Evergreen Cemetery - Bisbee, Arizona


Photographed this one as the sun was setting - it washes everything in warm light and deep shadows, making statues and headstones show their depth and detail. The graves faced east and it was sunset, so I couldn't get my shadow to lay atop of a grave but at sunrise, you could do this.


Each cemetery shows me how to photograph it. This particular one had spectacular spires of cypress trees and wrought iron - it was reaching toward the sky and with the sun setting, it could cast things in a ghostly glow or create delightful shadows. I look to repeat patterns sometimes, other times I look to show the depth of a 3-dimensional object. In one photo, I wanted the dead tree and the headstone, so I got down low to show the sky covered in dead tree limbs and the headstone together.




I could have shown this entire Christ on the cross, but his face was so aged, so agonizing, that just that seemed to get the entire message across and the focus was on the expression, not the entire figure. Sometimes, we think we know things - we see and entire body on a cross and it's Christ. We neglect the detail because we think of it as an icon. When you look at one part of the icon, the symbolism suddenly pops out instead of the statue.
 

Awash in color and shadow (above).  I often say - go low or go high, but don't do things from standing height - that's how everyone sees a cemetery and it has no emotional effect unless you show it from a view people don't usually get - then it become novel and unusual.

And, I sometimes run across headstones with appropriate names for a graveyard -




Comments

  1. Your pictures are gorgeous. You captured that cemetery perfectly.

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  2. Beautiful photos!!!

    I love cemeteries...

    ~shoes~

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