Honey-brown sphalerite with reddish brown willemite, black franklinite, greenish grey talc, and minor dark greenish brown serpentine (at right in photo). Note fluorescence of talc. Photographed under combined 190-Watt longwave and a SuperBright shortwave. Sterling Hill Mining Museum specimen SHMM-60, ex Marian Reitenbaugh collection. Specimen size: 22 x 14 x 6 cm.
This is the same specimen (and the very same photograph) that appears on the first page of the Sterling Hill Mining Museum chapter in the recent Mineralogical Record supplement on Mineral Collections in the Northeastern U.S. As sometimes happens, the electronic and print versions of the photo are quite different: The photo is color-distorted in print, but was spot-on in the original image. The only way to prevent problems like this is to require an actual printer’s proof, on paper, before going to press with the full run. In this instance, however, for a publication with literally dozens of authors, that would have been impractical. Thus I am not complaining about the Min Rec – they did a great job overall -- but I do wish people to know that the actual photograph I took was much better than what they saw in print, and is, in fact, faithful to the actual specimen.