March « 2010 « ClassyArts Blog

March 16, 2010

Little Known Artists Database

Filed under: Artists — ajmorris @ 4:24 pm

Yesterday, the Artists database was activated on ClassyArts.com. It is, of course, in its early stages, but I think the potential value should be clear. Oftentimes, we come across works of art attributed or signed by artists who are not ‘listed’ in the main reference works. This database will help remediate that problem.

Instead of looking to the traditional sources for artist information — museum holdings and exhibition catalogs — this database is derived from original sources in which people list their occupations. Mostly census listings and city directories.

Of course we pick up some of the ‘listed’ artists too — but no harm done. It may even provide previously unknown information about some of those artists too.

So far, the database has a little over 19,000 records. They are almost all from the U.S. so far, but I have plans to expand to global sources in time.

I also have a huge collection of digital reproductions of fine art works. Here is one (click on the image to view the full sized version):

A Tangled Skein by English artist George Harcourt

I’m not sure how those will fit into the site. There are too many to upload to the server, but maybe I can list them and make them available on-demand as I do with photographs.

Right now, you can search the artists database and get the name and city/state/country of residence. Paid members can get the full record, which includes the name of the source, the year (for the source citation), sometimes the birth and/or death date, the full residential address, the business address or studio, and any additional notes. Biographical descriptions will also be added for some artists, in time.

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March 9, 2010

What Good Are Public Domain Photographs?

Filed under: Copyrights — ajmorris @ 4:12 pm

You might wonder why go through all the trouble of trying to preserve old photographs? Unless they happen to be pictures of your direct ancestors, why bother?

Well there are many good reasons. Many of these pictures are just plain beautiful. Others are of historic interest. All of them preserve information about some unique time and place that can never be exactly the same again.

Old photographs can be educational — witness their use in documentary films, such as those by Ken Burns about baseball, or the Civil War. They can be inspiring and evocative, or may engender sympathy or disgust. Viewing them enlightens and enriches our lives.

It is also possible, even easy with today’s technology, to transform old images into new works of art. Now I’m no artist, but even I can manipulate images in ways that make them more interesting, or useful for advertising or illustration. And public domain images allow me to make those kinds of derivative works without infringing on anyone’s copyrights.

Take the following image of the city of Cork, for example. I spent about an hour total making all the variations shown below — I could have spent that long on a single image if I were planning to publish it and wanted it ‘just-right’ — but even so, these are just quick edits with Photoshop.

Here is the original image, published around 1900:

Patrick Bridge in Cork

Even just changing the brightness, contrast, hue and saturation can lead to a variety of different looking versions:

Simple Setting Variations

Then the built-in filters Photoshop supplies can be used to make other interesting versions:

Using Built-In Filters

Or one may choose the slightly more time-consuming method of combining different modifications and colors in different layers, to create special effects or colorization:

Using Mixed Techniques

And I am not even an expert at Photoshop — I don’t know what half the tools and filters can do. Of course Photoshop is just the program I happen to use, there are many others out there that can create similar effects — little or no skill required.

All these from this one original image — imagine the possibilities from the millions of public domain images available!

This is my favorite -- which do you like best?

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March 1, 2010

Identifying and Dating American Photographs

Filed under: Dating Images — ajmorris @ 6:55 pm

The online ebook I have planned on how to identify and date photographs now has its table of contents online. There are only the first few pages done, on those items that have links on that page. Only paid members of ClassyArts.com have access to those pages. When the whole thing is complete, I will try to make the whole thing available as an ebook, though it may be too large to fit in one PDF file.

The current outline is only partial — the main framework. As I identify more detailed characteristics within those categories, many of them will be broken down further, or existing sub-categories will have additional pages added. The section on Named Motifs of Photographers Imprints/Back Imprints only has half-a-dozen names listed now; I expect that to grow into fifty or a hundred or more.

The format I have settled on is similar to that of the post on this blog on Dating Imprints: Floral Bouquet over Picture Frame, with Camera and Palette with Banners — only the summary table will be the first thing on the page. That way, once you have read the explanation, and understand how the terminology is being used, you can quickly look-up the relevant dates by going to the correct page — and there it will be, first thing.

I have no idea how long it will take me to complete this project — I have several other things going on to keep me busy — but I’ll try to add to this as quickly as I can. There is lots of material I have already written up for other uses (such as the above cited post on this blog), so all I have to do is reformat and clean up the text. Other subjects will require more research, including analysis of example photographs in my dated images collection, which now includes nearly 3,000 images and continues to grow.

Speaking of dated images, I have another blog where I am posting one dated image per week (3000 / 52 — I only have enough material for 57 years worth of posts!) The Dated Images blog is a sub-site of my Genealogy Through Pictures blog, where I try to add a post every few weeks. Give them a visit — but don’t forget to come back here for the latest news!

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