Processes, Tasks, and Procedures (Zuhah)

The procedures that we do in the lab are mostly to record and document that we have the actual fossils. The procedures that we learned were taking stack photos, 3D scanning, labeling fossils, cataloging fossils, rehousing them, and putting them away.
Stack photos seem complicated when you first try it, but it is not as hard as it seems. First you take a picture with a color key and scale by themselves to show which lighting and scales you used. Then you place the object you want to photograph along with the scale. Zoom in with the camera to get the object in frame. You then have to find the highest point on the fossil, which you do by just looking at them and finding the topmost piece. You select that point and focus the camera so the highest point is clearly in focus. Set that as the start point and focus the camera until it is slightly out of focus. Set that at the end point and run the scan. You will get a bunch of pictures saved in your files. Drag them all into a peogram (I do not remember the name of it) and it will blend the photos so you get one perfectly focused photo with no blur on the fossil. You then document which color key you were using and who took the photo.