I have found that waiting for someone else to get genealogy information online is a long
lonely wait. In the last 3 weeks, I have taken 2,600 digital photos of tombstones in the
northern half of Chippewa County, MN. It takes about 250 photos per hour. Some need to
be retaken. Some need manually reading then adding the information to the side of the
tombstone in the photos. I will continue taking pics until the snow falls. Then I am
spending the winter going through each photo, entering data in Excel, using Excel to
generate indexes and html coding.
This weekend it rained all day Sat and most of Sunday was volunteering to pick grapes from
a nearby vineyard. And I spent early Sat photographing (one hour, 15 mins) a cemetery in
Bunde, MN only to find out I photographed a cemetery in Roseland, MN in Kandiyohi County.
And Sunday evening I managed to photograph half of Zion Lutheran cemetery NW of Watson,
MN. I have a Canon Powershot with 128 meg memory card which seems to hold about 300 small
pics even though it advertises over 600. I use rechargeable batteries.
Slightly funny story, I started Big Bend Lutheran with my grandfathers site and finished
the ones to the north and east of Ray Kolstad. I came back to the row in front of grandpa
and five photos later the camera turns off by itself and would turn on then off
repeatedly. I glanced at grandpa's headstone...I know he was up there laughing. The
camera works fine now.
2,600 small (640x480) digital pics take about 650 meg on my hard drive. I used a zigzag
movement by row so photos that need more work can be easily identified. I print out my
index by the order of the picture taking and I can see on my list which ones had missing
information. And I will leave room to mark down which row.
I want to thank everyone for time spent helping others on their family tree. I have
Roseland, MN (Kandiyohi) cemetery photos that I will process. And I have a tiny cemetery
for Lac Qui Parle County located 1 mile SW of Lac Qui Parle Village. Email me direct if
interested. MNGenWeb(a)aol.com
Mike Andrews, ASC
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