Part of the upgrading included buying new digital photography and video equipment, scanners, and printers. The staff also was expanded, with the hiring of photographer Mazen Jannoun as senior technician to join Hasan Nisr in running the daily affairs of the department. Another major step was the launching of a website (www.aub.edu.lb/~webphoto) that features an image gallery, a history of the department, and a list of its services. This project was started over a year ago, and much of the credit goes to Mazen Jannoun and Rania Haddad in Computer and Networking Services at the Medical Center for the time and effort they put into designing the site. It is soon to be expanded to include pages for students and staff to exhibit work and they also hope eventually to sell prints and digital images from the website.The department's services include preparation of educational material, as well as documentary and artistic photography. They do slide processing and duplication, the transfer of video and film to DVD and CD, high resolution digital printing, production of publication-quality images; and the scanning and printing of diagnostic x-rays and other imaging material for the Medical Center. The department is also a full-service professional photography studio that produces graduation and class pictures and documents events such as the Middle East Medical Assembly (MEMA). The staff is also working on an artistic series that focuses on the flowers of AUB and the campus environment in general. Another major service of the Photography Department is its work in digital image restoration and archiving. In December 2002, it exhibited a selection of restored images from the Moore Heritage Collection. The old glass plates, which were taken by Dr. Franklin T. Moore between 1892 and 1902, were all hand-cleaned, scanned at a high resolution, and then painstakingly restored. Most of the over 100 images involved took around 30 man-hours each to restore and the project took over a year to complete. The department's work with historical images is ongoing and it continuously receives valuable historical material to digitize and archive.A number of interesting new projects are either under way or envisioned. For instance, the department plans to document the changing face of AUB throughout the various stages of the 15-year Campus Master Plan-such as photographing the Hostler Student Center from the same vantage point every so often as construction of the building progresses. Dr. El-Sabban says he would also like to take portraits of department heads and other members of the academic and administration hierarchy, and also work on some modern images of Marquand House as well. Another idea is to create a different pictorial view of the University by taking pictures from "peculiar and unique" points of view, such as from inside the clock tower or from a rooftop outside AUB looking in on the campus. The most important thing about the Photography Department, says Dr. El-Sabban, is that it concentrates on quality, which means paying attention to detail and insisting on using the highest quality materials to produce photographs that look better and last longer. As he tells everyone, "Try our services and experience our quality work firsthand."
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