Artifact Photography and Wedding Weekend at the Castle

Yesterday and today I've been working with Dr. Scott to do artifact photography for all of our finds from the field school's Mota Piece excavation this year. We didn't have to photograph everything, but did have to sort through every single bag determining what we were going to photograph- mostly representative samples of different types of finds. 

Below is a sample of the photographs I took. The scale bar at the bottom is 6cm long. These are definitely not professional-level; Margaret, don't judge me! :) [She has an MA in Archaeology and Screen Media].

A few behind-the-scenes shots:

Our glamorous photography studio in the archives

Bags of finds being sorted for photography in the archives

This photo had to be reshot: because of the angle, there's no way to crop
out the non-white edges while keeping all the artifacts in the frame
and the scale bar parallel to the base of the photo.

Sorting through a bag of pottery finds to choose the best ones for photos.

For each set-up of finds I actually took two shots: the first one has the bag
with the finds' info on it, so that when I later edit and send the photos
to Sue and Dr. Scott, I can label them correctly. 

After we finished at 2pm today (Saturday), Dr. Scott gave me the rest of the day off and tomorrow (my last day here) off too. It was nice to have a bit of free time right before I leave :) I just looked back at the calendar, and including tomorrow, I've had five full days off in the last six weeks! I'm very fortunate that my work here doesn't seem like work in the negative sense of the word.

Canada geese flying past my window

The castle is wedding central this weekend: a wedding per day yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Yesterday's bride and groom arrived by helicopter! I've gotten an insider look into the behind-the-scenes prep of banquets at the castle, since each night when I'm at dinner the dining hall is the staging area for food plating/prep and the serving team. Tonight when I arrived they had already served the first couple of courses, so they offered me some focaccia bread and cheese that were left over from extra starter plates that were prepared but not needed; very nice of them!