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Serenity and Beauty in the Act of Remembrance: Part 1
🕑 Added 2025-10-27 00:30:49 +0000 UTCCemeteries have never been frightening to me. I've always felt a sense of pensive reflection as well as a grand showing of love and care when it comes to walking through them, and have often found myself day dreaming about the lives of those who's final resting place I pass by as I internally pay my respects. As I've gotten older and more comfortable with the concept of death as a whole, I find that the peace of cemeteries has only grown.
Once a year, during the spooky season, my roommate and I take a trip to one of our local cemeteries. It's quite a large cemetery (by my standards anyway), and we like to spend a handful of hours there walking around the various levels together. As it is a gorgeous landscape, we also usually take the time to photograph our adventures. We've done this at least for the past 3 or 4 years, and this year with all its ups and downs and my current headspace and physical conditions, it felt rather important for me to be able to keep up with this tradition.
I've also been feeling a bit stagnate in my art and in my artistic expression, so I thought: "This year, why don't I experiment with something I haven't tried before in photography," and so I decided to try out a tip/suggestion that I saw years ago. The gist of it is, to create a makeshift filter, take a mesh stocking or a wig cap and stretch it over the lens of your camera. This changes how the light interacts with the lens, and creates this almost soft, dreamlike and sometimes vintage effect.
The photos in this gallery—as well as in Part 2—were all taken during this most recent trip using this method.
Immediately I was incredibly taken with the results and with how the makeshift filter required me to change my approach on how I took these photos. This time around, I focused more on light, shape, and contrast, while also trying to convey the serene feeling that often comes over me while I'm at this cemetery.
As I started to take more and more photos, I also found myself drawn to the personalizations of the grave stones and their offerings, and how those who are still with us show how they remember and love those who have departed.
I of course was also drawn to how the cemetery design integrates so much different foliage, which led me to also taking more mid to far range photos of the landscape with the headstones, seeing how light and color changed depending on how much or how little foliage was around. This also led to some very close up photos of the nature surrounding and integrated with the headstones, and some further away landscapes without much focus on the actual headstones themselves.
Now—as sort of a disclaimer—whenever I take photographs there, I do my best to always be respectful to those who are no longer with us, not only with where I step when I'm taking the picture, but also how I frame the photo. Out of respect I try not to take extremely close up photos of the entire gravestone, especially with more current stones that have very clear information still presented on them, and are more often then not, still actively receiving visitors. This particular cemetery, due to how long it's been open and in use, has several parts that are filled with graves that are over one hundred years old, and I feel a bit more comfortable taking photographs of the entire headstone, but please know that the name and information—if readable—is not the intent of the focus of the photo.
I didn't really have any cohesive "theme" in mind other than what I stated above, but as I went through and did a bit of editing with the photos, it was interesting (and of course quite obvious lol) just to observe that the more things I encompassed in the shot, the less personal everything became. There are many metaphors that could be drawn from that, but since I didn't take these photos with the intention of expressing a metaphor, I've leave that to you, the viewers, if you wish.
In this part, there is more of a focus on the mid to far range landscapes, where Part 2 is more focused on nature, statues/architecture that were not headstones. I hope that you all enjoy the photos and the sort of different kind of post, and I would love to hear if there are some that are your favorites! Each photo also has a brief description that gives a bit more information about what it is, or why I decided to take a photo of it. (Note: There are some slightly sad descriptions in a few photos)
Finally, I've also included a Zip folder with higher resolution photos to download if you are interested! However please note that due to the makeshift filter the entire photo as a whole will be a bit blurry and out of focus. Regardless, I hope you enjoy!
Comments
Emily
Hey man, if you’re ever in the area, the Salt Lake City Cemetery (my fave cemetery) is awesome! Lots of local legends and some Utah socialites buried there
