Friday 10th May 2019
Three of us made the trip to Horton-in-Ribblesdale where we are
scheduled to provide RTI demonstrations on 25th May as part of the
Archaeology “Family Fun Day” being organised by the Stories in Stone Project
We started the day with a cup of coffee at the only tea-shop left in Horton and
had a nice chat with the lady who runs it – she really wanted this to be a gift
shop, but there are so many walkers and tourists passing through the village
she felt someone had to offer light refreshments.
We were greeted by the vicar who welcomed up to St Oswald’s Church. Then
we spent some time having a good look around the gravestones and selected three
suitable candidates for the RTI session. Most of the gravestones in St Oswald’s
churchyard are in pretty good condition – must be the clean air and the use of
local slate for many of the memorials – but there were three lichen-covered
stones that were difficult to read in overcast conditions.
The lighting conditions kept changing – from sunshine to cloudy – a nightmare
for RTI, especially when the clouds were mostly white, reflecting back a lot of
light. It meant the flashlight was not fully illuminating the gravestones as it
was competing against the natural light. We had to make a couple of compromises
on the first two memorials we photographed – such as moving the camera in
closer on the largest of the three gravestones, so that only half of it was
in-frame. We also had to halve the length of the string which is used to
provide a consistent guide to the distance between the flash and the camera.
Normally we advise that length should be the same as the distance between the
camera and the object. By the time we came to photographing the third
gravestone the clouds were greyer and the RTI session went well, working within
normal parameters.
While we were there we had a stroll around the north side where the
burial site has been extended to take newer burials. Found a couple of really
beautiful examples of memorials which struck us as particularly touching.
We also had a look inside the church to assess the potential for
setting up a small display on the 25th May.
After that we drove out to the tea-shop at Middle Studfold Farm where
we enjoyed a fabulous light meal – soup, omlette and cake. Highly recommended.
Back at home I processed the photographs with some reservations, and at
first I wasn’t too happy with the results on the first two gravestones. The
third was fine. However, by selecting Normals Visualisation Mode on the RTI
viewer and then importing the resulting snapshot into Photoshop I was able to
produce a really good result on both the gravestones – simply converting the
jpg to black and white, and playing a little with the Levels and
Brightness/Contrast. I was really pleased in the end that they had turned out
so much better than I expected.
So now we can say “here are some we prepared earlier” in true Blue
Peter style when we are at Horton giving the RTI demo.
We had originally
considered showing interested people how to use the RTI Builder software but
realised that (a) most people would find it a tedious process, and (b) we won’t
have internet access there, so the software wouldn’t work anyway!.
Jane Lunnon
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