Vitor Freire and I teamed up for this assignment.  We set our white balance using the gray card given to us by Eric, made certain we were in manual mode and went to work.

We soon realized that we were unable to acquire a a single sample image which included the park’s fountain and trees that did not include an area which was either under or over exposed.   You can see the images with their respective histograms on this flash animation:
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I found myself bemoaning not being in a stage to shoot our tests; I am very comfortable lighting sets – which is why I usually like the challenge of shooting on location.  Close to despair I turned to an area of the Washington Arch to which whose face was in shadow.

You can see our test results of photographing CaMg(CO3)2 (aka dolomite)  by clicking here and letting a new window open.  The .jpgs on that page are linked to original .tiff files.

If you are curious about the title of this post, it turns out that Washington Square’s Washington Arch was fabricated from a local material called Inwood Marble.   Gneissly speaking while it itsn’t schist, it also isn’t the marble of Carrara.

I like mineralogy and geology a lot so I checked it out.

(BTW – if you didn’t know that the hanging tree was either where the fountain is now or where the arch is located, or if you didn’t know that the 9.75 acre park was once a cemetery and is built over the remains of 20,000 people, you might want to read this fascinating Wikipedia entry for even more information.)