Friday, June 27, 2008

Guest Blogging at Shades of the Departed

I'm honored to be featured as the guest blogger at footnoteMaven's Shades of the Departed blog this morning. This photography-themed genealogy blog has been a big hit in the genea-blogging world and rightly so. fM brings her expertise as a collector of old photographs, researcher of long-departed professional photographers, and detail for source citations (hence the moniker "footnoteMaven") to this medium. Every Friday, she features a guest post from a genea-blogger sharing some aspect of photography as it relates to genealogy in the column "Friday from the Collectors."

At the 2007 Spring Seminar presented by the Eastern Washington Genealogical Society in Spokane, Washington, I was privileged to meet the Maven face to face and look forward to future opportunities to visit again. Besides her Shades blog, fM has been blogging at her namesake main site for quite some time. She hosts the monthly "Smile for the Camera" Carnival, maintains at least three other genealogy, history, and/or writing blogs for local groups in Western Washington, and is very active in the Washington State Genealogical Society.

I live in the Pacific Northwest and only four of all my hundreds of North American ancestors are buried west of the Mississippi River (one in San Antonio, Texas; one in St. Paul, Minnesota; and two in Oregon's Willamette Valley--eight hours away!). I've been blessed beyond measure by many wonderful volunteers who have taken the time to tromp through my ancestral cemeteries back East and willingly send me what is in many cases the only photographic evidence of my ancestors' lives. Very occasionally, however, a problem will occur. My post is a Miss Manners-style directive on how to address those sticky situations that can arise when you make a request of volunteer genealogy photographers to take pictures of your ancestors' tombstones. It can be found here.

No comments: