Every year after a trip to NS I return home with many, many cemetery headstone pictures. By "many" I mean literally hundreds, often over 1,000. A lot of actual work goes into all of this, I often wonder if people realize exactly what's involved. I know I didn't when I first started this project. I figured hey, I'll just pop out to a few cemeteries, take a few pics of stones, no big deal. That first time turned into taking pictures of ALL the stones in 13 cemeteries.
Over time I figured out that the time of day needs to be taken into consideration when photographing certain cemeteries, certain stones. Some stone materials don't photograph well in bright sunlight, others aren't great in shadows. It's nearly impossible to go to any given cemetery and get perfectly fantastic shots of every single stone the first time out ... there are always some that have issues. I am getting better at narrowing my original photo to the stone and just the stone ... the less cropping I have to do later, the better. And I've learned to get a picture of the cemetery sign before I start doing the stones, even if I'm just popping in for updated shots or scouting for new stones. I used to think "Oh, I'll remember I did that stone at this cemetery". No, I won't. There are just too many to remember exactly where each one was. So a shot of the cemetery sign then the stones within it, another sign, more pictures, makes it so much easier to figure out what goes where. Live and learn. Once a cemetery is done, it's still not actually done. Every time I'm there I revisit all the ones I've previously done to check for updated or new stones. Plus some cemeteries could have done maintenance work to clean up old stones, which is a great opportunity to get a clearer picture.
The flour will be a must-have from now on. I'm going to have to experiment with darker concoctions to use on the unreadable light stones like Louisa Cook. I know her name, and where she lies, who she's among, whose plot she's in, so I can guess who she was, but without being able to read the actual stone info it's pretty much all guesswork. This one has been edited on the computer to try to better define what's etched on it, but it's still not very legible. She's a mystery to me, that Louisa, but I'll figure her out in time.
I keep a copy of all my cemetery pics on my home pc and on a memory stick so I have them with me no matter where I am. That way I can use them when I'm away in NS, or at the library, or wherever. Plus, a backup is always good to have just in case. Once the photos are all uploaded from the camera and my phone they have to be cropped and sometimes fiddled around with to make them brighter or more easy to read, then renamed from the image number to the actual names on each stone. Yep, every. single. one. Each is saved in a folder named for that particular cemetery. I have done about 28 cemeteries now, some aren't yet finished being cropped and renamed from my latest visit.
I maintain a few different trees on Ancestry, but my main one is A Patch of Gray, my original tree in my Search for Capt Jesse Gray. It quickly spread out to tens of thousands of entries, demonstrating to me how we really are all related, so I decided to make the Yarmouth County, NS tree. So now I try to use A Patch of Gray for stuff more closely related to me, and everyone else goes in the Yarmouth County one. Once the stone photos are all renamed and ready to use I head to Findagrave.com. Some cemeteries are already started or done or partially done on there, some I've done completely myself.
Findagrave is great if all you're doing is looking for someone that has already been documented. You find your person, and if it's done well it's got the photo of the stone, maybe even a photo of the person, with links to their parents, spouse, children, etc. Getting all that information in there is a mammoth task. Here's where my multi-screen computer system at home comes in super handy. I have 3 screens and I use them all, with a couple of Findagrave windows open, plus Ancestry, census, NS Vital Statistics, and other cemetery registries. With one stone entry on Findagrave I have to enter the person's full name, date and place of birth and death, then add the photo, then edit the entry to add parents and spouses. If it's a relatively recent death (like within the last 10 years) I also look online to see if there's an obituary. This helps out a lot in figuring out relations, often there's a photo of the person, and I also copy the obituary to the Findagrave page. There's no quick and easy drag/drop way to do this, it all has to be done manually and it's SO incredibly time-consuming, but I get such a sense of satisfaction when I finish up a family and can compare it to Ancestry and see that everyone is there and linked up properly.
When I'm doing a tree that has already been entered or started by someone else I tend to get a bit annoyed because it's rare that they've been as thorough as they could/should be. Often the page is just the name and year of birth and death. No exact dates (that's why I keep the NS vital stats open, so I can find these nitty gritty details) or places, and rarely are they connected to the rest of their family. I appreciate the effort, but like I always say, any job worth doing is worth doing well. I hate to see someone half-ass it, then take credit for the "wonderful" job they did after I've had to go in and do all the actual work. It's kind of like those people that take a picture with a bazillion filters to make it pop and sparkle, then post it for all to see and people oooh and aaah like they're some kind of fantastic photographer. Sorry people, give the credit to photoshop.
As each photo is entered on Findagrave I also add them to the correlating profile on Ancestry. My trees are public, so anyone can see them and have the photos ... that's why I'm doing it, after all. Why take all these pictures of other peoples' family stones if I'm not going to share with them?
So this whole adventure started with a "few" photos in a couple of cemeteries and has exploded into thousands of photos in many cemeteries. I foolishly started out just taking pictures with my phone ... ohhh so silly, no phone has that much room LOL Now after doing this for a few years I have cemetery gear that goes with me to every one. This includes my actual camera (with 2 32gig memory cards), a notebook, a tablet (paper, not computer, though my other tablet may be added in the future), pens and pencils, a good stick (for scraping off lichen - sorry Dad, but I need to read the stones), a small bag of flour (next trip there'll also be something for the light stones), a rag to wipe off dirt or excess flour, moist wipes, and rubber boots. I made a bag to carry all my stuff in (it's reversible, pockets inside and out) but I may have to make a bigger bag ... my gear just keeps increasing as I discover new obstacles in my photo-taking.
It may sound like I'm complaining about all the work it takes to do all of this, but believe me when I say I'm not at all ... I truly love it. I love the cemeteries, the older the better. I love walking among the stones and feeling the history that surrounds them. I love the feeling of a job well done when I've got everyone all linked up and documented. And it's not something that I have to worry about what I'll do when it's done, because it'll literally never be really done. I'm not looking for thanks or praise for the work either, though it is very labour intensive, I'm happy to do it and love it when I see a message on ancestry that someone has benefited from it, especially people that live far away and want to know about their people. And I love a good mystery ... like my friend Louisa Cook mentioned above. If you have a brick wall, or someone you can't figure out and they're buried in Yarmouth County, I will do whatever I can to help figure it out.
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