and HIV at a time in Edinburgh when bigotry and fear of contracting HIV were prominent, which led to Edinburgh being described in the popular media as the “Aids Capital of Europe.”

Cultural Heritage Digitisation Exhibitions LHSA

Edinburgh Women's Liberation Newsletter EWLN High Quality Photography LGBTQIA+ Lothian Health Service Archive Queer Zines

Published March 7, 2023 by CHDS

Documenting I.C.28

Black and white composite image of the death mask of William Burke, overlayed with the image of his skull, matching up eyes to eye sockets, teeth to mouth etc.

Last summer, I spent five days photographing the skeleton of William Burke to document recent conservation as a record for future collection care. The remains had been conserved and cleaned for the first time since the 1800s and the skeleton was going on display at the National Museum of Scotland for their 2022 exhibition “A Matter Of Death and Life“. I also photographed the life and death masks of Burke, Hare and Robert Knox (“the man who buys the beef”).

Cultural Heritage Digitisation Edinburgh Medical School

Anatomy bodysnatchers bones Burke burke and hare Centre for Research Collections Centre for Research Collections Digital Imaging Unit CHDS Collections composite Conservation crime cultural heritage Cultural Heritage Digitisation Digital Imaging Edinburgh edinburgh crime High Quality Photography Library medical history National Museum of Scotland Photography Scotland skeleton skull true crime University of Edinburgh University of Edinburgh Digital Imaging Unit University of Edinburgh Library victorian

Published February 3, 2023 by CHDS

Sounds of St Cecilia’s

Recently I have had the joy of photographing a range of instruments from the collections at St Cecilia’s Hall .

Over the last few years, staff at St Cecilia’s have been identifying instruments currently displayed that need new photographs taken. In the end, approximately forty instruments were identified as needing re-photographed as the existing images were either black and white, of poor quality (typically scans of slides) or were taken before conservation treatment was carried out on the instruments and it was deemed necessary to update these images to better reflect the current state of these parts of the collection.

The aim of this project is to incorporate more sound into the visitor experience at St Cecilia’s Hall, through stand-alone interactives in each of the galleries as well as individual hand-held devices. A more dynamic website will replace the current app and can be used both in the stand-alone kiosk and on a smartphone/tablet. These new images will be incorporated into the dynamic website/app and represent the collections both online and in-gallery, as well as replace the existing images on Musical Instrument Museums Online (MIMO) – a site dedicated to acting as a single access point for information on public musical instrument collections from around the world.

Cultural Heritage Digitisation Museum Collections Projects

High Quality Photography Museums Musical Instruments St Cecilia's Hall

Published July 4, 2022 by CHDS

From Castles to Cradle: Photographing the Lyell Notebooks

I was delighted to take on the challenge of helping photograph the University’s collection of notebooks of geologist Sir Charles Lyell, and there’s a bit more to photographing 300 notebooks than one might imagine. The Cultural Heritage Digitisation Service is a fantastic team of people, and quickly welcomed me onboard. Prior to this posting, I’ve enjoyed a varied background, including photographing the contents of National Trust for Scotland castles as part of a major digitisation project Reveal, plus Polar and Northern Lights photography aboard expedition cruise ships.

Library Manuscript Collections Museum Collections Projects School of Geosciences

Centre for Research Collections Conservation Digital Imaging Unit Geology and Geologists High Quality Photography Lyell Notebooks Sir Charles Lyell

Published April 29, 2022 by CHDS

The Skene Album – An artistic partnership between author and artist

Collection: Walter Scott Image Collection; Persons: Scott, Walter; Event: N/A; Place: Scotland; UK; Category: Art; Description:

James Skene was a close friend of one of Scotland’s greatest and most influential writers. By profession he was a lawyer, but he was also a keen amateur artist. Skene and Scott first met as fellow Advocates at the Scottish Bar and were brought together by their common love of German literature. They were subsequently joint co-founders of the Light Horse Regiment and the pair formed a close friendship.

This particular album appears to have fallen into obscurity over the years, as it had been in private collections and out of public view. Skene made these sketches for Scott to use as a reference or aide-memoire when writing his novels. Knowledge of its existence does not appear in any research or exhibitions relating to Scott or Skene. We were very fortunate to have this new acquisition and it was a pleasure to personally handle this beautiful album and see every drawing up close.

Art Collections Library Museum Collections

Conservation High Quality Photography Illustration James Skene Landscape Scotland Sir Walter Scott Skene Album

Tag: <span>High Quality Photography</span>