The School of Jack

[Dinosaur]

You'd think the advent of digital cameras with little screens on the back to show you the end product in advance rather than 2 weeks after the site's been backfilled (marvellous things!) would have improved matters, but if anything matters seem to be getting worse. On the up-side, it's now possible to disappear into the cabin with the digicam for a quick review and lots of private swearing, and then head back out to cautiously negotiate how perhaps the whole thing could have been done better if the photographer had tried this, this and this...and oh look, I seem to have accidentally taken some decent shots while suggesting all that... Bring back site photographers, they don't all have to be at the same standard as the likes of Mick Sharp (I couldn't handle the 2hrs being posed for 'working' shots at my age, but then again every exposure was publication standard), but at least we'd get some useable report pics

[Unitof1]

I think that you should be able to record a site without haveing to take any pictures

[P Prentice]

You'd think the advent of digital cameras with little screens on the back to show you the end product in advance rather than 2 weeks after the site's been backfilled (marvellous things!) would have improved matters, but if anything matters seem to be getting worse. On the up-side, it's now possible to disappear into the cabin with the digicam for a quick review and lots of private swearing, and then head back out to cautiously negotiate how perhaps the whole thing could have been done better if the photographer had tried this, this and this...and oh look, I seem to have accidentally taken some decent shots while suggesting all that... Bring back site photographers, they don't all have to be at the same standard as the likes of Mick Sharp (I couldn't handle the 2hrs being posed for 'working' shots at my age, but then again every exposure was publication standard), but at least we'd get some useable report pics

just shoot the person responsible for training and standards and get somebody who can lead a team. who is that on your sites?

[Wax]

Photography is an art (as is archaeology) You can be a whizz with the technology and still produce awful pics. get someone with that bit of artistic flair and your site can look like something out of a magazine.

I think finding the edges of contexts is also an art, you can teach the techniques but it needs a little bit of something extra to truely get it. There are those who can do it and those who cannot. It sometimes baffles me why others cannot see the changes in texture and colour that I can (though some might say I see things that arnt there).

[Dinosaur]

just shoot the person responsible for training and standards and get somebody who can lead a team. who is that on your sites?

I'd suggest that those persons at other units who had the personnel previously for years before they arrived here with long CVs, the tag 'experienced' and glowing references may to some extent be responsible for their apparent total lack of knowledge of the basics in almost all areas of sitework? If I was taking 'inexperienced' staff it'd be fair enough, but the ones with balls enough to claim to be experienced and have years of CV at major excavation units, and are expecting to get paid, should at least have some idea how to use a trowel, or, in this case, that 1/1000sec probably isn't an appropriate shutter speed for most archaeological photography (amazing how often you find site cameras on settings like that). On that basis, no, actually, I've got better things to do (like getting to the archaeology before they can make a total b****-up of it), followed by a recommendation they don't get employed here again. Same pretty much applies to people who need their hands holding...

Too right-wing? :0}

No objection to training people how to do new things though, do that quite often thanks :face-approve:

[kevin wooldridge]

.....with the widespread use of digital cameras, I have for a long time failed to see the point of the number board messing up site photos. Surely it takes no longer just to enter the requisite metadata directly into the camera stead of messing about etc etc.

[Dinosaur]

In a world where turn it on, point and press is stretching the technical capabilities of many of the workforce (and a biro and a piece of paper, for that matter), I think that'd be asking for trouble?

[Unitof1]

why cant you record a site without phoitography?

[P Prentice]

I'd suggest that those persons at other units who had the personnel previously for years before they arrived here with long CVs, the tag 'experienced' and glowing references may to some extent be responsible for their apparent total lack of knowledge of the basics in almost all areas of sitework? If I was taking 'inexperienced' staff it'd be fair enough, but the ones with balls enough to claim to be experienced and have years of CV at major excavation units, and are expecting to get paid, should at least have some idea how to use a trowel, or, in this case, that 1/1000sec probably isn't an appropriate shutter speed for most archaeological photography (amazing how often you find site cameras on settings like that). On that basis, no, actually, I've got better things to do (like getting to the archaeology before they can make a total b****-up of it), followed by a recommendation they don't get employed here again. Same pretty much applies to people who need their hands holding...

Too right-wing? :0}

No objection to training people how to do new things though, do that quite often thanks :face-approve:

you get what you pay for

[Dinosaur]

You been having similar problems too then?