Images

All of the images of wrappers and the ball in this site, up until September 7, 1997, were created by placing the actual items directly on the bed of a scanner. My thanks go to Dani Maidman for doing those scans and subsequent minor image processing for me. As you can probably tell from the fact that new mug shots of the ball do not have transparent backgrounds, Dani left my previous employer before I did.

Actually, depending on what you consider an image of the ball, not all of those early images were scanned. From May to September of 1997, I did not have a means for photographing the ball. That is because I had to leave the scanner behind at a previous workplace (since it is theirs), and the ball finally got a camera in September. So that I could still provide data points in the growth chart during that period, I created a ray traced image of a foil ball, and inserted it, scaled appropriately, in the chart, overlaid with the words "Image Unavailable".

The images in the navigation bar were also ray traced.

Now that the ball has a camera, it is once again possible to create current images of it. The first such image is the mug shot for the September 8, 1997 data point in the growth chart. I was in a hurry to snap that one since a new photo was so long overdue. I have since built such a jig from PVC pipe and some 1/4-20 threaded fasteners. Lighting remains problematic as direct lighting produces glare and indirect lighting requires long exposure times.


Home
Chronicle
Growth Chart
Contributions
Feedback
Frames