Useful photographic software and trepanning

I woke briefly with the aura of an impending migraine, took some tablets and slept again until the medication took hold.

Yesterdays photographs at Ely Cathedral included a range of images either taken at different focal depths, e.g. of carved figures around a column, or of a scene such as a stained glass window taken at a range of exposures so that the series would capture all the detail in both the darkest areas and lightest ones.

These two different series would be used to create composite images using some extremely useful software. However, I needed to transfer and activate licensed software from my old PC for these programs on my new PC and that was a key task undertaken today.

The most important software is Helicon Focus, used to create a focus stack. A problem commonly experienced with photography, especially macro-photography and microscopy, is that when areas in the foreground are in focus, the background is not and vice versa. Whilst this can be used to great effect to achieve an emphasis of one subject, by making sure it is the only one in focus, in other instances you actually want a whole area to be in focus.

When it is critical to have more of an object in focus than can be achieved with a single photo, I ensure that the camera is fixed and then take a series of photos, changing the focus from front to back in incremental steps. With Helicon focus I can then combine all the images together and create an final image where only the elements that are in focus are used from each serial image.

The second software is Photomatix. It can combine images of different contrast range to create a High Dynamic Range (HDR) photo which reveals all the detail.

Our eyes and brain are brilliant at looking at a scene where there are very bright and very dark areas. Imagine yourself on a path in a wood in bright sunlight – you can see detail in the shady areas AND the bright areas. Cameras have a much lower contrast range, meaning that if you expose to reveal the detail in the brightest area, the shadows are black without detail – and vice versa.

With Photomatix, I photograph a scene from a fixed position (tripod) over a range of bracketed exposures and then combine these in Photomatix to create an HDR image.

In the evening, during the judging of Strictly Come Dancing, I started reading Northern Lights by Philip Pullman. One of the curious minor story threads is the use of trepanning or trepanation – the drilling of holes in the skull and allowing them to heal – for spiritual or health reasons.

 I'd seen a skull displayed in the International Museum of Nubia in Aswan showing a skull with an accompanying X-ray where there was lesion that I thought was a trepanation that had healed over.

Trepanning or trepanation had been part of human culture for at least 7000 years, starting with a neolithic skull found in Ensisheim, France, and in Chinese, Ancient Egyptian, Greek, Arabic and European skulls. Approximately 6% of Inca and pre-inca skulls had been trepanned, with a suggested survival rate of over 60%.

There is a small group of individuals who actually self trepan to the present date.

Reasons for trepanning include the obvious medical – to repair skull damage or antique beliefs that it helped with curing migraines or epilepsy. However, there may also have been trepanning for spiritual reasons.

The current rationale for trepanning in the absence of medical necessity is to increase brain activity with the explanations that it might help by allowing the brain to expand or increasing oxygenation of the brain. No medical evidence for these exists to date.

Whilst I am a migraine sufferer, I will not be taking up trepanation!
Two interesting links : Wikipedia and An illustrated history of trepanation.