Tips for cemetery shot needed

[dlanter]

The end of next week I will be spending a few days in NW Arkansas & southern Missouri mainly in hopes of getting some fall color landscape shots. While there I want to go back to the cemetery where my great great grandfather is buried to photograph his headstone. Since it's not exactly easy to go back & reshoot if I screw it up, I thought I would ask for recommendations on getting it done right the first time.

I tried to find a sample of the type of shot I want to do, but came up empty so I'll try to describe what I have in mind. I am thinking a high contrast black & white that has kind of a erie spooky feel but but not Holloween-ish and sharp enough to see the details of the headstone & carving. I want some of the other headstones in the background, but not sure how much of a DOF I should shoot at.

It has been almost 20 years since I have been there, so my memory may be rusty but I think the way my ancestors headstone faces I will be shooting towards the east. There other headstones behind his and I think there was a tree behind and slightly to the right. I will shoot this in color and convert to black & white in post but as much as possible I would like to get the shot done right in camera and not have to rely on photoshop. The equipment I will have with me: 30D, tripod, 10-20 f4-5.6, 24-70 f2.8, 70-200 f2.8, filters - ND4 & CPL, speedlight

There is a strange spooky story about how I found this headstone, but I won't bore you with it now. Let's just say that I feel that I have an obligation to my great great grandfather to do the best job possible making this shot and since I am the last Lanter male in our line, I probably better not put it off much longer.

Thank for reading my long winded post and for any recommendations you can give.

[CaptainTom]

From the looks of your website you have the techinical stuff down pretty well.
I'd just suggest off camera flash at a sharp angle hitting across the headstone in order to emphasize the text and the granularity, etc.
composition just depends on the surroundings. Under expose in RAW.

[Graydon]

I've only played around with the high speed flash a bit... so I can't give you a lot on how to do it... but it could do something for you.

It'll help darken the background and could work for the "look" you are trying to get.

Attached is one of the shots I did at a cemetery with the highspeed on my Nikon.

I'd take a run out to the closest cemetery and practice a couple of things. Also, get an hotshoe extension cord for the flash... or steal a couple of radiopoppers... because I don't think you can do a hi-speed sync with regular wireless syncs.

Also, if you've got the May 08 issue of Tx Monthly, I think they had some good cemetery shots in that one...

http://www.texasmonthly.com/preview/2008-05-01/feature3

Unfortunately, the online article doesn't include all of the images in the printed mag.


exif:
# Exposure Time (1 / Shutter Speed) = 10/7500 second = 1/750 second = 0.00133 second
# Lens F-Number/F-Stop = 160/10 = F16
# ISO Speed Ratings = 100

(Nikon's normal sync speed only goes to 1/250... so by going to hi-speed, can get it faster, darkening the background and using the flash to fill in close)

[humminboid]

Headstones are a unique problem in themselves, the contrast may be much less than you observe.

For minimum technical problems, if possible, and depending upon the orientation of the headstone, shoot at any time of day that will provide the most contrast, if that is what you want. Use a polarizing filter to darken the skies, if you include them, underexpose slightly, then convert to black and white, and play with the exposure till you get the effect you want. Of course, if you want only the headstone, no worries about the sky, just the contrast. Like I said, it will be less than you think you observe.

Bracket.

As was mentioned, bright, grazing light from a flash, none of this 1/16, or other low power stuff. Light it up! Create some contrast!

Good luck.

[dlanter]

Thanks guys for the advise. I didn't think about putting the flash at an extreme angle, I'll definately do that. Along with putting the flash at a side angle, would you light it up from above or closer to level. I am thinking of making the shot with the camera at a low angle, it will depend on what the background looks like at the time. I do have an off camera cord and radio trigger, I'll be sure to take them with me. I had thought about bracketing the shot and probably would have, but how much under would you go?

One more question. Of the 3 lenses listed above that I will have with me, which would you shoot this with? I'm thinking the 70-200 but probably at the wide end.

[humminboid]

Dan; Your 24-70 should be great for what you want to do. You can't go wrong with attempting to duplicate the angle and direction of good ol' Sol...the Sun, even if you have to help him out a little.

Figure..."If I were the Sun, and wanted to light this subject, where could I be best placed?" Then experiment. A 1/2 stop bracket either way will be a good beginning place.

As an alternative, I visualize the stone backlighted, detail on the shadow side, then a bright strobe, skimmed across the detail, but arranged so it doesn't cast a shadow that will just holler "FLASH!"

Not sure if that made much sense to anybody but me, but good luck to you!

[venchka]

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm..........

Get there early. Wait for a shaft of sunlight to light the headstone. If that fails, drag out the flash. If you get really lucky it'll be foggy or rainy or both.

Use all 3 lenses. Get close. Then closer still with the wider lenses. Then get really close with the widest lens you have.

Get a bigger camera and some real black and white sensor material. Use a lens as old as the date on your great great grandfather's headstone. Make prints with a process from that period.

Opps. I guess I got carried away, hey? Have a great trip. Share your results.

[dlanter]

Originally Posted by humminboid

You can't go wrong with attempting to duplicate the angle and direction of good ol' Sol...the Sun, even if you have to help him out a little.

Good idea about the flash angle, Carl, and an easy to remember technique. Thanks

Originally Posted by venchka

Get there early. Wait for a shaft of sunlight to light the headstone. If that fails, drag out the flash. If you get really lucky it'll be foggy or rainy or both.
...
Get a bigger camera and some real black and white sensor material. Use a lens as old as the date on your great great grandfather's headstone. Make prints with a process from that period.

Wayne, not sure, but I think I will be shooting towards the east so the morning sun lighting the headstone may not work, but it could provide some nice backlighting like Carl suggested. Fog really would be a nice touch, maybe mother nature will cooperate.

Actually, I had thought about possibly processing the shot to look like a photo of that time period, but I'm not that good with photoshop so not sure if that will happen or not. I have an original photo of him in his Civil War uniform and I thought that if my headstone shot turns out like I have in mind I might mount both photos together in a sealed frame to display.

Thanks for the suggestions. I definately will post the result here and let you guys see how I did.

[pcdeatherage]

I applaud you for wanting to get a great cemetery shot, you won't regret it...from the for what it's worth department...while you are there, if you haven't already, for future generations and simply documentation purposes, also get standard shots of perhaps the approach to the cemetary, entrance, where the stone is in relationship to the graveyard, close ups of the verbiage on the stone (there are tips out there for bringing out hard to read lettering) etc...

In other words, put yourself in the place of a distant relative who wants to find it and has only your information to get there...the beauty of technology is that now days we also have the ability to easily produce maps to help pinpoint...

It was pre-digital era and I fell into the trap of, 'oh, I'll do more next year' - in some cases the graveyard was destroyed by the time I got back, and/or I never made it back, hand written notes lost not to mention failing memory...

heck, now I wanna make a road trip to Ohio...

[dlanter]

Patrick, I have already gotten documentation type shots that you mentioned many years ago, but that was with a cheap film camera (forget what kind) and I was thinking of redoing those shots also next week. I have much better equipment now and hopefully a little better skill now. The shots I took of the cemetery before, I made copies of and sent them to the local historical society to hopefully help others and a couple of them have been published in 2 books about the local history.

I said earlier in this thread that I wouldn't bore all of you with the story of finding my ancestors grave, but it has been heavily on my mind since starting this thread so sorry, but get prepared to be bored.

In the late 80's and most of the 90's I was heavily into genealogy and made several research trips across the country to learn as many details about my ancestors as possible. One of these trips was to NW Arkansas (Carroll County) where 2 different lines of my family lived from shortly after the Civil War to the early 1900's.

At one cemetery that I visited, I knew that several members of one family line was buried there, but as far as I knew the Lanters had been buried in a family plot on the farm. I was photographing the headstones for documentation and for one shot I was backing up to get a better shot when I tripped & fell over something sticking out of the ground. I kicked the dirt away enough to realize that I had tripped over the corner of a broken headstone. With a rock and my hands I dug the broken stone out and when I got to the name on the headstone I think I may have actually screamed. F. M. Lanter 1826-1891, my great great grandfather Francis (aka Frank). I still get chills now thinking of it. It almost felt as if he had reached out and grabbed my ankle.

I was supposed to leave and come back home the next day, but before I could I just had to arrange to have his headstone repaired. I found a monument maker that could repair & reset the original headstone. I then just had to go back to the cemetery one more time before leaving for home. On that second visit there happened to be a ceremony going on at another grave site by the local Sons of Confederate Veterans organization. I stayed to talk to them, told them the story of finding the grave and that great great grandpa was a confederate officer. One of the men there said that he had Civil War era photos of the unit my ancestor served in and invited me to his house to look through them. You guessed it, we found my ancestors photo in his collection. Some one had wrote on the photo his name, rank, unit & company.

The man who had the photo gave it to me that day and told me about their organization placing bronze plaques on veterans graves and asked my permission to do the same with my ancestor. About a year later I went back to that cemetery for the ceremony and placing of the plaque. All of the members were in Civil War era uniforms and fired a salute over great great grandpas grave in his honor. Really cool.

Well I think you can probably understand now why getting this shot of his headstone is important to me. Sorry for the long non-photography related rant, but thanks for reading.

[acymc]

Several people have told me that they carry a spray bottle of plain water if they are just trying to bring out the names and dates on headstones. I haven't tried this and some of the older cemeteries I have taken pictures in the headstones were very worn and I don't think anything would bring out the names clearly.

[pcdeatherage]

absolutely *loved* the story (chills)...we started in 1990 and spent $20 for a "class" - only learned 2 things...that the IGI on microfiche existed and the one thing that has proven to be true over and over again - the lady said "when they are ready for you to find them, you will"...and generally it's a multitude of things that have to seemingly accidently happen in a specific sequence...

only other suggestion I can think of after seeing a variety of pics on photosig is to shoot from every conceivable angle...

enjoy the trip...

ps: speaking of cemetery shots and a shamless plug for my kid...one of her shots at Glenwood Cem in Houston got picked up by a German group for an album cover... http://www.harvestaflame.com/releases.htm

[doctahjones]

i know this thread is pretty old, but i'll offer what i did.

however, this was with my sony v1, not an slr. it was better than a 'club camera' but definately not slr quality.

mine was for a personal 'spooktober' theme, and i shot around 10pm-midnight.

on the last shoot, i took a flash light with me so i could 'paint' the things i wanted in the shot. the exposures were all 15-30 sec. not sure on other settings since this wasn't really a slr. but there was almost no light in those cemetaries...

anyway, i just found that using a tripod, remote and a flash light worked pretty well.

http://atomicwaves.com/heatwave/041003/index.shtml

http://atomicwaves.com/heatwave/041004/index.shtml

http://atomicwaves.com/heatwave/041005/index.shtml


i'd love to go back and re-shoot now that i have a dslr...

[kneemeaux]

Dan - Far from boring or a rant, your story is fascinating!