Grave images - Collecting dead relatives (and sometimes a live cousin)

Home    Search    Print    Login   

1. Why take the images in the first place? Grave images can help further your knowledge of the family. From additional death dates, through to names of spouses and children, as well as additional relatives buried in close proximity. An excellent example is the trip my family & I did on 15/16 September 2007. We took a LOT of images over 2 full days, and so far, with less than 50% of the images sorted, we found about 30 additional burials that I had no details on, and a further 30 or more where I was able to gain additional information from the headstone. I still have many hundreds of images to sort out, so that number is likely to rise.
   
   
2. How many images will you take? If you are taking digital images, there's a rule of thumb I use. If I expect to take 30 images, have enough storage for twice that at least. I usually work on a 10:1 ratio, but I tend to go a little overboard when it comes to images. If you take photographs of all the names that sound familiar, depending on the size of your family tree, that list can stretch to hundreds of surnames, and these are often in addition to the ones that you know are buried in the particular cemetery.
   
   
3. Don't be afraid to take pictures. Take a list, but if you are shooting digital images, if a name sounds familiar, take a picture and sort it out later. You can drive from 10 mins to 10 hours to get to a cemetery, so why skimp on images, especially when they are effectively free? If I have a name, say "John Smith" at a cemetery, and when I find that person there are 8 other Smiths around it, take images of them – they could be children, brothers, parents or other close relations you did not know about, or did not have birth or death details for.
   
   If I have a name that "rings a bell", then I will take an image of that & if I gain 1 or 2 more deaths by doing this, then its well worth it. In my experience probably somewhere between 5 & 10% of the extra graves turn out to be related.
   
   Sometimes I will get to a cemetery where I might have 20 burials to find that there are only 100 graves, so I photograph EVERY headstone. It's surprising how often I end up with a number of extra deaths I did not know about!
   
   
4. Get a decent camera, and spare batteries for it, as you don't want to run out of storage or batteries when away from home. If you have a laptop then take it along & store the images from "full" cards on it. I also suggest a second battery, or one that takes AA or AAA batteries.
   
   I have gone from film to a 1MP digital camera, then 2MP, 6MP, 9MP and my new baby is a 10.2MP digital SLR with all the bells & whistles. The film and 1MP images are still used on the website, but they are slowly being replaced with more up to date images taken with the new cameras as I re-visit the cemeteries. Over the past few weeks I have updated images for Bedgerebong, Eugowra, Condobolin & Forbes cemeteries and when the images go online in the next few weeks many users will see a huge improvement in the images.
   
   When it comes to AA and AAA batteries there are 3 options.
   
   •    Alkaline batteries, which last anywhere from 1 to a few hundred shots depending on the camera. Digital cameras draw a lot of current, and this causes Alkaline batteries to fail very quickly.
   •    Nickel Metal Hydride, Ni-MH batteries. These are available at your local camera store, supermarket or electronics store, and range from $5 to $20 for a pack of 4. Add $20 for a charger if you don’t have one. A 2600mA set can power most cameras for many hundreds of photographs, and they cost only a few cents to recharge.
   •    Low-Self Discharge Ni-Mh batteries like the Sanyo Eneloop's. These are almost identical to normal Ni-Mh batteries except that over time they wont go flat by themselves. Normal Ni-Mh batteries can "self-discharge" from 1 to 10% per day! So after a week your full charged battery can be 90%, down to almost flat – not nice when you want to go take pictures. The low discharge batteries say that after 12 months  70% or more  of the charge will still be available, and considering that after 6 months almost all normal Ni-Mh batteries will be totally flat, that's pretty good. The price ranges a bit, but expect to pay $20 to $28 for a pack of 4, and you can charge them in any Ni-Mh charger.
   
   
5. If you are going to take a lot of digital images then you may have to think about how you are going to store them. For instance the images taken over the last trip totalled nearly 6GB (yes 6,000MB) which is about 8 CD's or 2 DVD's worth of grave photographs! I burn to DVD as soon as I have completed sorting, with one copy of the DVD being stored at work & one in the shed at home, plus the images also stay on my HDD of the main PC in the home. At a guess I probably have something along the lines of 40GB worth of digital images (about 25% are grave images) so you need a decent amount of drive space, or some form of reliable storage to keep the images safe.
   
   
6. Technique. Well first you turn the camera on, point it at the grave and press the little button, but alas it’s not always that easy. You often have to move items away from the headstones so you can read them. If that’s not possible, then a normal image can be taken, and then a second one at a steep angle so you can read the "hidden info" behind flowers or fixtures.
   
   Old headstones, or those made out of highly polished materials are also often hard to read, and I have seen (and tried) many different ways to get better images. Chalk dust lightly rubbed over the front can often be enough to allow you to read the graves – I have seen one couple that had a small hessian bag of chalk dust & they patted the front of graves, gave it a little rub & the names stood out clear as a bell. The chalk will blow off, or run off in the next shower of rain. My personal favourite is simply a spray bottle full of water – a light spray will often make the inscriptions stand out long enough to photograph. The advantage of the water is that if you get hot, then a light spray can also feel wonderful.
   
   On graves that are made of highly polished marble or granite, reflections become an issue. Try not to stand in front of the grave so you avoid seeing your own reflection in the grave, but sometimes you don’t notice, or cant move due to various other reasons, so wearing darker clothes can lead to less obvious reflections. A polarising filter mounted on your camera can often make a large difference, but make sure you get a circular polarising filter (CPL), as a Linear one can upset many SLR and digital camera metering systems.
   
   
7. Good shoes, long pants, a hat & sunscreen are a must, especially in summer. I suggest long pants all year round, as in winter because it can get cold, and in summer as it helps give you an extra layer between your legs and items like sharp grasses, thorns & snakes.
   
   
8. Workers, locals, mourners, and other visitors. I have visited many cemeteries, and with the exception of one, have found the workers to be extremely helpful if you take time to talk to them and explain what you are doing. Taking photographs for your own family research is not illegal, so provided you don't draw attention to yourself (you ARE in a cemetery after all), then people tend to not really notice you, even carrying camera gear & backpack around.
   
   What you don’t want to do is get close to any burial in process, as you can understand that it is a difficult time for all involved. I once waited over an hour for mourners to move away so I could take a photo of a grave 2 up from the burial location. The problem in this instance was who the mourners were – a local bikie gang who had lost one of their friends to an accident. There was still a few around when I took the photo, and it turned out that the person was also a member of the gang and once I explained my interest they were more than willing to supply more information about the person, including family contacts.
   
   
9. Respect for the place and the people. I have an odd little saying that I say out loud before starting my cemetery search. "Please forgive my intrusion. I intend no disrespect, as I wish to allow distant mourners to pay their respects to my family members. Thank you.". Why? I have no idea, but it started about 8 years ago, and has become a bit of a habit whenever I get to a cemetery. I also excuse myself when I step on or over a grave, and I have never had any complaints, so it must be working.
   
   
10. Have fun. Remember that Genealogy is the only (legal) hobby where dead people can really excite you.