How to take images of an old cemetery ?

[Donald]

You want morbid, how about a low angle shot of the headstones.

Or go low, B & W AND, as Boab suggests above, get some snow!


Canon 40D, Tokina 11-16 f2.8 @ 11 mm. ISO100. 1/30s @f11

[dan marchant]

This thread inspired me to go shoot a cemetery.....



The rest of the images are in this thread - Cemetary

Going to see what they look like in b&w once i have finished going through the rest of my shots from my trip to Canada.

[HenkB]

Or go low, B & W AND, as Boab suggests above, get some snow!

Very effective shot, Donald.

Shot 8 Feb 13 at the start of what turned out to be a historic blizzard. Nikon D600, 70-300mm 4.5-5.6G AF-S VR, 1/100s f/18.0 at 125.0mm iso800 - I wanted it to be about the cold, cold ground.



Six weeks later, same cemetery, different headstones. As befits a very early spring sunset, in color. Nikon D600, 24-85mm f/2.8-4D, 1/125s f/4.0 at 75.0mm iso200 - A warmer feel to this but the snow is intentionally left with a blue cast lest the image seem too comfortable.

[VanessaS]

I spent a couple of hours at Mt. Pleasant Cemetery in Toronto between Christmas and New Years of last year. We had just received a fresh snowfall and Mt. Pleasant is a fabulous cemetery to visit and walk around. I was only able to cover half of it in a couple of hours.

[rpcrowe]

The primary tip is to try not to be a resident of said cemetery...

[arith]

I agree with low long light, but there is so many things you could do. Graveyards sometimes allow you to get on with it, you need the right lens with you to get the most meaningful images, I didn't so mine fall short.

As examples, showing I am a crazy person are some here, I can think of improvements on, but remember a long lens compresses perspective and a wide lens elongates it.

http://public.fotki.com/Arith/starti...graves-hf.html

http://public.fotki.com/Arith/starti...ee-hf-jpg.html

http://public.fotki.com/Arith/winshi...urchgrave.html

[drjuice]

The two best cemetery pictures I ever took were at the Gloria Dei National Historical Site in Philadelphia and at Andersonville National Historic Site in Georgia. For the Gloria Dei pictures, I'd learned to get low. For Andersonville, because the thing that really impressed me was that there were SO many graves there, I wanted to get that feeling in the picture. I finally figured out that, if I'd shoot with my car mirror in the image and park so that the car mirror would be completely filled with gravestones, I'd have the feeling of being completely overwhelmed and surrounded by the gravestones. I'd never known before about mirrors having nearly infinite focus (I missed that day in physics class because I was more interested in participating in our high school league's debate championship).

I'm jes' sayin'....

virginia