Theme: Common

Last project was so creativity-sparking and fun that Mike and I decided to do it regularly. This project’s theme is Common, which at first really had me stumped. Lots of options came to mind: just take pictures of everyday things (and hope something decent turns up); take stop-action photos of people playing sports; take close-ups of common household items; etc. Marianna and I had planned on going to Great Falls on the weekend and visiting her parents in nearby Germantown, so that became my opportunity for images of Common things: Nature! Or so it would seem. To be honest, I had vague plans to try to mimic the great black and white processing I recently saw over at Tao of Digital Photography, with the heavy contrast and the point of interest somewhat brighter than the rest of the scene. Isn’t it kind of a rite of passage to be able to successfully mimic art — or anything, I suppose — you admire, and then integrate the parts that jive with you and discard those that don’t? That’s essentially how I was approaching it.

It turned out to be more difficult than I had imagined – nature photography is not easy to do well. There’s a huge gulf between seeing a beautiful tree and capturing the beautiful tree how the mind’s eye sees it (or even recognizing when a beautiful tree may not be particularly photogenic). I was able to capture a few reasonably okay shots, but most were total crap. The only one I’m happy with is the following image.

Common #1

Second Idea, Again

A day or two later, Marianna and I were talking about possible photo opportunities for Common, and she suggested an idea I had come up with a couple years ago and mentioned to her recently: the churches in Hampden. There are at least five pretty neat little churches in the neighborhood that are 100+ years old, made of large gray stone bricks and each with their own unique feel. Not feeling like documenting all the churches in Hampden for this project, I instead decided to shoot common names on tombstones in their cemeteries. (Anyone who has seen Traces or my other Urban Decay photography knows that a cemetery isn’t very far from the stuff I’m normally attracted to!) So I quickly saddled up my bike and rode out to the cemetery with about and hour and a half of sunlight left.

The idea to find only common names like “Miller” or “Smith” quickly faded when I saw that there weren’t very many common names, and the tombstones with common names were fairly uninteresting. But, I mean, cemeteries and tombstones are still fair game in themselves, so I barreled on. As I walked and shot, I found I was most attracted to — surprise, surprise — the overgrown, broken, and seemingly forgotten tombstones. In fact, there were varying stages of disarray — stages of disarray! Entropy! Traces! This is a very common theme and natural occurrence. Perfect.

So there is the real, honest, true-to-the-spirit theme: the inevitable process of increasing entropy and human made things becoming more a part of nature, with a case study on tombstones. The remaining images show various levels of disarray and nature’s reclaiming course. Hopefully they jump out at you, maybe for the same reason they do for me: they’re tombstones, which for many is the last vestige of a living, breathing person like us. To see them overgrown, fallen, broken, etc. is particularly tragic and foundation-shaking — simply imagine it’s your tombstone that’s off in the corner with your name wearing off and vines growing over it. Unless you’re uncharacteristically Zen’d out about death and your legacy vanishing into obscurity (or worse: completely vanishing), I’d bet the thought is pretty striking, if not frightening.

Common #2

Common #3

Common #4

Common #5

Other Comments

Another thing that struck me even more than overgrown tombstones were a few dual, husband+wife tombstones from the early 1900s with the wife having no date of death. Here are two examples: Missing Date #1 and Missing Date #2. Note the wife’s death date missing on both tombstones. Unless she’s over 100 years old, in both cases the woman died but was never buried next to her husband like they planned. Is that not incredibly intriguing? Why no date? Did she remarry and get buried next to her other husband? Did she die without family or will, so nobody knew to bury her there? Did she die in poverty, her or her family unable to afford the burial? Was it more scandalous, like she never wanted to be buried next to him in the first place, so she was able to escape it because he died first? It could be a great start to a mystery — or even romance — novel! I discussed this idea with a friend and he suggested a new project: 1,000 word fictional story based on a photograph chosen by the other person. We’ll see what Mike thinks of that one…

Technical Info

All the images were shot hand-held with a Canon 40D and 24-105 f/4L lens with image stabilization turned on. I processed several composite HDR+Normal exposure images with a good deal of Photoshop to bring out detail in the tombstones, but none of them made it past the chopping block. All the ones above are straight from the RAW image files and processed with a combination of Lightroom and Photoshop. (Yes, lots of layers in some, especially to help in my adapted black and white process mimicking mentioned above).

P.S.

Readers may find this image of a larger chunk of the cemetery interesting, or some more in the Flickr set. And yes, I’ve repeated “They’re coming to get you Barbara…” at least a hundred times since taking these pictures.