Cemetery Photography

Today, I helped a friend of mine who is a volunteer for cemetery photography. He receives the requests through the volunteer organization. The photographer's role is to look for the graves and tombstones of deceased family members for people who are staying really far away in other states and cannot come to visit their family graves. Many requests are also for the purpose of establishing family lineage and genealogy.

I helped him today. We is old and his eyesight is not too good. It was my first experience walking around in a graveyard. We just walked over the land that coffins lie below because this is an old crowded grave. I was very afraid for a few reasons: (1) my personal safety of visiting old graveyards - but my friend carried his personal shotgun, as if that was supposed to make me feel safer - in fact, I felt even more afraid!!! (2) my spiritual safety having to walk over dead people and (3) the time it would take to accomplish this task.

The work was interesting and educational. I learnt about how graves were arranged - family clutters, older tombs to newer tombs etc. This particular graveyard had no management office because it was too old and sort of unkept. Newer graves apparently had management office, but then again, they might not be helpful to volunteer cemetery photographers. It took one hour to look for two tombstones in this small cemetery. My friend told me that he would have taken longer without me, given his eyesight and short memory. I believed him.

Here are my photos.

I won't be joining him anymore. You probably know the my reasons.