While we have a photo studio where we do most of our artifact photography using white backgrounds and strictly controlled lighting, many times we encounter things that are too big for this setting—for example, a car! In those cases, we need to take ourselves and our studio on the move, and our newest collections storage building, the Main Storage Building (MSB), gives us a perfect environment for that. While sometimes space can be an issue (there are only so many places you can store dozens of wagons and plows), we make the most of the room we have and get creative in the meantime.
For example, to photograph “The Busy World” automaton wagon, it first needed to be moved out of a row of wagons and into an open space to give us room to set up our lights and camera.
“The Busy World” automaton wagon in storage in MSB before photography. / Photo courtesy Jillian Ferraiuolo
The completed photograph of the automaton. / THF187282
Since the Unimate robot was featured in an episode of The Henry Ford’s Innovation Nation, we needed to capture new photographs of it for our Digital Collections before the episode aired. While we had a little more room to work when photographing the Unimate (this was before MSB was as full as it is today), we still benefitted from having the ability to set up all around it because it is extremely heavy and cannot be easily moved. We had to use the space around it to access both sides for our standard photography.
Photographing the Unimate. / Photo courtesy Jillian Ferraiuolo
Completed photo of the Unimate robot. / THF172780
It was a similar situation when we photographed the 1977 Ford Mustang II. Though now this area in MSB houses an array of agricultural equipment, such as plows and wagons, in 2018 we were able to use the open area to photograph the Mustang II for the first time so it could be viewed online.
Photographing the Mustang II. / Photo courtesy Jillian Ferraiuolo
Completed photo of the Mustang II. / THF173560
This next example shows a more current look at MSB in 2021. As you might be able to see, there are many more vehicles now occupying the large area where we shot the Unimate and Mustang II. So when we were tasked with the job of photographing a 1925 Yellow Cab, we were unable to circle around it and had to work with our collections management team to move the taxi for us as we documented it.
Photographing the 1925 Yellow Cab taxicab. / Photo courtesy Jillian Ferraiuolo
You can also see that we created our own white background around the cab with tall foamcore boards (a little thing that helps immensely with post-processing in Photoshop). But our “studio” was surrounded by another car to the right and a wagon to the left! All this careful maneuvering and setup was necessary to get the final image.
Final photograph of the 1925 Yellow Cab Taxicab. / THF188014
Looking at the completed image, you probably would never know what it looked like when we were photographing it out on the floor in MSB!
My final example, the Ford COVID-19 mobile testing van, was so tall that it almost reached the ceiling in the tallest room in MSB. Since it’s a full-sized van, it isn’t easy to move—especially inside a building. In case that isn’t enough, its current neighbors in storage happen to be a couple of large fire engines. Regardless, we got creative again and we were able to get photos of the van despite these challenges.
Photographing the Ford COVID-19 mobile testing van. / Photo courtesy Jillian Ferraiuolo
Completed photo of the COVID-19 mobile testing van. / THF188109
Besides being an invaluable space to store an extensive variety of precious artifacts from our collections, MSB also serves as a functional space for us to use as photographers—so we can digitize artifacts even if they’re larger than we can accommodate in our photo studio.
Jillian Ferraiuolo is Digital Imaging Specialist at The Henry Ford.
Main Storage Building, photography, photographs, digitization, collections care, by Jillian Ferraiuolo, #Behind The Scenes @ The Henry Ford
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