This year I am thankful for all the great work being done by the Project Aspire students at Biddeford High School for the Maine Community Heritage Project.  I continue to be impressed by the effort and enthusiasm of these students while tackling the work of the MCHP.  At the beginning of the month I spent the better part of a day in the classroom, and I brought a bunch of objects with me to digitize. We spent some time examining the objects and talking about them, and one of the students found some information etched into a ladies’ tortoiseshell hair comb.

 We spent some time shooting close-ups of the comb to try and show the etching, and had a good time trying to figure out how to do it. Another artifact, a canteen used during the Civil War, ended up having a small initial etched into the rim, and the process started up again.

The excitement and perserverence in trying to show their discoveries was part of the inspiration of asking for a workshop on museum photography. The amazing team at Maine Historical Society set one up for us, and we were lucky enough to get photography professional Dani Fazio of MHS in to teach us the basics.  

Many of the items we want to digitize present some challenges, but we are getting well equiped to deal with them thanks to the hard work of our students & the help of MHS!