Scan The World

Thanks to Scan The World and a contest they launched a few months ago, I recently went to Brussels, Belgium, on a scanning trip.
First of all, thanks a lot the team for this opportunity!

I chose Brussels after careful consideration: I wanted to find a city with a rich history, a place I had never visited or not visited in ages, and a place that would help complete the Scan the World collection.

I stayed 3 days and a half on site, and I visited various locations: the “Grand-Place”, a UNESCO World Heritage Site which is the main historical town square with lots of old buildings, the Art & History Museum, the Museum of Natural Sciences, the neighbourhood of Sablon which features many interesting statues.
I was able to scan several dozens of artifacts and locations, which will be uploaded on Scan The World under CC-BY-NC-SA licence: feel free to download them!

Here are a few tips & tricks, should you want to plan your own scanning trip:

• Come prepared: for a short trip like this, preparing most of the scans in advance is a good idea and will help you not to waste time. Making a list of things you want to scan will help you pinpoint the right location for your hotel, and checking where museums or monuments are located will help you avoid spending too much time in the bus or in the subway. For example, I chose to go to the Museum of Natural Sciences and the neighbourhood of Sablon on the same day because they were located alongside the same bus line.
  Wikipedia, search engines, Google Street View and Flickr are your friends: they will help you learn more about a location. Is this statue in the public domain? What is the location of this monument like, and which lens do I need? What does this museum looks like, and what can be found inside it apart from the most known artifacts? Are there any interesting statues or buildings near the area I already plan to visit?

• Narrow down your targets: I could have spent many more days in Brussels scanning more statues, museums, monuments. But when time is limited, you have to make sacrifices. My strategy was to scan a wide range of subjects, to give an “overview” of what can be found in the city. Which is why I scanned both big houses and small artifacts items museum, ancient artifacts and more recent creations.

• Know your gear: this is especially true in museums, where low light means there is a trade off between high ISO (and therefore noisy pictures), shutter speed, depth of field. Knowing how far you can push a setting while keeping usable data is very helpful. The secret, of course, is practice.

• Be prepared to improvise: a closed museum, out of date information on the internet that mislead you, bad weather? A backup plan might be needed. This can also happen on location when you stumble upon something you didn’t plan to shoot.
  As an example, I was planning to scan a sculpture next to the Grand Place, but could not due to the high number of tourists passing by and blocking the view. Just above it are three sculpted plaques related to the sculpture, too high up for people to block the view: I therefore decided to scan these instead.
  Another example: after I missed the bus, and while waiting for the next one, I took this opportunity to scan a nearby statue.

• Bring more SD cards than needed: On day two, it became clear that I was shooting more pictures than expected. I was initially planning to use a useful safety feature from my camera that allows me to save picture on two SD cards at the same time, but this would have halved the total storage capacity: I chose to de-activate it.

• Have fun! Unless this is a professional shoot, don’t forget you’re here to enjoy the city, monuments and museum: take some time to wander around, eat local food, learn about the location.

To check out the scans I did in Brussels, head over to Scan The World. Some are already online, and many more will be uploaded in the days and weeks to come.