Portraits, fish scales and Neptune's anniversary

I received an email from another German company, specialising in building conservation techniques, who had taken part in a previous delegation from NRW to Wimpole Hall and London. Information is being accummulated for a potential press article/release after their planned next visit to the UK. I responded with the suggestion that we meet up informally when I next venture to Germany in the coming week.

This afternoon, I uploaded the portrait photos of some of the Cambridge Open Studio visitors who came last weekend and made a selection for more detailed editing. There were four final pictures in all, representing a gentleman wearing a fez, two different mothers with their daughters and a father with two student daughters.

The editing was limited to optimising lighting and contrast. Then the colour saturation was carefully adjusted by increasing it slightly, altering the saturation balance to maintain a natural set of tones. I do not go in for heavy skin or other editing as would be done for a fashion model. I do remove the occasional skin spot (three in total) and in one instance, reduced the pimples on the brow of of one subjects.

Having saved the colour image, I would then convert the image into a grey-scale version, again optimising lighting and contrast for this particular medium. There is a particular beauty with grey-scale portraits, whether it is the impact of the face without the distraction of colour or the beautiful texture of wavy hair with one of the mothers.

This evening, I was acutely aware that I had been hanging onto a box by Mr Richardson from the Postal Microscopical Society that should be passed on, initially delayed by illness and the distraction of Open Studio preparation. I returned to view the slides again (having to change a 30 year old bulb when the existing one blew – the next time will require a new lighting system!).

I had seen this box probably over a decade ago and illustrated two fish scales enclosed. This time, I decided to photograph them. The first was a cycloid scale from a rainbow trout. The scale is generally ovoid with concentric rings leading to an almost central focus like the contour lines on a mountain. The second was a ctenoid scale from Dover sole. These are more rectangular with a quartered pattern. The two long sides again have contour lines. The front part of the scale that is exposed on the fish skin, is covered in rows of short spikes that elongate towards the edge of the scale. The remaining side has a series radial ribs, giving the contours traversing them a way characteristic.

Even at a mere 40 times magnification, the scales were larger than the field of view through the microscope and camera viewfinder. The trout scale was photographed in a series of three columns and three rows of overlapping photos, each location at three focal depths (edge of scale, halfway up scale and centre of scale – giving 27 pictures in total. The Sole scale was photographed in the same manner but only required two columns of three rows at three focal planes – 18 photos in total.

Stacking the focal planes and then aligning the rows and columns is a labour for another day.
The interesting anniversary today is that around the 12th July it will be the first year's anniverary of the discovery of Neptune by Johann Gottfried Galle, in neptunian years of course. Herr Galle first identified Neptune 164.79 Earth years ago in 1781. Ever since the ignominious departure of Pluto from the pantheon of planets by its derogation to planetoid, Neptune has been the eighth and outermost planet of our solar system. The Hubble space telescope took some “Anniversary pictures” of Neptune late in June, which can be seen here http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2011/19/image/a/.