A View to Hugh – Page 42 – Processing the Hugh Morton Photographs and Films

A Whale of a Storm

“In North Carolina, the toll: 19 people killed; 15,000 homes or other buildings completely destroyed or with major damages; 39,000 homes or other buildings with minor damage. Total property losses: $125 million.”

This quotation comes from page 15 of the book Making a Difference in North Carolina, co-written by Hugh Morton and Edward L. Rankin. Though most of the pages are filled with intimate portraits of politicians and other influential individuals who operated on the state as well as national level, one chapter is devoted to Hurricane Hazel (arguably just as influential a figure as the others in the book).
Hazel visited the Coastal Carolinas as a Category 4 hurricane in the middle of October of 1954 after striking Haiti with deadly results. As we in the Carolinas are just coming out of the zone of influence of another H-named storm and, as a nation, are about to be assaulted by an actual hurricane, it seems appropriate to post some pictures that Hugh Morton took during the 1954 hurricane season. All of these pictures are from Carolina Beach, NC.
Let’s begin with an award-winning photo:

This picture of Julian Scheer, a Charlotte reporter (and later NASA Public affairs Chief during the Moon race), won Morton the “first prize for spot news in the NC Press Photographers Association,” in 1954 (Morton, Rankin 15). The houses in the background are disappearing into the ocean, and the house in the mid-ground is on fire. Aside from these details, I don’t think it needs much of a caption, as it speaks, dramatically and clearly, for itself.

Some more pictures that were really interesting and are in need of identification are ones that appear to be the wrecked remnants of a boardwalk.

I was able to identify one of the stores, the Ocean Plaza Bathhouse (that appears in the background of the picture, but gets more prominence in other ones in the series), a somewhat well-known institution of the time at Carolina Beach. Does this place still exist? Or did a hurricane and/or a decline in interest towards bath houses contribute to its closing? And how about the rest of the Carolina Beach boardwalk?

This whale, probably a familiar symbol to those who visited and lived in Carolina Beach, seems to be faring better than some of the other structures. The woman standing to the left seems to be weathering the storm in her own right, but I wonder what she was doing out in the storm? Perhaps she was a local politician, a member of the chamber of commerce, or a friend of Hugh Morton. I suppose everyone has their reasons for facing a storm; I suppose it still happens today.
If you are one of those individuals, until the hurricane season is over, be safe!
–David

Mile High Milestone

Grandfather Mountain’s Mile High Swinging Bridge was dedicated 56 years ago on September 2, 1952 by then-Governor William B. Umstead (pictured above at the ceremony at center, with his daughter, WBT Radio announcer Grady Cole on the left, and Hugh Morton on the right).
The bridge was one of several projects Morton took on during the early years of his oversight of Grandfather, designed to turn it into (according to the slogan he coined) “Carolina’s TOP scenic attraction.”
An Oct. 1, 1978 article about Morton from the Greensboro Daily News recounts the following:

The swinging bridge was one of two options when Morton decided to get visitors from the gift shop-museum parking lot to the rocky overlook. “We had to have some way to get them across, and we could either have a stationary bridge or a swinging bridge,” he said. “We decided the swinging bridge would be more fun, and would make a good conversation piece.” Some 30 percent of women visitors, and a smaller percentage of males, however, think it best not to cross the bridge.

Crossing the bridge is one thing (speaking as a “woman visitor” who has done it, in 95-mph winds, even!); building it is entirely another, as you can see in the picture below. This is NOT a job I would have taken on.

The Mile High Swinging Bridge proved not just a promotional boon for Morton, but a photographic one as well. He took many beautiful images of the bridge over the years—enveloped in mist, framed by vivid fall leaves or blooming rhododendrons, encased in rime ice. I find the (cropped) image below particularly “striking.”

Making a Difference in NC

Thus far, our student assistant David’s scanning efforts have been focused on what I call the “loose strips”—the unlabeled, unidentified masses of negatives that need to be inspected before we can decide what to do with them. (The inspecting, of course, becomes much easier when you can look at a positive on a computer screen versus a negative on a light box).
We decided recently, however, that since David is so darn good at scanning, we should probably have him work on some of the “good stuff” as well. (This term refers to Morton’s images of well-known people and events—it’s certainly not to say that the loose strips aren’t loaded with “good stuff”). So, I got David started on the images that were either considered for or used in Hugh Morton and Ed Rankin’s 1988 book, Making a Difference in North Carolina. As the book’s introduction reads:

The people, groups and events [depicted in the book] were chosen on the basis of the impact they have had, or are having, on life in North Carolina. Most of the photos have never been published before. And all have captions and text brimming with first-hand knowledge and experiences of the authors.

What could be better? Certainly a far cry from the jumble of “loose strips.” And the images themselves are beautiful. Take for example this portrait of Governor J. Melville Broughton, a cropped version of which appears on page 47 of the book (click the image to see the description):

I also love this image of the “Iron Major” Governor, R. Gregg Cherry, with a group of (Miss North Carolina?) pageant contestants. This one wasn’t used in the book, so I don’t know the details. But I do wish they still made swimsuits like these!

And then there’s that perennial Morton favorite, Luther Hodges (on crutches, below—this image wasn’t used in the book, either). That’s Grandfather Mountain in the background, and they appear to be on a golf course, so perhaps this image is somehow related to the Grandfather Golf and Country Club? Anyone know what’s wrong with Luther’s foot, or who these other men are? (Based on the IDs you lovely readers provided for this photo, I think that’s John Williams to the left of Hodges).

Serving up server space

Elizabeth’s last “Behind the Scenes” post on our file nomenclature has a flip side: “Once you name them, how do you organize those scans on the server side?”

Two weeks ago I received what I’ve kiddingly called a “cease and desist” order from our IT department. At seven minutes before closing, I learned that our “projects” drive—where we’d been storing our scans from the Morton collection (among other collections)—was full. I knew this and had already started working on the problem earlier in the day. The friendly caller from the Library IT department was nicely adamant, however, in his insistence that before I left the office that evening I had to remove at least 10 gigabytes of data, and continue the process the next day. The Morton scans had already amounted to 140 gigabytes; respectable, but not immense . . . unless you do not have the room!
The Library’s long-term storage configuration, the Digital Archive, has lots of disk space, but that server is designed for little to no alteration of files, file names, or directory structures once files get deposited there. That’s with good reason: you don’t want to be accidentally renaming, deleting, or copying over files intended for long-term storage. Our short-term storage is the projects drive, a server meant to be used as an interim holding tank for scanning projects before transferring files to the Digital Archive.
Scanning as a processing tool represents the antithesis of the long-term storage model; “in process” scans are not necessarily ready for prime time because we don’t know what many of the images depict. By scanning negatives, for example, we get to see the images to aid in identification. We also have the possibility of matching up related negatives or slides that have been separated as their relationships are rediscovered. The resultant scans, however, can set on the server for a long time before any file name or directory manipulation might take place, and that runs contrary to the purpose of the project drive.
So scanning during processing fits neither storage model. Well, where (and how) are we going to put 140 GB of data? That’s not a huge amount on the face of it, but it is only going to keep growing, so we needed a file structure that would handle that growth, and one that the IT department could accommodate on the systems side, too.
Here’s what emerged:

Morton Directory Structure

The diagram above shows the directory structure for the Morton scans. The top-level directory is P081_Morton, with five (for now) subdirectories: NTB (black-and-white negatives), NTC (color negatives), PRB (black-and-white photographs) , PRC (color photographs), and PTC (color transparencies, which are positives). Each subdirectory has a number of subdirectories that further refine the category, as do those subdirectories have additional subdirectories. The following diagram illustrates the file structure for color transparencies, showing the mounted slides at the base level:

Morton directory structure for mounted slides

An illustration showing individual scans for 35mm slides, then, looks like this:
Morton directory structure for mounted slides
On the server side, we have re-conceptualized the notion of the Digital Archive. In the long run, we may end up with a third type of storage for longer term projects with sizable and flexible storage requirements that allow us to rename files, move them around into different directories, et cetera, and then formalize them before they are moved into more permanent storage. Until then, IT is unlocking the restrictions placed on the Digital Archive to accommodate our immediate needs. (And we are not the only ones scanning lots of material!) In the final scenario, the university’s Institutional Repository will be the ultimate long-term preservation storage solution, but that is a few years in the offing. For now, we’ll be using the approach above . . . and keep on scanning!

Camera Clinic this weekend

This coming weekend (August 16-17) is the annual Grandfather Mountain Camera Clinic, founded by Morton in 1952 as a networking and educational opportunity for photojournalists—and one of the events that helped earn him the titles of “photographer’s photographer” and “the father of N.C. photojournalism education.”
From the Grandfather website: “A freelance newspaper photographer himself, Morton wanted to know more about his craft and thought other photojournalists from around the region would enjoy the opportunity to learn as well. He began by inviting nationally prominent photojournalists to come to Grandfather Mountain to share information and inspiration with their Carolina counterparts. For many years the Carolinas Press Photographers Association held its annual meeting at this event, and although the NCCPA no longer sponsors the Clinic, many of its members continue to attend faithfully.”
On a related note, two photographers have been named 2007 “Hugh Morton Photographers of the Year” by the North Carolina Press Association: (Ethan Hyman of the News & Observer and Derek Anderson of the Independent Weekly). Visit the award’s Web page to see samples of their work!

Name that file

I gave a quick “tour” of the Morton collection recently to a group of local archivists who specialize in audio-visual materials, and after explaining a bit to them about the file naming scheme we’ve adopted, they suggested I share it on the blog. WARNING: some may find this a bit dry, but hopefully it will be useful (or at least mildly interesting) to others.All the scanning David’s doing presents a number of challenges, one of which is how to name the digital files he creates. Some quick background: as I briefly explained in my post on mass digitization, we are going about scanning in a somewhat unusual manner, in that we’re beginning to scan the collection in the middle of processing it, rather than waiting until the end. We’re doing this because 1) we don’t want to wait that long to make Morton’s images available on the web, and 2) we’re hoping to use scanning as a processing tool, helping us to view negatives more easily and to bring like materials (e.g., images shot at the same event but on different film formats) back together again.

For these and other reasons, we decided to base our naming/numbering system on the format of the original item. For one thing, when you’re looking at a scanned image, you have no way to tell whether the original was a print, a negative, slide, transparency, etc.—we wanted the file name to give us this information. So, here’s an sample image and file name:

P081_NTBF3_000132_03

P081 is our collection number for the Hugh Morton
N stands for negative (this could also be “P” for positive)
T stands for transparency (this could also be “R” for reflective, e.g., a photographic print)
B stands for black & white (this could also be “C” for color)
F stands for film pack (this could also be “S” for sheet film, “R” for roll film, “P” for print, or “M” for mounted slide)
3 indicates the size of the original, in this case 3″ x 4″ (this could also be 4 for 4″x5″, 2 for 35mm, 8 for an 8″ x 10″ print, or one of the many other numeric codes we came up with to indicate size)
The six digit number is our running “lot” number to provide a unique identified for every image
The last two digit number indicates the frame number (only film packs and roll films have this)

Here’s another sample—see if you can decipher this image’s original format.

P081_PRCP8_000273

And while we’re at it, does anyone know who these gentlemen are? I recognize Gen. William Westmoreland (2nd from left), and former NC Governor James Holshouser in the middle, but I need help with the others.

We’re not far enough along in our process yet to fully judge the usefulness of this naming scheme, but it does seem that it would be most applicable to collections with very little existing organization (like the Morton). We’ll let you know how it goes. Any thoughts, ideas, suggestions?

One "golden roll"

From Elizabeth: Allow me to introduce our summer student assistant, David Meincke, the author of this post. David grew up in the small town of Hebron, Connecticut, received his BA in English from the College of William and Mary in May of 2007, and began the Masters of Library Science program here at UNC’s School of Information and Library Science (“SILS”) this summer. Since he came in with experience digitizing film, slides and photographs, we put him to work at the HR Universal Film Scanner. He surfaced from his cave long enough to write the following. Note: I suspect the images below were taken at “Singing on the Mountain.”

This is my first post on the Hugh Morton blog—up until now my work on the project has mainly been spent in a dark room with a high-powered scanner the size and shape of a Galapagos tortoise. I spend most of my time digitizing film negatives, the majority of them black and white, from various stages of Hugh Morton’s life and career.
I’ve grown accustomed to watching faces, bodies, rivers, lakes, arenas and street corners fly by on the monitor before me. The number of images in the collection is the hundreds of thousands, and it is difficult to retain anything of the image beyond the few seconds it lingers on my screen before it is sealed away on a hard drive somewhere. Occasionally, however, a “golden roll” falls out of the slim acid-free envelope, and it, for some reason, creates such a vivid impression that I have to study, stare, and tell others about it.
These pictures were taken at an event that seems to be a cross between a religious revival and a country music jamboree: an accordionist, banjo player, and a few guitarists play, while the crowd assembled around them raise their hands in exultation (and in one woman’s case, what appears to be religious ecstasy). I wonder, do any of these faces look familiar to you?

Here a boy stands, surrounded by motherly figures, and only his head is visible amid the confusion of blouses, as if he were coming up for air. Despite the crowd around him, though, he has a serene look, and his face is the only one in sharp focus as he stares into the camera.

The picture that initially caught my attention was the one below, a man with bright sunlight coming in behind him that provides a nice contrast to the picture without obscuring any details. In addition to the nice dynamism of light in the picture, I appreciate the drama that is contained in his face: his eyes, downcast and to the side, make it seem as if he’s slightly removed from the revelry around him, and the blur that envelops those around him further emphasizes his aloofness.

Before I continued the next roll of film, I wondered what the people within these photographs, especially this last one, were thinking. Had the music transported him to a different place? Were existential doubts plaguing him? Or was he considering what to have for dinner that night?
Thank you very much, and I hope you enjoyed these photographs too.
—David Meincke
UPDATE 8/13/08 from Elizabeth: See the comments on this post for a discussion of whether the above photos might have been taken at “Singing on the Mountain.” Here’s a shot that shows performers in a tent-like enclosure, and that was taken at the Sing (according to Morton’s caption on the envelope). That caption is provided below.

Bascom Lamar Lunsford, known as “Minstrel of the Appalachians,” is one of America’s foremost authorities on the folk music of the Southern mountains, shown here singing with Miss Freida English. Lunceford [sic] is from South Turkey Creek, NC. All songs at “Singing on the Mountain” are religious, but Lunceford [sic] is famous for “Good Old Mountain Dew” and other songs which he wrote.

Morton collection on UNC-TV, 7/29

Be sure to tune in to North Carolina Now, UNC-TV’s nightly news program, tomorrow (Tuesday 7/29) at 7:30pm, for a feature on our work with the Hugh Morton collection. Thanks to Rob Holliday and other folks at UNC-TV for this great publicity!
And while you’re at it, check out UNC-TV’s Biographical Conversations with Hugh Morton (watchable online).
UPDATE 8/11/08: The UNC-TV piece is available, at least temporarily, on the UNC-TV website.

Crowdsourcing IDs – another method

As a recent Boston Globe article discusses, historians, archivists, and other cultural professionals are increasingly relying on the public to help provide information and feedback about the materials in their collections. These efforts have been hugely expedited by the internet—see, for examples, Flickr collections put up by the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian, a “crowd-curated” photo exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum, and this very blog!

In addition to our online efforts, we here at the library decided to experiment with “crowdsourcing” in person. A few weeks back, we hosted an event we called a “Hugh Morton Photo Identification Party.” Hugh’s wife Julia Taylor Morton (in white top above), Bill Friday, and some other guinea pigs we felt would have specific knowledge and experience related to various areas of Morton’s work were invited. We set up some unidentified Morton prints on tables labeled “Sports,” “People,” and “Places,” pulled together a slideshow, armed a few library staff with paper and pencils, and started recording.
The result, we think, was a great success—more than 300 previously undocumented images were at least partially identified!

The award for most efficient and prolific identification has to go to the “Sports” table (shown above), where former UNC men’s basketball coach Bill Guthridge and UNC sports reporter/historian extraordinaire Fred Kiger kept our own Jason Tomberlin’s pencil flying for hours.
They identified the shooter in the Morton image below as Dante Calabria, playing for UNC against the Texas Longhorns in the Smith Center. (I haven’t yet done the research to confirm the year).

$UNC\'s Dante Calabria going up for a shot against the Texas Longhorns at the Dean Smith Center, circa 1990s$

The composition of this next Morton photo is simply amazing. The ID we got from Guthridge and Kiger was (in unknown order) Tommy Lagarde, Walter Davis, and Mitch Kupchak vs. NCSU, 1975 or 1976. Perhaps fittingly, they didn’t identify the NC State players. Can anyone help refine this description?
$UNC vs. North Carolina State men\'s basketball game, circa 1975$
These are just a few basketball-related highlights from what may be the first of (potentially) several “Morton Photo ID Parties.” We’re thinking future events could be topically based—e.g., another one just for Sports, one on Morton’s nature/scenic photography, the Azalea Festival, etc., etc.
Let us know if you have ideas, or would like to host one!

Vote for the Bodie Island Lighthouse

Every year, as part of its Reliable Lighthouse Restoration Initiative, JELD-WEN provides new windows and doors for one historic lighthouse. This year, North Carolina’s Bodie Island lighthouse (a favored photography subject of Hugh Morton’s) is one of the 12 finalists. Vote now!