Friday, November 6, 2009

Follow Friday - Shades of the Departed - WOW!!

My selection of footnoteMaven's Shades of the Departed blog for Follow Friday is a no-brainer - especially today!

What is Shades of the Departed? It's all about images, especially of those that have passed away. Over the past two years, footnoteMaven (we who love her call her fM) has published her own posts about photographs, and has hosted regular monthly columns written by other notable genealogy bloggers, including Craig Manson, Donna Pointkouski, Jasia, Sheri Fenley, George Geder, Rebecca Fenning, Denise Levenick, Denise Olson, and several others that I cannot recall. In addition, the Shades of the Departed blog has produced a monthly Smile for the Camera blog carnival.

The difference between the articles in the Shades of the Departed blog and those on many other genealogy blogs is that they are written in a professional format, include many images, have edited writing, and utilize source citations.

Things changed on Shades of the Departed this week. fM has created a monthly online magazine called Shades - a Digital Magazine - the November 2009 cover is shown below:


The blog post on Shades of the Departed provides some discussion of the creation of the magazine and some directions on how to navigate the online magazine.

The articles in the premier issue of Shades, the Digital Magazine include (there is no easy way to copy and paste these, I typed them):

FEATURE ARTICLE:

* page 27 - What is Mary Queen of Scots Doing in Your Photo Album, by footnoteMaven

COLUMNS:

* page 9 - The Healing Brush: A Very Fitting Tribute, by George Geder

* page 12 - Appealing Subjects: Death of a Photographer, Part 2, by Craig Manson

* page 18 - The Future of Memories: The Sky's The Limit, by Denise Olson

* page 21 - The Year Was ... : The Year was 1867, by Sheri Fenley

* page 30 - In2Genealogy: Making Sense of 1930, by Caroline Pointer

* page 41 - Penelope Dreadful: A Dreadful Portrait, by Denise Levenick

* page 46 - Captured Moments: Forget-Me-Not, by Vickie Everhart

* page 54 - The Humor Of It: The Photo Booth, by Donna Pointkouski

* page 59 - Saving Face: Where Oh Where Did My Photographs Go, by Rebecca Fenning


My initial reaction to this new online magazine is WOW! What a magnificent effort to produce a high-quality and readable genealogy magazine focusing on images. All of the contributors are genealogy or family history bloggers, and most of them are "unknown" to the larger genealogy community of professional researchers, conference-goers, print magazine readers, society officers and members, etc.

Shades, the Digital Magazine is readable online (although you have to move your cursor around the page to see all of the text - it takes some practice) and can be downloaded as a web page and saved and read at the reader's convenience.

I encourage you to read this inaugural issue of Shades, the Digital Magazine, and be sure to put the Shades of the Departed blog in your blog reader.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

How do you save or download the article. All I see is the print option... Tina

footnoteMaven said...

Randy:

I think I can fix your viewing problem. Instead of using the arrows to go page to page, you clicked the page and got the zoom tool.

Go to Full Screen and select the arrow to the right of the page or the arrow at the top of the page. Then you won't have to move your cursor around the zoomed page.

Tina - go to presentation view and select download.

-fM

footnoteMaven said...

Randy:

Thank you so much for featuring Shades and this new publication as your follow friday. You are always such a generous supporter of your fellow bloggers.

Your wish is my command, my friend.

-fM

Anonymous said...

As one of the Shades contributors, I thank you for your delightful review of Shades - The Magazine. Even though I had seen the concept some time back, I was bowled over when I saw the finished product today. It's an honor to be a part of this group and to be included in fM's vision.

Stay tuned . . . this is just the beginning.