Archaeological Photography – Photographing a Site

A photo shown to us in last week’s class stuck with me through the week and made me think, “How was that taken?”  It was a photo of an excavation square from directly above the square.  Now anyone who knows anything about excavation will immediately understand my perplexity.  Squares are generally anywhere from 4 meters (as this one is) to 6 meters.  It is physically impossible to float above a square and take a photograph from directly above  (short of renting a hot-air balloon or a helicopter).  What we do at Jalul is to use secure step-ladders to get relative top angles of the squares taken from different sides of the square.  But how was that one taken?

There is really no way for an ordinary person to get that pure of an angle – yet here was a photograph taken (not from a high-altitude plane or a satellite but) from a 70’s era, 35mm, black and white film camera that one has to wind and manually focus!  Furthermore, our professor informed us that it was taken from about 3 meters above the surface of the floor of the square.

So how did they do it?  I had to ask.

I arrived at class about 15 minutes early and was rewarded with the answer to my quarry.  It was done with delayed action camera atop a frame.  It involved four people (one on each side of the square).  Two secured the base of the frame on opposite sides of the square from each other, while the other two (standing on perpendicular sides to these frame-holders) held a rope each, attached to the top of the frame.  The frame was “A”-shaped made from round tubing with a crossbar to make it somewhat steady.  A gimbal was mounted at the peak of the “A” along with both ropes.  The camera was fastened to the gimbal so that it would always point straight down (due to gravity).

They managed to work this simple machine by having the photographer be one of the rope-holders.  In this case, he wound the film, set the timer on the camera (in which they had 10 seconds to hoist it into place and hold it steady), and called out for the opposite rope-holder to pull mightily, raising the “A” (along with the gimbal and camera) into the air.  A knot, tied in the photographer’s rope told him when to stop the ascent of the “A”-frame.  They held it steady and the camera snapped the photo.

My professor told me that a 24mm, wide-angle lens, was all that was needed.  Furthermore, today the whole process would be much easier.  We have digital cameras that auto-focus.  Also, we can snap the pictures remotely.  We can zoom in or out with the use of a laptop and actually see what we are photographing.  And today there are “arms” (similar to the legs on a tri-pod) that can extend to 25 feet that we can hold up to achieve the same results reducing the number of people involved to just 2.

He further told a story about a well that they wanted to “see” down into.  They suspected a cistern lay at the bottom but were unwilling to descend without first knowing the structural soundness of the walls of the well.  What they did was to first lower a plumb-line so they knew the depth.  Then they took a rope and tied knots in it every ½ meter down to the depth.  Then they fixed a camera to the end of the rope so that it would face downward and focused it to ½ meter distance (thus the walls would be in focus at ½ meter depth from camera lens and everything beyond and closer would be gradually out of focus).  Then with the delay action of the camera (timer) they would wind the film, set the timer, and carefully, but quickly lower the camera to the desired depth, wait for the shutter to snap and then hall it back up to set it for the next shot.  They would repeat this gradually letting the camera take photos further and further down the well shaft.

Naturally, the photos were not all facing the same direction (as there is no way to keep a camera from spinning a bit at the end of a rope), but what they ended up with were photos of the sides of the well all the way down.  What they were shocked to discover was that there were hand/foot holds carved into the sides of the well going all the way to the bottom.  At the bottom, there was a cistern.  Apparently, during times of great distress or danger, they were able to climb down the well to this cistern and wait.  With food that they brought along, they had plenty of water and could last for some time down there (until it was safe to return to regular life back on the surface).  All of this done with a little ingenuity and a delayed camera timer.

It is these types of stories that I am happy to hear.  There are many applications to these two methods of filming.  I would be happy to hear of some of the methods you have heard about or done yourself to get at a solution to a problem.  The more we share these methods, the better we get as photographers and the better our archaeological photography (and other types of photography) gets.