Dancer receiving finishing touches to his costume, Room 1, north wall. Parts of this scene at left and below demonstrate the datasets and field methods in use by the Bonampak Documentation Project. Color images formed the backbone of the documentation of the murals, but infrared imaging added information about line detail and the boundaries between color not clearly perceptible in visible light.

The photographer Justin Kerr took a series of medium format color transparencies covering all three rooms of the building.

David Wooddell, a photographer from National Geographic, documented the murals using 35mm infrared film. A third photographer, Jorge Perez de Lara, provided additional coverage in large format infrared film, as well as in color and 35mm infrared.

A vidicon imaging system was used with a filter that restricted response to wavelengths from the near-infrared into the mid-infrared part of the spectrum (1000­2200 nm). This sometimes created clearer images than infrared film, and a monitor allowed immediate feedback unobtainable with the use of film. Gene Ware, of the Engineering and Technology department of Brigham Young University, greatly facilitated the use of this system.

A digital camera attached to a tunable filter, here operated by Steve Booras of FARMS, was used at a few selected places on the walls to sample reflectance at 20 nm intervals across the visible and into the infrared part of the spectrum. This was done both as a test run for the design of other imaging studies and with the hope of gaining some insight into the spectra of pigments used at Bonampak.