Powerhouse Museum - Photo of the Day

Loco 3265

2009-11-20T10:04:48Z

Since its public launch on 20 September 2009, the Museum’s reconstructed steam locomotive 3265 has been hired by two steam train operators for their day trip excursions. On Sunday 4 October, 3265 performed faultlessly as it hauled a Cockatoo Run service operated by 3801 Limited to the Southern Highlands. On Saturday 7 November, 3265 shared some hard work with locos 3526 and 3642 en route to Blackheath hauling a special train operated by the NSW Rail Transport Museum. Hundreds of passengers and thousands of delighted onlookers took in the spectacular site of a rarely seen “triple header” steam train working the steep Blue Mountains grades.

The restoration of 3265 received an award from the Association of Tourist and Heritage Rail Australia at the International Rail Heritage Conference held from 14-17 October at the Workshops Rail Museum, Ipswich, Queensland. The award is testimony to the high standard of work invested in the project by Powerhouse Museum staff and the dedicated team of volunteers who worked for 11 years to finally realise their objective.

On Monday 9 November, 3265 was prominently displayed at the opening of the new Roundhouse at the Rail Transport Museum at Thirlmere. The Roundhouse represents the first stage in RailCorp’s redevelopment of the Thirlmere site where both the Powerhouse Museum’s steam locomotives, 3830 and 3265, will soon be stored, displayed and maintained.

Photography by Marinco Kojdanovski
License: Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0
Post by Andrew Grant, Curator
Photo of the Day 2nd anniversary statistic: one of our top 5 posts is Future of image licensing

The 80s are back

2009-11-19T10:29:52Z

I’m excited about my first blog post. As the museum’s industrial designer I have been realising John Hirsch’s dream of a 1m³ interactive Rubik’s Cube replica for the upcoming 80’s exhibition. He’s our Interactives Department Electronics Engineer, something of a McGyver.

It’s a touch sensitive cube with colours you could drag across the surface, all made possible by new sensing technology we developed and coloured light projected by LED’s from behind plastic sheets.

I started with CAD concepts of a metal light box of laser cut parts welded with the precision necessary to fit the many layers of parts still to come.

Photo collage and post by Krister Gustafsson, Industrial Designer
© All rights reserved
Photo of the Day 2nd anniversary statistic: one of our top 5 posts is Whats in the Workshop #1

George Walker

2009-11-20T02:11:01Z

This 1856 photograph is of George Walker who would eventually become the Mayor of Paddington, in Sydney. While ambrotypes from the 1850s and 1860s can still found in antique shops and markets ones in which the sitters are identified are much rarer. Even rarer still are examples of prominent Sydney figures like this one.

No known copyright restrictions
Post by Geoff Barker, Assistant Curator
Photo of the Day 2nd anniversary statistic: one of our top 5 posts is Lansdowne Hotel

The 80s are back

2009-11-17T09:52:06Z

The exhibition is in construction and we are preparing a lot of content at the moment that will be featured in this exhibition that will take you back to the decade of decadence, extravagance, big hair,shoulder pads and much more. This image (sent throught the Polarize app) is a behind-the-scenes shot of the testing of some audio-visual, image and lighting content that will make up an entry experience for the audience just prior to entering the exhibition. The 80s are back will open in December.

Photography by Paula Bray
License: Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0
Photo of the Day 2nd anniversary statistic: one of our top 5 posts is The Commons anniversary

Redfern Railway Station: a transport hub

2009-11-16T10:35:23Z

Redfern Station in Sydney opened in 1855, just north of its current location. In the early 1900s the main terminal was moved a few hundred metres further north and became known as Central Station.

The Central terminus was designed as a vital transport interchange where people and goods moved between trains, horsebuses, steam trams, horse-drawn cabs and carts. Good planning made change possible, as buses, cars, electric trains and light rail took their place. Although the vehicles have changed, Central Station serves thousands of people very well each day.

Photography by Charles Kerry & Co
No known copyright restrictions
Posty by Sandra McEwen, Principal Curator
Photo of the Day 2nd anniversary statistic: one of our top 5 posts is Sydney Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef exhibition

The heart of the Milky Way

2009-11-15T10:17:23Z

This is a stunning view showing the centre of the Milky Way galaxy in infrared light that was made with data from the Spitzer Space Telescope.

With visible light, dust between the Earth and the galactic centre obscures the view. However, infrared observations see through this dust, and this false-colour image shows old, cool stars in blue while the dust illuminated by hot, younger stars is red. The brightest white spot in the middle is at the very centre of the galaxy, which also marks the site of a supermassive black hole, about 26,000 light years away. The plane of the Milky Way’s flat disk is apparent as the main, horizontal band of clouds.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/S. Stolovy (SSC/Caltech).
Post by David Malin
Photo of the Day 2nd anniversary statistic: 1009 subscribers to the RSS feed.

Ballet portrait of Massine

2009-11-14T06:13:27Z

This is one of numerous intimate portraits from the Bruno Benini photography archive acquired by the Powerhouse Museum with funding assistance from the Commonwealth Government’s National Cultural Heritage Account in 2009. Dramatically lit and boldly choreographed, the image captures an intimate moment in the dance routine and the working life of Leonide Fedorovich Massine (1895/6-1979) one of the greatest dance masters and choreographers of the 20th century. Compositionally the image gains great theatrical presence as Massine and the female ballerina occupy only a small part of the spot lit picture plane, the remainder of the image remains in stark contrasting blackness. The name of the female ballerina, the specific ballet and the theatre are not yet known. Perhaps you can help us with our research? Bruno Benini took the photograph in London during 1958.

Photography by Bruno Benini
© Estate of Bruno Benini
Post by Anne-Marie Van de Ven, Curator

Photo of the Day 2nd anniversary statistic: 330 comments with 18000 words in those comments

Photo of the Day turns two today!

2009-11-13T09:40:49Z

Today we are celebrating Photo of the Day turning two. I am going to share some of the statistics with you over the next week that I have about this blog, the first being that we there are 141, 000 words associated with the images. The statistics are interesting but more than the stats it is the amazing feedback that we get back from you that inspires us. There is some incredible research going on and connections being made. Thank you for participating with this blog it is very much appreciated.

Photography by Paula Bray
License: Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0

William Hetzer stereoviews join the Commons

2009-11-12T05:49:47Z

This week we have added another small collection of photos to the Commons on Flickr and this is one of twelve stereoviews that we are now making available for you to see and use. This original was created by William Hetzer and was published in one of the earlier sets of William Hetzer’s stereoviews, This image is especially relevant to the Powerhouse Museum collections as it is the earliest photographic record of Australia’s first Locomotive. Appropriately named Locomotive No. 1, this train is now part of the Powerhouse Collection. This locomotive arrived in Sydney in February 1855 and worked on the NSW rail lines until March 1877 when it was withdrawn from operation after having travelled more than 250,000 kms.

Flickr member Thiophene_Guy has already made an animated gif of this image and describes this as:

The purpose here is not to duplicate the original image, from the Powerhouse Museum collection but to generate an animated gif to assist viewing.

See the gif here

Stereoview by William Hetzer
No known copyright restrictions

Constructing Artefact H10515

2009-11-11T20:31:38Z

Constructing Artefact H10515, originally uploaded by Powerhouse Museum.

My time-lapse sequence of the Artefact H10515 exhibition was shot with a Canon EOS-1D Mk1 fitted with a 20mm f2.8 wide-angle lens and a Canon Remote Control Timer which I set to trigger every 2 or 15 minutes depending on the amount of activity I thought would occur each day.

The camera was mounted on the lighting-grid in the ceiling of the exhibition using a Manfrotto 3D tripod head on a super clamp. In that location the camera was surrounded by exhibition lighting which would probably be repositioned during the exhibition installation so I added a pair of make-shift ‘barn-doors’ on either side of the lens to minimise lens-flare.

Once I had the camera positioned I connected its AC converter to a continuous power supply and set the camera to manual focus with Aperture-Priority automatic exposure set to f11 at 100 ISO. The exhibition is relatively dark and I knew my exposures would vary between 5 and 30 seconds but that suited me because I wanted to blur the motion of people working on the installation.

The project took about 30 days to shoot using two 4Gb SandDisk Extreme III CF memory cards and every day or two I checked the camera and swapped cards so it would continue its capture while I used Adobe Photoshop CS3 to download, edit and process the latest RAW files into screen-sized JPGs.

Altogether I shot about 2000 images, which I edited down to around 1100, and 850 effective shots that could be used in 60-second and 90-second versions of the time lapse sequence. The shorter of these started at the point where the exhibition developers installed new rear-projection material on the inside of the glass cube to achieve better image contrast than the material originally specified.

Finally I used an early version of Apple iMovie software to produce the two time-lapse sequences using a duration of 0.3 seconds for the majority of the images, with longer transitions at the beginning and end where I used titles and some supplementary images to finish off the project.

Photography and post by Geoff Friend
© All rights reserved

Write your own label

2009-11-10T09:15:23Z

This is a label written by one of our visitors to the Odditoreum display that we featured earlier in the year. This display showcased a selection of weird and wonderful curiosities from deep within the vaults of the Museum’s collection. Children’s author Shaun Tan then gave these unusual objects a different story about the objects that blurred the line between fantasy and fiction.

Within this experience the visitor was encouraged to write their own interpretation of the objects and then share them with other visitors in a special display. This is one of the labels that was written by an eleven year old. It reads:

Mutated Moth
This amazing moth was found in the deepest Borneo where it had mutated to the size of an incredibly small lawn mower whilst being dissected by the greatest scientist that ever lived.

Rhona 11.

Photography by Paula Bray
© All rights reserved.

An Australian rabbiter making a living from pests

2009-11-09T04:22:20Z

The release of rabbits into the Victorian bush in 1859 was an environmental disaster. The 24 animals multiplied to plague numbers that are still with us today. Rabbits affect biodiversity and cause soil erosion by tunnelling into the ground and nibbling plants to the roots.

Trapping provided food and income for many people until it was banned in NSW in 1980. Today it is considered more humane, efficient and effective to control rabbits by destroying burrows, building fences and using viruses such as myxoma and calici.

Photography by Henry King Studio
No known copyright restrictions
Post by Sandra McEwen, Principal Curator

Garden Palace organ

2009-11-08T09:07:15Z

By April 1879 the Commissioner’s of the 1879 International Exhibition had agreed to the purchase of an organ for the ‘Garden Palace’ building and appointment of a musical director to oversee the recitals. Alongside traditional works to resound around the exhibition halls over the following six months was a full orchestral work, Sydney International Exhibition March, especially composed by Giorza. Like the International Exhibitions that preceded it there were complaints about the acoustics, and even more about the ‘leathern congestion’ of the organ, but this didn’t stop 30,000 attending one of the performances held in the ‘Garden Palace’.

Photography by Messrs Richards and Company
No known copyright restrictions
Post by Geoff Barker, Assistant Curator

The 80s are back

2009-11-07T09:03:10Z

This is one of the behind-the-scenes shots taken for our upcoming exhibition The 80s are back. This was taken in our conservation photography lab as we were using the photographic studio to shoot the audio-visual content that will be featured in a special display in the gallery.

This exhibition will explore the decade’s styles, trends and subcultures, and how they found expression in fashion, design, music, film and television. Keep an eye on our 80s blog where you can nominate someone who was prominent in the 80s for a Q&A series that we will feature online

Commercial Bank in George Street

2009-11-05T04:01:15Z

This stereoview showing the Commercial Bank in George Street was taken from a building located near to the centre of the city in what we now call Martin Place. It is one of a set of images from William Hetzer’s stereoviews. Barrack Lane, now known as Barrack Street, is on the left and one of Sydney’s shortest streets. The Commercial Bank building is no longer in George Street but the façade of the building was donated to Sydney University in 1923. On the other side of the street is the original David Jones building that was built in 1838.

Stereoview by William Hetzer
No known copyright restrictions

Sydney International Exhibition Album is added to the Commons on Flickr

2009-11-05T03:10:07Z

We have just released eighteen images taken from the Sydney International Exhibition Album featuring images taken of the Garden Palace from around the 1880s. This palace was the main feature of the Sydney exhibition which was over 244 metres long and had a floor space of 112,000 metres.

Geoff Barker has been contributing some posts to Photo of the Day about the Garden Palace that are from this album. Due to the interest in this collection they have since been added to the Commons on Flickr under no known copyright restrictions. Geoff writes:

“The main feature of the Sydney exhibition, like the international ones that preceded it, was an ornate building, the ‘Garden Palace’, which was over 244 metres long and had a floor space of over 112,000 metres. This building, and a number of smaller ones, was erected in the grounds of the Sydney Domain where it dominated the Sydney skyline for three brief years before the ‘Garden Palace’ was destroyed by fire in 1882.

These photographs are significant to the Powerhouse museum because the ‘Technological, Industrial and Sanitary Museum’, as the Powerhouse was then known, had earmarked objects on display to be among its first acquisitions. In 1880 a committee started selecting specimens and many of these were housed in the Ceylon court in the Garden Palace building.”

These images are also significant because they give us an insight into what this building was like before it burned to the ground.

Photography by Messrs Richards and Company
No known copyright restrictions

George Street Markets, Sydney, N.S.W., No. 1

2009-11-04T02:29:57Z

Sydney’s George Street Markets once stood on the site now occupied by the Queen Victoria building, (QVB). At the time that this photograph was taken, photography of interiors was constrained by lighting conditions and it was the presence of skylights or large windows that often determined the production of an image. Even in the available light, many of the people in this scene are blurred due to the length of the exposure that was required.

Photograph by Henry King. Tyrrell Collection
No known copyright restrictions
Post by Kathy Hackett, Photo Librarian

The biggest radio galaxy in the sky: an Australian first.

2009-11-03T03:28:11Z

Centaurus A is a radio galaxy that is the nearest active, supermassive black hole in the Universe. This image is the first to show its full extent at radio wavelengths, covering almost 10 degrees from end to end, and twice the extent of the Southern Cross. The huge reddish radio lobes combine data from the Parkes radio telescope and the Australia Telescope Compact Array at Narrabri. At the centre of the lobes is the optical image of the galaxy known as NGC 5128. This was also discovered in Australia, by James Dunlop, at Parramatta Observatory, in 1826. This inner image (inset right) is pretty stunning too, and includes submillimeter radio data (orange) and Xray data (blue).

Outer image credit: Ilana Feain, Tim Cornwell & Ron Ekers (CSIRO/ATNF). ATCA northern middle lobe pointing courtesy R. Morganti (ASTRON); Parkes data courtesy N. Junkes (MPIfR).

Inner image credit: (Optical), ESO/WFI/AAO (UKST); (Submillimetre), MPIfR/ESO/APEX/A.Weiss et al.; (X-ray) NASA/CXC/CfA/R.Kraft et al.

Inner and outer images combined by David Malin.
Post by David Malin, From Earth to the Universe team.

Street life, Paddington 1969.

2009-11-02T03:08:45Z

This great image, which forms part of the David Mist photographic archive, was taken in Paddington in 1969. This glimpse of daily life around the streets of Paddington was one of the images that didn’t make it into David’s book on the life in around the city titled ‘Sydney’ that was published in 1969. Around this time David produced two documentary style photographic publications that were quite different to his commercial fashion photography, one being on life in and around Sydney and the other about Australian women.

This shot features the Dandy Dog salon that used to be located in Paddington which was apparently one of the first grooming salons in NSW.

On board

2009-11-01T20:36:56Z

Group on board ship, originally uploaded by Powerhouse Museum Collection.

This image was taken by photographer Tom Lennon on board a ship on the 2nd March 1934. There was an inscription on the box that this negative was located in that reads ‘Mr Grant [indecipherable] Zealand / D.B.N. 2/3/34′. The magazine that the man in the centre is holding is a copy of the monthly industry magazine, “The Australian Music Maker and Dance Band News”. This was published in Sydney by the Australian Dance Band News Ltd from 1932 and its editors were Eric J. Sheldon 1932-36 and George Hart 1936-40.

There are a few images from the Tom Lennon photographic archive that I have been loading to the Commons on Flickr recently that were taken around the ship and wharf, including this image Group [farewelling Eric Sheldon and band?] on wharf and possibly this one taken on the ship, Eric Sheldon’s bass drum.