Timelapse photography can make slow change visible, whether the subject is a blooming plant, a conservation treatment, a construction project, or a changing cultural landscape. This toolkit offers practical use cases and equipment ideas for heritage organizations interested in experimenting with the format. Its interpretive strength lies in compression: moments separated by hours, months, or years can be brought together to reveal processes that visitors would otherwise never be able to perceive.
Tag Archives: preservationtech
Posts about technology used in historic preservation, including documentation, conservation, recording, analysis, and preservation practice.
Knight Foundation makes a digital heritage dream possible
A $100,000 Knight Foundation grant gave Vizcaya the opportunity to turn years of interest in 3D documentation into a practical visitor-experience project. Working with university and technology partners, the initiative combined photogrammetry, laser scanning, 3D printing, kiosks, and virtual experiences to interpret spaces visitors could not physically access. The project illustrates how emerging technology becomes useful when preservation, interpretation, institutional support, and external partnerships are designed together.
A 3D Documentation primer for cultural and historic sites
This primer introduces laser scanning and photogrammetry as increasingly practical tools for documenting cultural sites and objects in three dimensions. It explains how the technologies work, where their strengths and limitations differ, and how preservation data can also support interpretation through virtual experiences and interactive displays. The post marks an important convergence: documentation technology originally developed for accuracy and conservation beginning to serve public access and storytelling as well.
Dale Kronkright on Shaping Georgia O’Keeffe’s Digital Image
At the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, conservator Dale Kronkright helped test computational imaging technologies while making the research process visible to the public through digital media. This conversation explores the Georgia O’Keeffe Imaging Project as both a conservation experiment and a communications strategy: sophisticated documentation technologies paired with relatively simple online storytelling to connect conservation research, collections, and audiences.
Picturing preservation tech online with Cultural Heritage Imaging
Cultural Heritage Imaging explores how photography and computational imaging can become tools for preservation research, documentation, and public understanding rather than simply illustration. The conversation looks at emerging methods for recording cultural resources and at the challenge of explaining highly technical work online, connecting preservation technology with a broader question that still matters: how do we make specialized knowledge visible and useful without oversimplifying it?
The Preservation Technology Podcast: The longest continually produced show on historic preservation
This post looks back on the Preservation Technology Podcast as both a media experiment and a practical knowledge system for the preservation field. Developed through Jeff Guin’s work at NCPTT, the show connected practitioners with conversations about materials, conservation, sustainability, research, and field practice. It also documents the learning curve behind institutional podcasting: improving production skills over time while building a durable channel for specialized professional knowledge.
John Leeke V-log: Steam Paint Removal
In this installment of his Voices of the Past V-log, John Leeke demonstrates using steam to remove heavy paint build up from wood surfaces. Steam paint removal softens the paint film so it can be more easily scraped away. It works well with the heavy paint buildup commonly found on the exterior of older buildings during house restoration and historic preservation projects.
John Leeke V-log: Repairing moisture damage in wood
This time, John looks at moisture damage to a wooden door jamb. He explains how to evaluate the damage and how to effect a repair using epoxy. 25 min.
John Leeke Preservation Trades V-log: Fort Lowell Adobe Ruins “Gringo Blocks”
In this installment of his video log, John Leeke takes us to Fort Lowell in Tuscon, Arizona where he speaks with Simon Herbert about Adobe contruction methods. Specifically, they examine "gringo blocks" as a building device. More to come ...
John Leeke Preservation Trades V-log: Timber Repair
John Leeke of Historic HomeWorks demonstrates preservation-trades knowledge through short-form web video, focusing here on timber repair for older and historic buildings. The original Blip.tv video is gone, but the post remains evidence of an early effort to move hands-on preservation instruction onto the social web.