Dave, You have the idea. I start by looking at all the images I have to work with, my own slides and on the net. I go through the mindat galleries and using paste and cut copy the locality strings of the localities I want to include and put them in a notepad field and then use cut and paste to select the images in the galleries I want to use and paste them in under the localities. Then I review some of the common mineralogical texts and amateur literature. The 25 year index of the Mineralogical Record gets heavily used. Then I write up the text for the general mineral and as much text as I can about the specimens from the various localities. A lot of them I know next to nothing about, and I have to display my ignorance and ask for help. I arrange them alphabetically by country, state etc. I use reverse Mindat locality strings and think we should stick with that. When you have the text in place and arranged with the appropriate headers for each locality, then go ahead and stick in the pictures. If you do your work on line here, you will have many many edits, but at the work progresses you will find people chipping in and giving you suggestions, some of which you will wonder why in the world you didn't think of that and though it often distracts you from what you are concentrating on, it does in the end make for a stronger and better article with a wider perspective. Often people will look at some of the images you are using and think, my god there are so much better specimens than that, and will offer to take good pictures of their better specimens and upload them for you to use also. Sticking in the images is just something you will have to learn. It is not big deal and adjusting their size and placement is a bit of an art, but if you have problems just ask for help.
Rock Currier
Crystals not pistols.
Mineral and Locality Search
