NBC-10-Philadelphia-kimwolterman

Saturday my friend Linda and I drove down to Ste. Genevieve to see some artwork that was on special display, and to look at the old buildings. While it was a little cool and windy, at least the sun was out to make the day more inviting. We decided to go on a tour of three of the buildings in addition to going through the museum where the art was displayed. Our tour guide could have been better (she admitted that it had been a long time since she had conducted a tour), but seeing the old buildings on the inside made up for it.

We had lunch at the Cafe Genevieve. It is located in an old hotel, and while the decor was cool the food and service were just so-so. Following lunch we headed off to the Catholic Church, which was amazing! The outside of the church is not all that remarkable, so when you walk inside you are not expecting to be blown away. I'd love to attend mass there some Sunday.





Our last stop was the cemetery in town, which is proclaimed to be the oldest cemetery in Missouri. I guess since St. Genevieve is the oldest town in Missouri, that makes sense. I was disappointed that I did not see any headstones older than 1812. Since the town was founded in 1735, I expected to see some older stones. Perhaps the early settlers were buried elsewhere? The town relocated in the late 1700s due to flooding. All in all, it was a fun day and great to be with someone who likes to take as many pictures as I do.

We do not do anything for New Year's Eve typically. We're just not that interested in putting our lives on the line due to drunk drivers. So we made a nice steak dinner (awesome to be able to grill out on December 31st!) and I am having a nice glass of wine as I sit at my computer. Today has been pretty introspective as I have spent the last two days scanning documents and photos of my ancestors and current family members. I had asked for a Flip-Pal Scanner as a present since I had seen one in action at the Federation of Genealogical Societies annual conference in Springfield earlier this year. It is amazingly light-weight, runs on batteries and scans 4" x 6" pictures like a champ. For larger documents or photos, you simply remove the cover, flip it over and scan the item in pieces. As long as you have properly overlapped the scans, the stitching software provided puts it all back together with no seams. Amazing!

Anyway, as you can gather I received one for Christmas so I have been putting it through its paces. It does a wonderful job, and I have been uploading the scans to my ancestry.com family tree. I have been thinking a lot about the people in the photos. What was their day like? How in the world did they manage to raise 8 (or 10 or 12) children? How did they feel when their children moved away to another state? All the strangers in the box and the stories that will remain untold. While our lives today may not seem all that important, down the road our descendants may be very interested in how we spent our time. What stories will you preserve in 2012?

This weekend we are heading to Cincinnati with my sister and brother-in-law for a Crusham family reunion. This is my mom's side of the family, and only one brother and two sisters remain of the nine children grandma and grandpa had. Each time I go to a reunion it seems that there is one less person in the group pictures. And I always wonder what will happen to the reunions when the last three siblings pass on. It doesn't seem like our generation is all that interested in large family gatherings. My sister and I make the trek from St. Louis every time a reunion is held, but cousins who live there in town can't be bothered to stop in even for a brief period.

Speaking of pictures, one of the many boxes I inherited when my dad died contains old family photos. I am in the process of scanning them so that I can share them with my siblings and other interested relatives. I first divided the photos up by family and created a bag for each of my three siblings. They mostly contain photos of their own families that they shared with mom and dad throughout the years. That was the easy part. The stack of photos I knew we all might be interested in I decided to make digital rather than making prints the others might not even care to have around. Scanning is a slow and tedious process, particularly since I feel the need to clean most of the photos up with a photo editing program.

I am not quite sure what to do with the scanned pictures when I am done. There will be too many to email to my siblings, plus I want the photos somewhere that my cousins can access them if they want. My Picassa account, where I post photos from the Missouri Botanical Garden and other public venues, has nearly 200 photos in it. Once you hit 200 photos, you have to pay an annual fee. I have a Shutterfly account where I import photos that I want to reprint or put into photo books, but I'm not sure if others can access the account or if they have to join Shutterfly just to look at my photos. I also don't know if any of my photos could then be downloaded by my relatives. It sounds like I have some research to do, which will take more time. But as I said, it's all relative.

My sister came and stayed two nights with us, and that was fun. We went out to eat, shopped and enjoyed the Missouri Botanical Garden on a particularly beautiful June day. We also went through a box of photographs that I had taken out of mom and dad's photo albums after dad died. I have been sorting them into bags for each of my siblings, but there are some I know that we all might want to have copies of. Kathy helped with the sorting. Now I have a bunch of scanning to do. Bleh. But I also have a batch of photos to take over to Cincinnati for the family reunion, so that will be fun.

Katie is now in Barcelona for a few days. She called yesterday to let me know that she and Megan had arrived safely. In a few short days I will be picking her up at the airport. Can't wait to see all of her pictures and videos, and hear all about her adventures!

I am halfway through a photography class that I am taking at the Missouri Botanical Garden. It is on Tuesday mornings for 3 hours, and lasts for 6 weeks. The instructor is a professional photography with many published photos to his credit. This is a beginning photography course, and I have taken a couple of those in the past. For some reason I just don't get the aperture, focal length, f-stop, ISO terminology stuff. Whenever it is discussed, my eyes glaze over. Math - bleh! So I was hoping this class would help me understand my D-SLR better. And I want to take the next class on photographing nature, and it is for intermediate students. I didn't want to be "that person" in the next class...the one who asks all the inane questions.

My camera is a Nikon D-40, and it takes amazing pictures. I love it, and the lens I purchased for it. So why am I taking the class, you might ask? Because I shoot everything on automatic exposure. And most of the time, that is perfectly acceptable. But you do get the rare time when the lens can't focus on what you are really wanting to take a picture of due to junk in the foreground. I experienced that just the other day when I was trying to photograph a bird's nest through a tree. When I took my camera setting off of automatic {gasp!}, I could manually focus on the bird in its nest. So I can understand the beauty of knowing how to shoot on manual, but by the time I think about changing the exposure and working with the lens, sometimes the photographic moment is lost. The instructor assures us that it will become second nature to us. We shall see...

At the very least I am learning a lot about photo composition, so that will be invaluable whether I shoot on automatic or manual. And every Tuesday I get to go to the Garden and take photographs. It's a win-win!

One of the books I had autographed while at Book Expo in New York in May was entitled, "Confessions of a Compact Camera Shooter" with the tagline "Get Professional Quality Photos with Your Compact Camera". I joked with the author, Rick Sammon, that perhaps he could finally teach me what the camera classes had not. He replied that this is the book for me. We'll just see about that, mister!

A few weeks ago I was waiting for one of the cars to be serviced and I took along the Shooter book to read. Rick is a professional photographer who believes that anyone can take great pictures with a compact camera. By which he does NOT mean a point and shoot camera. Your camera must have some settings on it for this book to be of much benefit. Anyway, I had just read the section on how you should never go anywhere without your compact camera. After all, it will fit in your pocket, purse or briefcase, so there is never an excuse to be camera-free.

This came back to haunt me as I was walking the dog that very same day. I came upon the truck of a landscape contractor. He had the usual pickup truck, so nothing special there. What caught my eye was the trailer on the back of the truck. It was the typical mesh-like metal trailer, but on the back of the trailer was an assortment of items - dolls, action figures, small stuffed animals... Apparently whatever he finds in the yard as he mows gets attached to the back of the trailer. It was a moment...and I even knew what I would title my photo. "Yard Waste."

But where was my camera? Back at the house, of course. Had Rick Sammons taught me nothing? Apparently not, because Monday as I walked the dog along came same landscape contractor buzzing down our street. Was there a camera in my pocket? Nope. And just to further mock me, I had the dog out earlier than usual today since it is so hot, and the landscaper passed me again. I'm beginning to feel like Richard Dreyfuss in "American Grafitti" as he keeps getting a glimpse of Suzanne Somers in the '56 Thunderbird but can't seem to hook up with her. "Ain't That a Shame?"