On a whim, I stopped into a cemetery to take photos. At the exact same moment I stopped in, so did another guy. He had in tow two medium-format digital Hasselblads and lenses. In sum, the gear he had in his car was worth more than my entire camera collection. Stands to reason, he was tooling around in a decked-out Carrera. If I'd known being a professional photographer paid that well, I may have made different choices in college.
Anyway, I started with some establishing-type shots to simply get to know the place and get comfortable.
A number of the graves had stone borders or designs. Many also had raised dirt, fresh or not. I liked that. When I die, I want to be buried with bottled water, a flashlight, and a shotgun with lots of ammo. Why? Because when the dead rise from the grave that's zombies. I want to be well hydrated and capable of defending myself.
Many of the newer graves had concrete borders. I supposed that's for visitors.
This statue was next to a pastor's grave.
The pastor may have been a golfer.
Another statue in the cemetery. There were a number of statues, all about 18 inches tall or so. Many of them from different eras and clearly with different intents. This was my favorite of them.
Many of the graves has silk flowers. But some had come loose in time and littered the cemetery. Also, most of them were severely sun-faded, which actually made me sadder than the graves. It meant that no one had been by in a long time to tend to the graves.
This was a particularly sad grave -- a child who died after 57 days.
At one section, a number of children's graves were grouped together. Many had stuffed animals and toys adorning them. The adornments showed a lot of weathering and fading.
I almost didn't take photos of the children's graves as I was debating if it was disrespectful. In the end, I decided to do it because I wouldn't show any respect for the kids' short lives by simply walking past.
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