Here are some more photos from the PIAP collection. I just liked them. The railroad car that became someone’s home is an awesome idea. Are you brave enough to go outside the box like this? I liked the church benches too. They’ve been a part of the church since the pre-civil war era. I like the grain in the photo. Was it taken a few months ago, or 50 years ago? I’d love to hear your comments!
If you’re ever in Natchez Mississippi, you really have to visit the Longwood Mansion. Building started on the mansion right before the Civil War broke out. The exteriors were completed and the basement living quarters were done, all 10,000 sqare feet of them. The remaining 20,000 square feet never got finished. It was occupied by relatives til the 1980s or 1990s then the property was donated to a garden club. One of their caretakers stayed in the home til about 5 years ago. Apparently there are about a million bricks in the darn thing. Of course I had to do some photos. Here are some of my favorites that made it into the now infamous Pig in a Poke Collection.
I’ve been having some fun with my photos for the last year or so printing them up as postcards and sending them out at random times.
1) Pick a favorite photo and size it correctly for a post card, generally 1500 to 1800 pixels on the long side is plenty big enough.
2) Go to Overnight Prints and place your order. I’ve been using their digital 4×6 cards. Matte front and back. It runs about $20 after they “discount” the order and add shipping. Calling themselves Overnight is a bit of a marketing scheme. If you want them overnight it’s gonna cost you about $35 bucks to get your $15 worth of postcards! I use the cheap seats and wait 3 weeks to get mine in. If you want to have different cards, you have to place multiple orders, which is kind of a pain, but oh well.
3) While you’re waiting for the order to come in, go to Henry Gitner Philatelists and order some stamps at a discount to face value. Email them and tell them you want post card stamps and they’ll set aside enough for you. The last time I did this the transaction I got $99 worth of stamps for $88.50, delivered. Because of credit card fees, they only take checks and money orders. I did have to send a check to them. They shipped in a few days. You will have to lick the stamps. It might be worth $99 for the self stickies from the post office. Your call.
4) Send the post cards out. Think about people looking in their mail and going “What’s this? Cool!”
5) Soon, your friends will tell you how they treasure the cards, put them on their refrigerator, stick them on the wall or do something cool with them like Gretchen did below.
The cards I’ve been using, have been getting to their destinations a little scuffed and worse for the wear of the post office. I’m good with that though. I think it’s part of the whole analog, hand done, hand written, real people doing real things to communicate thing rather than just shooting some electrons through cyber space. Real is good. Effort is good. Fun is over the top! If you want higher quality cards, I’m sure they’re available, and I’m sure it won’t be a whole lot more. The stamps will still work… I figure I’m in for about fifty cents a person to share some fun.
I use my Gmail contact list to keep track of folks that want my cards. I have a post card category and just click on that list and I’m good. I ask on Facebook for folks to email me their mailing address to get on my list. About half follow instructions, the other half do it through FB messaging. I don’t bust them for that though, it’s supposed to be fun. If they use my email, I just copy their mailing address, click on their name, click on the contact info and drop the address in and save it.
