Just playing around: 3 views of a colonial gravestone

[DanK]

We have quite a number of colonial-era graveyards in the area. I have periodically gone to one in Lexington, just yards from the green where the American Revolution started. (For all you on the other side of the pond: the graveyard has a stone commemorating the British soldiers who died that day, still maintained by the locals.) The old gravestones are fascinating, but I find it very hard to capture images worth showing.

This is three views of a stone dating to the late 1700s. Like many of them, it is partially covered. Since there has been a lot of discussion lately of almost-pocketable cameras, I took these with my little Lumix LX-100, which has fairly decent macro focusing. If anyone has thoughts about how better to capture these sorts of things, i would be eager to here. Any, for what they are worth:

[rpcrowe]

Here are some pointers in Internet articles on how to photograph old gravestones...

http://www.wikihow.com/Photograph-a-Tombstone

http://www.genealogy.com/articles/re...avestones.html

I didn't realize that New England Grave Stones generally face West and are generally best photographed at mid-day.

My wife has been wanting to visit New England and visit the graves of her deceased family members and ancestors. Some of them came to New England with the original groups of Puritans and some of them arrived in later groups. One of them had been with Cromwell in Ireland before that ancestor emigrated to Massachusetts.... The above tip would help me schedule times to photograph the grave stones...

There are two aims in photographing grave stones. First is making a nice visual image while the second aim is more for genealogists and tries to get the carved lettering more decipherable. Sometimes, more than one print or exposure can work to get some of the words more readable. While other brightness of prints will get other words clearer. This seems to allow reading of the words obscured by the lichen...



Knowing the syntax of the people who did the early burials also helps to read the gravestones. As an example, the word "the" as we know it was often written as "ye" and very often abbreviated to just "y"

[george013]

Knowing the syntax of the people who did the early burials also helps to read the gravestones. As an example, the word "the" as we know it was often written as "ye" and very often abbreviated to just "y"

Does remind me of Tao2. I didn't know he was so old.

Dan,
I like to see more historical context. Reading what's written on the stones. Mostly they refer to something that's interesting.
I also wonder why there's a skull on a graveyard. I can't remember graveyards with a skull. They always refer to the living times, not how they look under the ground after a while.

George

[Astramael]

I think the texture and weathering on these makes the close up shots a completely valid way to photograph them.

If you want to go for a longer shot of the whole stone my suggestion would be to go for a wide lens and go way, way down to ground level. You might have to grab a couple of exposures and composite to get a good sky because that tends to blow out and the tombstone will ruin a gradient ND. Tombstones mark the location of one interred and they hold a strong significance. Going down gets us a look up at the stone which is somewhat unique and indicates its importance to us. Having a long ground ramp in front of the stone in the shot gives us this negative space which has significance as well because presumably there's somebody down there.

My ideas might also not work at all whatsoever! You have been warned.

[Davejl]

Hi Dan,

Thanks for the info re the British soldiers.

I love your New England headstones. I am fortunate to live in a part of England where there are many excellent headstones of the same era as yours. I have photographed a lot of them and put some images on Wikimedia Commons in the hope that they become more appreciated.
Lighting angle is critical for revealing the engraving. Dull days are useless and full on light is too. I understand that most of your headstones face west, which is handy. Many do in "my" churchyards, but some face east, and some face east and some west in the same churchyard.

If you follow this link, most (not all) of the photos here were taken by me in my neck of the woods:

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki...te_gravestones

I took the Quorn photo with off-camera flash because it is such an interesting gravestone but impossible to capture otherwise (in a dark corner). The others I took in sunny conditions.
I have done some mono conversions at times, but I prefer colour because the slate is attractive.

Cheers,

Dave

[DanK]

Thanks, all.

Julian--a very interesting suggestion. I'll try shooting up.

George--I don't know why, but the death's head at the top was very common toward the end of the 18th century and into the 19th.

Dave--I agree about lighting. This time, I tried late afternoon full sun to get high contrast. Other times I have tried spraying the headstones with water to bring out more color. I need to experiment more. And nice images on your website.

Richard, I hadn't really thought about it, but you're right: in the oldest part of the graveyard, most of the stones are facing west. You had mentioned your wife's family in an earlier post. I was in Concord recently and didn't have time to do much hunting, but I did find something you might find interesting. Contrary to the article you sent, Concord doesn't really have a town green or common anymore--very odd for an old New England town--so it will take some time or luck to find the grave mentioned in it. However, right in the middle of the town is something called Monument Square, which people might confuse with a town green. At one end there is a monument commemorating a Hosmer, although a different one, and in a different war. I didn't have a camera, so I had to take phone photos, which I will post below.

Dan

[mknittle]

I always heard the church steeples faced east to represent a new beginning (sunrise) so I suppose west would be the opposite.

[Davejl]

I always heard the church steeples faced east to represent a new beginning (sunrise) so I suppose west would be the opposite.

The "east" end of a church (whether literally east facing or not) is the sacred end at which the altar is found and steeples are usually found at the west end. The normal arrangement where graves are concerned, is that the deceased was laid feet to the east, so that on rising from the grave they would be facing east. The headstone was placed at the head end of the body (i.e. the west end of the body). If the carved side of the headstone faces west the reader of the headstone avoids standing over the deceased. Numerous old headstones in my area depict Resurrection scenes showing corpses rising from the grave in a churchyard with church in the background. They are all shown facing east as they do so.

Dave

[xpatUSA]

Knowing the syntax of the people who did the early burials also helps to read the gravestones. As an example, the word "the" as we know it was often written as "ye" and very often abbreviated to just "y"

Yes, the "y" usually has a super-scripted "e" - see what looks like a circle over the top of the "y" in the OP's images.