9. Materials and references
Table of contents
This module aimed to give a better understanding of the factors involved in specimen photography and should help you with your own digitisation efforts. This page is not and definitive source of information, but should give you a good starting point to build your understanding. Different specimen types and situation may require alternative approaches to those we’ve covered here.
Below is a list of resources where you can find additional information. Many were used in the creation of this page.
- iDigBio – run by the University of Florida, iDigBio is an online research infrastructure which helps US collections to digitalise and publish their collections. Many of the pages have useful information for photography. Start by looking at this page and the links within.
- Callamon 2021 – a detailed and very readable overview of museum specimen photography. Availible here from research gate
- UPDIG – universal photographic digital imaging guidelines. A collection of resources on digital photography – quick guides cover the important points of using digital photography. Site
- Wikipedia – a huge source of photography subjects. Check out this category page to get more information on many of the topics discussed here.
- GitHub – previous digitisation resources which cover the use of photography are available through github. Two useful ones are:
- Mobilising Collection’s Biodiversity Data - NatSca Workshop 2019
- Biodiversity Informatics 101 Workshop at Biodiversity Next - October 2019
Examples of photography workflows used within DiSSCo
Pinned insects:
Microscope slides:
Herbarium sheets:
Geological thin sections:
Authors
Michael Jardine, Simon Harris, Peter Wing, Ella Howes, Lisa French, Laurence Livermore, Helen Hardy
Licence
The content of this page and the proceeding photography modules is the property of the Trustees of the Natural History Museum and may be used under a creative commons licence
Document Control
1.0
Citation
Jardine, MD., Harris, S., Wing, P., Howes, E., French, L., Livermore, L. & Hardy, H. (2022) DiSSCo Digitisation Guide: Guide to specimen photography. version 1.0. Available at: https://dissco.github.io/SpecimenImageCapture/SpecimenImageCapture.html