Michelle Brown.

01/23/2017

Mentor Interview Transcript

(MV: Michelle Brown, MB: Mark Buchholz)

MV: Could you please introduce yourself?

MB: My name is Mark Buchholz. I am the digital asset imaging specialist here at Balboa Park
Online Collaborative. Ive been here for seven months now. I moved here from Miami wherew
I was working in the same field for approximately ten years.

MV: Thats quite a bit of time!

MB: Yup, so I originally got started in this field because, I had taken a job for a grant based
project at the university. That was essentially digitizing the slide libraries of the art history and
architecture programs. The university really wanted to get away from using physical slides and
so they transitioned to digitizing the slides as a teaching collection. Which would then use a
platform called art store, which is I belive funded by mown foundation. So thats how I initially
got involved. Eventually I was able to find a full time position with the university and I was
their digital production manager for six or seven years after the grand based project ended.

MV: You moved up pretty quickly.

MB: Yes.

MV: Where did you go to college?

MB: I actually attended the University of Miami. So I did the first few semesters full time and
then when I was working at the university I did part time, while I was working full time. That
was a good experience because it allowed me to focus more. Although it took longer, in terms of
calendar years, it allowed me to focus more on each class and eventually do better.

MV: Which is more important, I believe.

MB: More important to me was that I graduated with zero student debt.

MV: Thats fantastic.

MB: Yes, because of the universities tuition remission program.

MV: Thats neat. Why did you decide to go to the University of Miami?

MB: It was there.

MV: Okay, so where you raised there?

MB: Yes, I was born in New York but we moved down to Miami when I was five. So Im
basically a native, a Florida native and I mean the University of Miami is a good school.
Although them charging private university tuition I have issues. Lets just say there are issues
with higher education these days. So I dont know that if I were to make the same decision now
I may have decided to go to Florida International University which is the public university in
Miami. Instead of paying the private school tuition but then again because I was receiving the
tuition remission benefit at UM because I was working there, it was free for me.

MV: But you were also working for them, it paid off. Did you know what you wanted to do in
college?

MB: No, I was one of those people who had a really hard time figuring out what I wanted to do
with my life. One of the guidance councilors actually said something that stuck with me for a
while, she said Its unreasonable for us to expect for young people at the age of eighteen or
twenty to know what they want to do for the next forty years of their life. I had switched
majors a few times. I originally went to school because I thought I wanted to be an English
teacher. I was majoring in secondary education and stuff like that but I eventually figured out
that the analytical deconstruction of literature just was not what I enjoyed about reading and
literature. I had a hard time kind of figuring out what I wanted to do. Once I started working for
the university and going to school part time I decided well, since the classes are free now I can
kind of be more experimental with what I want to take and so I ended up taking a photography
course and really fell in love with it. The idea that being an image maker had always really
appealed to me but Im not exceptionally good at drawing, Im okay. The idea of rendering an
image through a photographic process as opposed to a drawing or painting process is just allows
me to achieve that goal a lot easier.

MV: So did you fall in love with photography when you took that class or did you know that
you really loved photography beforehand?

MB: So I kind of had a passing interest in it, for that. Outside of taking a university level course
I just did not have enough access to enough information and the information was not structured
enough. Again, it was basically limited to Google searches and a lot of times the information
that you get on photo blogs are either way too advanced or either way too basic just kind of
guidelines. The idea of taking a structured approach as you would in any sort of curriculum
really helped me in that on top of being able to develop my own film. You know process films in
a dark room that was a really foundational experience for me. Even moving across to the digital
side of things you get to learn where these tools in Photoshop come from. The dodge and burn
tools because those where the old dark processes.

MV: Now going back to your career, what inspired you to pursue the career would be I guess
would be having that job opportunity at your university correct?

MB: Yes, I mean initially I started working in this field for the sake of a paycheck but I think the
idea of the detail oriented nature of the work, the fact that it can be a bit repetitive is kind of
comforting to me. That you are, there is an element of craftsmanship in making archival images
because you are aspiring to attain the highest possible quality image from a technical standpoint.
Not necessarily from an artistic or creative standpoint its like making a table. After a certain
point a table just needs to have four legs and a sturdy surface but to achieve the best quality table
is usually what a craftsman tries to achieve.

MV: To dig in a little bit deeper, what do you like most about your work?

MB: Well, again Im probably going to fall back on the element of craftsmanship again but I
also like a lot of the fun materials that come across my desk and these kind of have a touch stone
into the world of history and art history. So, I digitized letter from Thomas Jefferson and Ive
digitized some of the older photographic processes, we have digitize artist books where you
know they present certain challenges just in the way that they are constructed. One of the books
was in the shape of a three dimensional shaped pyramid. With hieroglyphics murals on the
inside, so that was a challenge to try to capture all the relevant information about the object.
Then, you know just trying to present those digital images in a way that is A makes sense to the
viewer and B, is hopefully enjoyable and being able to expose those things to the world. The
other thing that I really like is that it is hard to kind of be evil with this kind of work.

MV: In what sense?

MB: I dont know there are a lot of industries out there that you could work for and make a good
living you know, have a comfortable paycheck and stuff like that but maybe they dont make you
feel very good about yourself working for them. I was offered a job in the health care industry at
one point but the health care industry has its own issues. I mean even, I mentioned that higher
education may have its issues as well but the idea of supporting researchers at a larger and at a
larger level supporting the spread of knowledge I think is a worthwhile goal.

MV: That also connects into what you believe is most rewarding about your job.

MB: Yes.

MV: What is most challenging about your job? I have a feeling I can guess a little bit about this
but go ahead.

MB: Yes well, let me hear your guess first.

MV: Would it be for example: rescanning and like you said before organizing things and
keeping track of everything.

MB: That is to a certain extent the trick. Most challenging I think a lot of the challenges I
confront the most are sort of the self imposed right? The idea of making things as efficient as
possible, building those work flows so that youre going to minimize mistakes, youre going to
get high quality images. Then that you know you are going to do it in a way that is usable not
just our department but for other departments as well, other institutions. Also learning what
others in the field are doing thats part of the biggest challenged, just trying to keep up with other
institutions, learning what other people are doing and trying not to be overwhelmed by all the
information that out there.
MV: Which I can imagine there is quite a bit in this field. My next question would have been
what did you want to be when you were growing up? Which was, if I remember correctly a drag
race car driver or a teacher?

MB: Well not drag race car driver but road racing but that was an ambition at one point. I think
as I explained earlier, it was one of two things to get into racing. Someone who know who can
get you involved or you need lots and lots of expendable income. Neither of which I had. But
like I said for the first part of my college career I was originally going to be a teacher at probably
at the secondary level or the college level. I became kind of disillusioned with that so I had a
few months there where I really was not sure what I wanted to do and it was like I was paying all
this money to go to a school where I didnt really know if that was for me. So I had kind of this
existential crisis until I started working there and I found photography it helped that I also had
really good teachers at the time. I can imagine how if Id had just another ward TA who was just
not just trying to make it through the work day, how it wouldnt have resonated so strongly with
me so strongly. Luckily my intro photography professor was really passionate about the subject.
He was a working artist as well, he still is. I went to a show of his not too long ago. Does that
answer the question more or less?

MV: Yes it does. If I were to pursue this career in the future, what are some tips you could give
me or anyone else who were to pursue this career?

MB: So when Im looking to hire technicians.. Essentially the entry level position is a
scanning technician, kind of what youve been doing. When Im looking for technicians to hire
Im looking for experience with digital imaging. A lot of times that does mean photography but
the danger there is that a creative photographer isnt or doesnt need to be as technically versed
in the ones that go into the ones that go into making an image that a scanning technician can. So
yeah, Im looking for a technical expertise not just the idea of the creativity associated with
being a photographer but then I am also looking for somebody who is detail oriented and who
handles boredom well because like I said the work is repetitive and who can multitask or be able
to sustain repetitive work without making mistakes.

MV: Develop constant work flow.

MB: For like a non-entry level position, you know obviously, we would be looking for
something that is kind of like extrapolating there from that scanning technician position. Where
you have a good grasp of the basic mechanics and then also taking into account the idea of more
advanced photographic practices so photographing 3D objects from a technical capture
standpoint. And you know over sized objects that wont fit on a flatbed scanner or on the book
scanner that we have here. Trying to think, trying to essentially apply the concepts to larger and
more complex problems of digitizing. Say you have to digitize a quilt. Whats the idea behind
the quilt? Do you need to capture details of each tile or do you need to capture the whole thing?
Do you need both? Is there important information on the reverse? What conservation issues
might there be with photographing it? Is it sensitive to like flash bulbs? This whole idea is kind
of like a conservation photography kind of process. Its not always photography what people
think of usually but it helps to know to be very comfortable in all kinds of photography.
MV: Also keeping in mind all those different aspects that go into digitizing and preserving the
object or the artifact.

MB: Another good thing to have is there is another kind of separate field called digital
preservation that looks at the preservation of digital objects. But its good to have some
experience in that field because you know you want to make sure that your creating these digital
files to last for a long time, you know you want to be able to open these images fifty or a hundred
years time which we dont even know which operating system they are going to be running on.
So, that would be a good thing to read up on, I know there is a good number of books and
articles online. I went to a workshop at UNC Chappell hill at one point, so there are a lot of
professional resources surrounding digital preservation, which comes in handy a lot in doing this
kind of work.

MV: Thank you for the tips! What regrets do you have or would you have changed about going
into this profession?

MB: I think what I would have tried to do is I would have liked to have discovered some more
professional development opportunities early on. One of the kind of down sides to this field is
that there is no real kind of graduate program for it. So you know, you can do an undergraduate
degree in photography or digital imaging but after that point I was considering grad school for a
while a lot of people recommend the master of library sciences degree but again that isnt
necessarily targeted towards this kind of image making profession or digital asset creation
profession. The MLS will basically give you a knowledge on how to structure information so
that its most easily accessible but there is no like cultural heritage digitization masters program.

MV: Okay. Mark thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview with me and
sharing your profession with me!