Fun at the Rijksmuseum

This is just too much fun to keep secret. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has undertaken a project to photograph its entire collection with high resolution photography equipment. And here's the good news: it's all online.  You can find it at https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/rijksstudio

This is only a little bit of the story. The museum wants people who access the museum collection to copy, paste, create their own collages. So, for example, I can download this image:

 

And so what?  Well, since the picture was taken with high resolution (in other words, with a fine photographic lens), I can chop this picture into little bitty pieces and put parts of it, say the hands or eyes or hat or whatever into another picture and it still looks great.

The possibilities are unlimited. You can make decals to put on your car, create a family Christmas card in the style of a 16th century Dutch family, or put a nose from some painting on your own face. So in just a couple of minutes, I took a picture of Louise that I had on my computer and pasted her face onto this woman's face. It comes out like this:

 

Isn't that a hoot? I have a whole new girl friend. Now don't go ratting on me and leave a comment on her blog that her face is on my blog in a 16th century costume. Actually, it won't matter much, because it's not going to damage our almost 50 years of marriage. I've done all the damage I could possibly do already. 

But go to this site, even if you don't think you have a creative bone in your body, and play around. It's fun, and costs nothing. You have to register, but that's free too. This is just about the best deal I've found anywhere online.  And just for fun, send me your creation (tom@tomplummer.com) and I'll post it on this blog. We'll have a little community of artists--or wannabe artists.