On the 1st February I hosted a community RTI (Reflectance transformation imaging) day at Winchester Cathedral. The day was based around the introduction of this useful technique to the Cathedral guides, the Master students based in the computing research group and the lifelong learning students that have taken recent evening classes at the University. It was very much a hands on experience where groups of individuals were taken by myself, Hembo Pagi, Nicole Beale and Gareth Beale and shown how to correctly capture objects of interest. The cathedral was chosen as a suitable location to host this event, due partly to the close links that I have established through my PhD research and partly through the wealth of available objects that could be recorded.
The day began by introducing everyone to the technique through a powerpoint highlighting the recent work that research group has completed using RTI. The volunteers were then separated into manageable groups and taken to the cathedral where a range of objects were recorded, including graffiti and ledger stones. The ledger stones were of high importance to some of the guides, who after years of studying them, could still not fully read some of the inscriptions present.
Nicole and her group capturing one of the ledger stones in the cathedralMatthew and Marta capturing a RTI of some graffiti on the Gardiner ChantryHembo showing how to capture a RTI with his group
Individual snapshots of the results have been taken and can be seen below. The first image of the data presents the RTI before any manipulation of the light takes place, with the second image showing the RTI results. To see these results simply click on an interactive image of interest
