05 July 2011

Find A Grave

Reposted from One Day at a Time.

I joined this thing called Find A Grave a while back, largely thanks to pugbug over at Gravestoned, who runs a really nice blog about gravestones and the photography thereof.

Initially, I wasn't sure how to get started. I signed up as a photo volunteer, thinking it would be a good way to get out of the house a bit and do something fun and interesting outside, as well as a nice combination of my interest in gravestone iconography and Greg's interest in photography.

Unsure how else to proceed, I finally picked one of the larger cemeteries in my vicinity and claimed as many of the photo requests for that cemetery as the system would allow (contributors are apparently limited to claiming twenty requests at a time, and there were twenty-seven for this particular cemetery). For the ones I couldn't claim, I made notes, figuring I can always claim those once I've filled the others, in the event I actually find gravestones for all of them. I now have a handy list in Excel of names, death dates, and as much location data as available for each of these individuals, and the plan is to take that list to the cemetery this weekend to find and photograph as many of them as I can. I'll fill those requests, and unclaim the rest with a note about why I wasn't successful.

If that works out, I'll try another cemetery whenever I can convince my husband to tag along with me or let me borrow the camera.

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