I have just finished uploading approximately 4600 images of mineral specimens that I took mostly between 1971 and 1980. When I got my first good camera, a Nikon, which I bought for the primary purpose of taking pictures of fine mineral specimens. As time passed I wore that camera out to the point where the lenses rattles in the bayonet mount and I had to move on to a second and eventually a third one. I took the pictures primarily not those in my own collection but of the best specimens I could get my hands on in other collections. The reason for this is that I could never hope to own most of the really good specimens, but reasoned that perhaps I could get pictures of them. As it turned out I could get my hands on quite a lot of them.

Here is a list of the collections that I took pictures of during the time I was active in photography. I made an effort not to take pictures of everything, but only of those specimens I considered to be the best they had. Many of the specimens, especially in the private collections are no longer with the collectors who collected them, but have been sold to other collectors or are now in museums. In some cases the photography was extensive and in other cases not many pictures were taken. In some cases, the collectors and museums went on to add extensively to their holdings and many of those things I did not photograph.

Institutional Collections
Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia (Collection of William Vaux) [Key word= Academy]
Australian Museum in Sidney, Australia
British Museum of Natural History
Bryn Mawr College in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania (Collection of George Vaux)
California Institute of Technology
Canadian National Museum, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Geological Survey of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario
Harvard University
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Smithsonian Institute, Museum of Natural History
University of Paris (Sorbonne)
Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, USA
Yale University

Private Collections
Bandy Mark
Baudin Bernard
Cannon Bart
Albert Chapman
Currier Rock
Gaines Richard
Gerstmann Ewald
Harshbarger Kieth
Hauck Richard
Holloway George
Key Charles
Kosnar Richard
Landers Lew & Maycut Gary
Larson Bill
McGuinness Al
Minette Jim
Montgomery Arthur
Pinch Bill
Pohl Demetrius
Robertson Kay
Romero Miguel
Sinkankas John
Sklar Milton
Spertini Francisco
Stentz Carl
Swoboda Edward
Weidhaas Ernest
Wilber David
Yedlin Neil
And quite a few others.

If you would like to see the specimens I took pictures of in those various collections, click on the Search Pages tab here in the main menu here on Mindat and click on the Search for Photos menu choice. Then in the Keywords in Description field, type in the name of the institution or collector and click on the Search button at the bottom. Almost immediately you will be presented with pictures of specimens from that collection. In some cases there will be more images from that collection than the ones I took , but it is easy to spot my pictures (almost always those of superior quality) by the little one inch marker at the bottom of the image.

I spent two full weeks in the British Museum of Natural History and got pictures of all the good things in the horizontal display cases but not of anything in the wall cases because of the difficulty of access. Near the end of that shoot they showed me selected things from the drawers like their amazing slip covered Russia topaz crystals, the great Chilean Proustite and a few amazing things from the Ashcroft and other collections. It was a rare privilege and one that has always endeared the British museum and its staff to me. At the Smithsonian I was not able to take pictures of things in the display cases in the main gallery, but I was given full access to the “blue room” and the banks of drawers that held the bulk of the collection. There were so many find things that I did not feel deprived of not being able to get into the main display cases.

I started out taking pictures of a few of my own and then moved on to those in the collections of a few friends and I eventually got the nerve to ask collectors like Arthur Montgomery if I could take pictures of some of his specimens and then on to museums like Yale, Harvard, the Smithsonian etc. All my pictures were of 35mm format and I always sent one of the good originals to those who let me photograph their specimens. Eventually I was welcomed at all the museums and private collections with the exception of the American Museum of Natural History and Dick Bideaux. The American said they had a policy of charging $100 for each picture they let a photographer from outside the museum take, and Dick Bideaux wanted a percentage of anything I happened to sell the pictures for and I decided I really didn’t want to be bothered to keep track of something like that. Initially I had hoped that I could eventually sell some of the pictures to recover the costs of film, camera, travel, but that never came to pass. I did to sell a few, but it never did more that pay for a slug of film that was used in other projects. Some of my pictures did end up in and Audubon guide to minerals and in one of Kodak’s Here’s How To book/pamphlet. Perhaps I could have made a go of it if I had persisted and learned hot to take better photos, but I got involved in running around the world to specimen producing localities and running my own mineral business. looking back on this time of my life I realize this was my university training in mineral specimens. Handling thousands of fine mineral specimens is about the few ways you can learn about them. This process also eventually enables me to trade for some fine specimens for my collection that would have been difficult or very expensive to obtain in any other way. It also allowed me to make contacts and friends that have lasted me a lifetime.

In most of the pictures I have added to Mindat's galleries I have indicated where the specimen was when I took the picture. Sometimes I sort of abbreviate this attribution like R. Kosnar specimen. This usually indicates that it was in a dealers inventory. In other cases I say say something like the specimen is from the collection of Arthur Montgomery. In this way I have made a distinction between dealer specimens and specimens that were in the collection of a collector. Sometimes the collector was a dealer, so the distinction is somtimes ambiguous.

The lighting I used was an electronic flash and the whole outfit, camera, lights and all fit in a small suitcase with the exception of velvet backgrounds which I carried wrapped around a wooden dowel inside a round cardboard tube. The object was mostly encyclopedic and I was not all that concerned with details of lighting that are employed by really good photographers who know their stuff. As I went along I learned things and my pictures got better, but they never reached the quality, except by occasional luck of those taken by people like the Van Peldts or Jeff Scoville. In most cases I used a one inch marker ruled at one cm in all my pictures to lend scale to the specimens in the pictures. Initially it was a simple one inch snip of in insulation covered copper wire which quickly got changed out to thin rectangular markers made of brass and those morphed quickly to those of rectangular cross section polished then of matt finish to those of triangular cross section with a 1 cm rule on them. When the little marker got a little too scratched up and dull, a quick sanding with fine sand paper would make it look nice again.
[Rock Currier 2010]