Dear Fellow Researchers: This is a list of tips and hints I have collated over the past number of years, as a handout for volunteers. The list grows each year...but the major items included are most helpful to anyone who may be contemplating photographing entire cemeteries...! If you are not interested...please use the *Delete* key.....and motor on. Good luck in your efforts. Bye for now................M u r r a y P l e t s c h N.E. Ontario G r a v e m a r k e r G a l l e r y http://nocgg.maddoc.net Alt email: gravemarkers@hotmail.com ************************************************ NORTHEASTERN ONTARIO GRAVE MARKER GALLERY - TIPS AND HINTS FOR PHOTOGRAPHING ALL GRAVE MARKERS IN A CEMETERY ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 1. Most gravestones traditionally face the east (rising sun). Therefore, the best time of day to get good pictures is in the morning. 2. The best kind of day for taking pictures is a when it is slightly overcast, when there are no shadows. 3. When the sun is facing you while you are taking pictures.....make sure the sun does not reach your camera lens as it will make the stone very dark and almost black. (In most cases one should not photograph an entire cemetery with the sun shining in your face.....the resulting photos will require a lot of enhancement to make them readable....!) 4. When taking photos, the first priority is to make sure you can read the inscription before you take the picture....so do not stand too far away from the stone. I usually stand about 4 feet away. If I can read the inscription and also include the entire stone on the view finder ....then I will photograph the whole stone. 5. When some stones are wet from a rainstorm....they are unreadable. So wait for a dry day. 6. Some old stones have lots of lichen on them and quite often a small whisk broom will clean off the stone enough to read through your camera lens. 7. If your camera uses the AA flashlight batteries I recommend you buy the new Metal-Hydride rechargeable batteries...which are available at Radio Shack or Staples....! They have a kit where you get the battery charger and 4 of these batteries in the package. These batteries normally take 14 hours to recharge but I see they have new chargers out now that will charge in an hour...! They do not have a memory like the older Nickel Cadmium batteries. These new batteries will last all day while you take pictures. They are expensive but pay for themselves very quickly. If you use plain old Alkaline batteries it will cost you a fortune to buy new ones all the time. 8. If your camera has a choice, please ensure you select JPEG as the preferred format for pictures. 9. Many stones have a mirror-like finish, which means you have to stand slightly to the left or right of the stone so you do not see your reflection in the stones. 10. In older cemeteries you may see stones that have toppled over. If the inscription is showing then just photograph the inscription in place. Do not try and move the stones....they weigh a ton....! 11. Some stones are inscribed on more than one side. Take photos of all sides. 12. Some stones are quite tall with inscriptions from top to bottom. If the inscriptions are unreadable for one picture then stand back and take a picture of the entire stone.....then move in and take two pictures to get all of the inscription photographed. 13. Some plots have a main stone and a bunch of footstones. In this case stand back and see if you can get the main stone and footstones in the viewfinder......then photograph the main stone and then immediately photograph the footstones. When the pictures are being processed, the relationship between stones will be obvious. 14. For older stones, where the inscription is unreadable though the camera.....I use children's white or grey sidewalk chalk and lightly swipe it across the inscription which makes it stand out for the camera. The wind and rain will clean off the chalk in a few days. Do not wipe or try brushing as it will blur the inscription. 15. When taking photos in a LARGER cemetery (over 1,000 stones) which are not divided into Blocks.....it is best to organize the cemetery in Blocks in your mind or drawn roughly on a sheet of paper. Manageable Blocks are typically around 1,000 stones...! More stones than that are awkward to process in preparation for the web site. 16. Pictures taken for viewing on a web site and computer monitor do not need to be hi-resolution to show up nice and clear. This is good for a few reasons. A camera memory chip will hold 3 times as many lo-res pictures than hi-res....! For instance a 32 meg chip will hold 324 lo-res pictures......a 64 meg chip will hold 648 lo-res pictures.....! The photo file will be stored on the web site; they use up server space which is very expensive... so economizing allows more photos on the server. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT....!!! PLEASE photograph at low resolution.....because if the pics are done at high res I will have to force them down to lo res when I process them for the web and the picture quality suffers greatly......! 17. Organizing the photos on your computer is important to make sure you do not overwrite photos you already have in the folders. I normally make a folder called the name of the cemetery. Then I make sub folders for each full chip of photos from that cemetery. If your camera keeps counting chronologically then you can just dump all your chips into the same folder as they have different file names and will not overwrite. 18. When sending the photos in bulk to someone for a web site.....do not crop or rename the files that you send....! It is much better for me to receive the pictures in raw form as they must be cropped and renamed to match other cemeteries on the web site. 19. The best way to send photos is via a CD...and when you write the CD it is just a matter of burning off your entire Cemetery folder to the new CD....! If you do not have a CD writer then about the only other way is via email attachment (groan). One must bear in mind that when sending email attachments....each message with attachments must be under 5 megs in size or some ISPs will reject them.....! 20. I now have a miniserver in place and it allows folks to use FTP mode to send me files or pick up files. Please direct any queries about this mini-server directly to me...! Conclusion: ^^^^^^^^^ It is necessary to emphasize that when photographing cemeteries and putting pictures on the Internet you are more interested in reducing the size of your photo than getting a hi-res 300 dpi photo. 1,000 photos at 50k each in size will be 5 megs space or more on the server. Experiment with your resolution settings bt taking pics of anything around the house and when your pictures are about 100 k in size that is the correct setting for doing cemeteries....!