08 Aug Representing (pt. 2)

Using photogrammetry to create a three dimensional digital model is something I haven’t done before, so I was excited to learn. It is a tedious process that requires a lot of patience and diligence. The process requires multiple images and angles of small, overlapping sections.

But also, proper lighting, distance and focus must be sustained so that there is uniform exposure for each image. Since I had experience with digital photography, I took a lot of the photos after devising parameters for distance of the camera, placing of the lights that were held by hand, and manually focusing the camera. Also, there was not a lot of space to maneuver around the inside of the boat, so not only did we have to keep all these things in mind but we also had to be careful where to step. This last part was even more important due to the state of disrepair of the boat. Because the main issue is that the fasteners that hold the planks on the hull (the boards that make up the shape of the bottom of the boat that attach to the frames on the inside), we had to especially make sure not to step on the planks, which are the only flat parts of the boat interior one would want to step on.

Photogrammetry

After taking all the photos, they are then put into a program that plots them and puts them together to render a three dimensional digital image. In all, we had over 300 pictures of a relatively small space. Unfortunately, the National Park Service computer crashed while creating this image, so I cannot show an image just yet.

It is our hope that this digital documentation will aid us as historic preservationists, and we are thinking about how to display this to the public.