Hi Mary - I applaud your willingness to give back to the genealogy community. :-) I've been a volunteer with Find A Grave project for a year & a half, and relish visiting beautiful cemeteries in rural areas of the Midwest. Whenever I visit a cemetery to take a photo of one of my ancestor's gravestones, I check the cemetery's list of interments & online memorials at the Find A Grave web site, and for any online memorials that lack gravestone photos or that have unclaimed photo requests, I take photographs of these as well. Here are some techniques I've found useful: In most cases I like to crouch so I'm taking a photo of the stone straight on, instead of from a height. The exception to this is when a stone has a highly reflective surface and reflects my image. In this case, I might find it necessary to step further away from the stone, or take the photo from an angle above or to the side of the stone. I use photo editing software to edit & crop photos when I get home, but I can save myself the effort if I make sure my photos are aligned horizontally along either the bottom or the top of the photo. I bring a whisk broom to clear away any grass clippings, a small garden clipper to trim long grass from around the stone, and a soft rag with which to clean away any "schmutz" like bird droppings from the stone. If I take photos during the winter, I also bring a push broom to clear snow away from stones which are flush to the ground. A technique I learned from the Central Missouri Cemeteries: Cemetery Photography web page http://cemeteries.missouri.org/Photo.html is to bring a light-weight wall mirror so I can reflect light on any stones that are cast into shadow by the angle of the sun or by vegetation. I just found this web page which looks like it has lots of good details too: Cemetery & Headstone Photography: The StonePics Method at http://www.stonepics.com/newfoundland_cemeteries/method.htm Another web page offering info on photographing gravestones is Tips for Photographing Gravestones at http://www.genealogy.com/genealogy/64_gravestones.html Best wishes & I hope you enjoy using your new camera! Joy Joy Schwarz http://del.icio.us/freude On 7/4/07, Arthur Sloan <david.sloan@sbcglobal.net> wrote: > We recently bought a new digital camera and are > wanting to make pictures of headstones for our > records. Hopefully, we'll get proficient enough to > make pictures of stones for others as RAGK. My > question of the list is: What would be some hints, > suggestions, cautions, things TO do as well as NOT to > do, etc. Are there those of you who have made such > pictures with really good results as well as not so > good results? We are wanting to "give back" to the > public some of the help that has been given us through > the years with our genealogy and thought this would be > appropriate. Eager to hear from you. > Mary (Wallace)Sloan @ > david.sloan@sbcglobal.net