Photo Story3

Online Help
Kathryn Brannigan Walizer




For this issue, I thought I would break away from the normal genealogy website and detail a site that has to due with genealogy, but in a much different way. Genealogy is much more than dates of births, marriage and deaths, It is a family history of the people that have gone before us and it is a record of types of lives that our ancestors lived. Now what is a better way to experience and put ourselves in their time and space than to preserve all the old photographs that can be found in the boxes under the beds and the trunks in the attic. If you are lucky enough to have these photographs in your possession, and can identify them, Microsoft has a free Photo Program download . There are computer requirements for it to work so, please be sure to check them out first before downloading. Now on to the site. It is called Photo Story 3 the web site is:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/photostory/default.mspx

With this program you can capture those memories of times gone by, the grandparents, the great-grandparents, the family home. the aunts, and uncles, cousins, and family get-tog ether’s, either formal or just back yard bar-b-q's. This program will allow you to take your pictures that are stored on your ,computer hard drive or CD's and import them to create slideshows to bring the photographs to life. You can add titles, captions, and even your own narration to identify the photos. The site will zoom in and out and show details you were not even aware were there. Another good aspect is that you can add your own music in the background, or use the program to create the right music, from jazz to classical. If you have a DVD burner on your computer, these stories can be put on disk to be shared with family and friends. Just think, the idea's are endless, one story could be devoted to cemetery photo's, I know you have them in boxes and folders, gather them up, if not go to the cemetery with the digital and record the family stones. The motion and zoom feature makes it appear to be a video, and with a single click you can touch-up, or rotate photos and bring the family history to life.

I would also like to add a site here that I find very useful it is: www.EllisIsland.org and it continues to be one of the most exciting online tools available for researching our ancestors. Ellis island has a newsletter that they will e-mail to you with updates to their site so be sure to check that out.