Pallas Athena

[Mike B in OKlahoma]

Roman statuary of the goddess Pallas Athena, from a museum in Tunisia. I believe this was from about the 4th Century AD. The head is about ten inches from chin to the top of the cap.

Added later--To keep to the rules, I've cut down to a crop of the face details. See what y'all miss if you don't hang around here in the middle of the North American night? :-)

EOS 40D and 17-55IS
17mm
1/80th second @ f/8
ISO 800
ambient light
crop showing face details

[JoanYoung]

My goodness that is old Mike. A few years more than me though. I sometimes wonder at the way things like this have been preserved over the years. Now if only our cars would last as long!!

[rjlittlefield]

The head is about ten inches from chin to the top of the cap.

This is an interesting artifact, Mike, but this size subject is pushing the outer limits of "close-up". How about cropping in say 2X or more to show us some finer detail, with maybe an inset of the whole face to give us overall context?

--Rik

[Danny]

You always are one very interesting character in what you take and show M8t. Very interesting and what stands out for me, is the ambient lighting Mike. Very clean details and no blown highlights. A bit of an eye opener for a heavy flash user. Excellent detailed shot sir Mike.

All the best Mike.

Danny.

[Mike B in OKlahoma]

You always are one very interesting character in what you take and show M8t. Very interesting and what stands out for me, is the ambient lighting Mike. Very clean details and no blown highlights. A bit of an eye opener for a heavy flash user. Excellent detailed shot sir Mike.

All the best Mike.

Danny.

Danny, great to see you again! It occurs to me when I went back and cropped this, I forgot to use levels, so it is a bit darker and less contrasty than the original. I also am a flash addict for most of my closeup photography, especially bugs, but recently have been doing some general photography with an EOS 40D and a 17-55/2.8 IS lens. The combination lets you practically shoot in the dark handheld, as long as your subject isn't moving and you don't need much DOF! Alas, it doesn't focus particularly close, so of limited use for closeups, and macro is right out!

Regards, and drop in here more often!

[rjlittlefield]

Hmm, it seems the lady's complexion suffers a bit when one looks closely!

Mike, what type of stone is this, and what is known about the environmental conditions that it had to endure?

--Rik

[Ken Ramos]

Brings back memories of my visit to Delphi, Greece. Wish we had digital technology back then.

[beetleman]

Very interesting and different Mike.

[Mike B in OKlahoma]

Hmm, it seems the lady's complexion suffers a bit when one looks closely!

Mike, what type of stone is this, and what is known about the environmental conditions that it had to endure?

--Rik

Forthwith, my total definite knowledge about the head, a 100% crop of the museum label!



As you can see, labeling conventions and museology in Tunisia have not yet reached the standard of the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the Boston Fine Arts Museum! I estimated 4th century based on what I was told elsewhere about the area it came from.

If you'll notice the chipped areas on the statue, they are nicely white. So I suspect Ms. Athena's bad complexion is from being soaked in groundwater for 1500 years. My WAG would be that the statue is marble, but I really don't know that for sure. Some of the construction work was in limestone I believe, so that's a remote possibility. This was in the Tunis area, so it definitely wasn't dry desert conditions.