Sunday Afternoon Photo Shoot - Cemetery

Taking a short break from vacation photos (yes, I still have more to blog).

I needed to get out of the house and go shoot some photos.  Many months ago, a friend suggested going to a cemetery.  There was one close by that was easy to get to, and since I was short on time, it was the perfect destination.

This cemetery is small.  I would guess roughly 200 people buried here.  It is, however, historic.  It's located next to the city's historic church and museums.  Many of the city's founders are buried here.  I recognized a lto of names as I walked by the headstones.  

I'm not one to venture into cemeteries.  In fact, with the exception of my grandfather's graveside service (and I use that term loosely since it wasn't really a service, just us watching them lower the casket), I've only been in 1 cemetery one time, and it was because my boyfriend's mom thought it would be fun to drive through.  I didn't (and still don't) understand the attraction to spending one's leisure time looking at graves of strangers.  However I had a different mission today.  To look at things through a photographer's eye and capture some unique and eye-catching images.

However, being interested in history, I found myself being as curious about the stories of the people there as I was about getting artsy photos.

While it's not super artsy, I was captured by the dates.  Their birthdays were 1 day apart.  And he died 6 months after her. The romantic in me says he died of a broken heart. But being 78 probably didn't help things any.

I was captured by this spider web and the way it glistened in the sun.  Trying to respect the grave sites, I was unable to get a great angle, but I thought this was pretty good.

Poor little girl.  She was born 4 days before my sister.  And only 19 months when she passed away.  I don't even want to entertain thoughts as to why she died so young.

These were pretty.

This was a large pillar marking the family's site.  One of the 2 middle schools in the city is named for him.

Another big name in the city.  One of the major roads is named after this family.

I was captured by this bench, crumbing and falling over.  The tree behind it.
It was a lot more enthralling than I could capture.

From an artistic perspective, this was difficult to capture because of the drastic lighting differences.  I'm still not sure how to properly meter for shade and sun on the same subject.  But my heart was broken by the size of the grave markers.  This was one family, and the two smallest sites were young children, 4 and 7 I believe.  

Initially I was caught off-guard with the name. It's the same last name as one of Andrew's friends - I wonder if there's any relation.  It's a beautiful headstone.  I love the softness of the bushes around the stone.