April Blogging from A to Z Challenge: Family history

Thursday, June 6, 2013

Bill Nichols: A Wandering Picture Taker

Please give a warm welcome to Bill Nichols, a fantastic photographer and historian who is here to share some of his work with us. Take it away, Bill!

I feel honored to be here today writing this guest post, and by the time you read this, my blog Spuds Daily Photo will be just over six months old with over 6000 views!

When I said I'd be up for guesting, I never thought I'd get accepted as I am relatively new to blogging. I'm no writer, so I thought it better to tell you about my blogs. (Tina here - we love new people! Encouraging new bloggers is one of the big goals of The Challenge, and this blog. We're not just for WRITERS, we're for BLOGGERS!)

I've been called an historian and photographer though I claim to be neither. "I'm an old fellow who likes to take photos and reads some history on places I visit." That is the description on my profile, but as someone once said on a forum I visited, "A Wandering Picture Taker" would describe me better.

So how did I get in to blogging? I thought it would be another outlet for the photos I have taken. I am a member of Geograph where I go round the country taking photos of the areas I have been to. I did a few posts on there and thought, "This is not so hard!"

With the encouragement of other bloggers, I started off with Spuds Rural Explorations which tells about places I had been to and photos to back them up. The first post was called Pillboxes along the Thames which was about all the defensive blockhouses (pillboxes) that remain along there mostly hidden from view.

I update the blog periodically with new reports.

This is a pillbox and was one of my favorites as it overhung the bank but during the summer of 2012 it went in the river.

This picturesque looking boathouse near me is a defended building, the section on the left is one huge pillbox.

As a spin off from this, I started Forgotten Fairmile which is about the conversion of a mental hospital in the village where I live. I got permission to record the development and started to photograph it all. During this time, I got involved with a villager who was starting a village archive and was researching his family who worked Fairmile. The outcome was we had an exhibition for the village which was well received, and just lately I did a talk on the subject to the residents of Fairmile. My parents worked there and it is dedicated to them.

This group photo includes my mother.

It would have been taken on this lawn.
The link is a video I made.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7WJFKC_mT0

I realized I had few followers and discovered Google + which did help. Then one day I came across Beneath thy feet, a blog on Taohophilia, or the study of gravestones. Since I visit a lot of churches and churchyards, this seemed second nature so, My Grave Place came about. I tend to do this weekly and join up with a few other bloggers on the same subject.

Last we come to my daily blog, Spuds Daily Photo which is hardly six months old. I post a photo from my collection each day with a short explanation and hopefully people will enjoy my offering and leave a message.

The A to Z challenge was a good outlet, though I did need some encouragement from Dana of the Daily Dose. I did feel out of place with all the writers and so few photographers posting. Oh yes, I'm sorting out the theme for the next one at the moment.

There is one more blog which is on a different account. Cholsey new Pavilion where I have followed the building of the new village hall for the village where I live in. The blog will soon becoming to and end as the work is nearly complete, though I will leave the blog going for people to look at. I might add the main contractors who came from the north of England who followed the progress on it as well.

I hope you have enjoyed my little rendition here and will come and visit my blogs, and if you like any of them feel free to join.
I'm currently on my roadtrip and visiting all the blogs in the A to Z and am amazed at the amount of subjects people blog on but I am thoroughly enjoying myself.

Thanks so much for sharing your beautiful photos with us, and congrats on keeping so many blogs going!

***

Dear Readers - we're still accepting guest posts from anyone who has participated in at least one A-Z Challenge. Email me at tndowney at gmail dot com if you're interested. We accept posts from all kinds of blogs, not just writing blogs! We are a big family, and there's room for everyone!
~Tina

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Creating a Blog to Book from A to Z Posts : Guest Post by Pauleen Cass

Publishing a book does not always mean producing something to sell on Amazon or in the book stores. There are publish on demand and other publishing services that will print limited quantity or even single editions for family members, friends, or other specific audiences. Some of you have compiled your blog posts into keepsake editions.

Today we hear from Australian family history blogger Pauleen Cass who can be found at Family History Across the Seas. When Pauleen told me that she was going to publish a blog-to-book based on her A to Z Challenge entries, I invited her to share her story with us. In this post she tells about the process that she used to publish her keepsake editions for her family members.

A to Z Becomes Family Treasure

My passion, and the focus of my main blog, is family history so it was inevitable that this would carry through to the A to Z challenge 2012. Family history usually discusses the people and their lives, this challenge would focus on place as a character in its own right.

The theme I decided on was a dollop of travelogue combined with what I called a genealogue: a travel tale of the places important to the stories of our families (past and present).

My goal was to write something interesting for my fellow bloggers (the geographical/travel underpinning) but mainly to preserve the stories behind the places which might otherwise be lost from our family history.

My plan was to publish the posts in a blog-to-book thereby preserving the stories for my children and grandchildren.

Throughout April the blog toured many places in Papua New Guinea, Australia, England, Ireland, Scotland and Germany. My fellow tourists included some of my regular readers and some newbies. Their comments encouraged me to reach the finish line.

In terms of my planned book, I decided that I would combine the A to Z posts with another series, 52 weeks of personal genealogy and history from 2011, as this also contained memories I wanted preserved beyond the digital world.

I’d used Blurb previously and been very happy with the standard of the publication I received. The benefits of using Blurb are:

1. It’s possible to bring in footnotes as well as the web links from the posts. This is important in family history where citing sources is critical.

2. The file is auto-saved as you work, so you can work at it progressively.

3. It provides different photo/text layouts per page so you can choose what suits that particular story.

4. The photos you’ve used in your posts are imported and placed into the photo boxes of the layout you choose per page.

5. You can select which posts you want from your blog.

6. It also imports comments if you want them included.

Because I’d decided to combine two hefty series, the initial book length was quite long. I think this affected some of the issues I had in preparing the book. So what do I see as the downsides of the Blurb blog-to-book process and what would I do differently?

1. In retrospect I would ensure my book size was smaller as I think some of the problems I had with this book arose from its length.

2. While the importation of footnotes and citations is automatic, it doubles up the citations, cross-referring to your own post, so some editing is required.

3. Some of the comments flowed over many pages, with blank spaces, again requiring editing.

4. The photos come in at what seem much lower resolution than that of the original photos, presumably they’ve been reduced to web-standard, and some have to be reduced further –a helpful exclamation mark tells you when it’s not up to print quality.

5. To ensue you have good quality photos throughout you may wish to re-import the photos you used in the blog post. This certainly gives a better quality final product, but is surely tedious. If you get stuck and can’t find the image you used on your computer, check its title on the blog and do a search.

6. If I was doing another long series I wanted to publish in print, I would copy all the photos from my post at the time, and put them in one folder. With the A to Z, I used photos from different file directories so it’s another challenge to go back and re-import them all.

7. Blurb didn’t cope with the fancy google maps I’d used or the slideshows. Again, more importing.

Based on my previous Blurb book I expect that I will be very happy with it once it’s completed. Only the individual writer can decide whether its worth the preparation and editing process of getting it print-ready. Because recording these stories is important to me, I’ve deemed it worthwhile, though I’ve had to take a break before finishing upgrading all the photos.

Have you had any experiences with limited run book services such as this? Have you ever published your blog posts in book form? Let us know your thoughts or experiences.