Simon Harris

Simon Harris’ biography

• 2009 – 2012: Collections Photographer and Collections Management Adviser, Freelance
• 2006 – 2009: Collections Photographer, The National Trust
• 2006 – 2007: The University of Lincoln, PGDip Conservation of Historic Objects (Distinction)
• 1996 – 2000: The University of Birmingham, BEng (Hons) Materials Science and Technology

Research interests

• Automated processing of bulk digital imagery
• The use and utilisation of open source hardware and software in the museum environment
• Automation of repetitive tasks (for example photography of many thousands of microscope slides) using off the shelf microcontroller driven hardware

References

Mitchell, E G, Kenchington, C G, Harris, S, and Wilby, P R. 2018. Revealing rangeomorph species characters using spatial analyses. Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences , 55(11) 1262-1270.

Kenchington, C G, Harris, S J, Vixseboxse, P B, Pickup, C, and Wilby, P R. 2018. The Ediacaran fossils of Charnwood Forest: shining new light on a major biological revolution. Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association ,129 (3), 264-277.

Mitchell, E G, Harris, S, Kenchington, C, Vixseboxse, P, Roberts, L, Dennis, A, Clark, C, Liu, A, and Wilby, P. 2018 The relative influence of niche versus neutral processes on Ediacaran communities. bioRxiv, 443275.

Harris, S J, and Pickup, C. 2017. Reflectance Transformation Imaging – a possible alternative to ammonium chloride coating for specimen photography. The Geological Curator , 10(8) 481-486.

Skills

• Conservation of historic objects
• Conservation treatment of geological material – pyrite oxidation, breaks and fractures, microclimates and repackaging
• Photography, digital and analogue, with cameras ranging from 35mm to Large Format
• Digital image processing using commercial and open source packages – Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, ImageMagick, GIMP
• Collections management and databases
• 2D and 3D mechanical design
• SQL database work – Microsoft Access, Oracle SQL, MySQL, PostgreSQL, InfluxDB and SQLite
• Creation of 3D models of physical objects using varied techniques including laser scanning and photogrammetry.
• Preparation and processing of 3D models in common formats (STL, OBJ, PLY) for additive manufacturing (“3D printing”). Scan based design using Geomagic.
• Simple script or programme creation using DOS command shell, Bash shell, PHP or Python
• Specification and installation of radio frequency telemetric monitoring systems, and collection of data from them

Professional association

• Member of the Geological Curators Group
• 2017 – ongoing: Charity Trustee, Geological Curators’ Group