Artistically photographing a headstone ??

Valerie - sorry for your loss. At least for me, doing something artistic to remember my dad, and my mom, made it a lot easier for me to deal with. It's sometimes hard to remember them as they were at their best if they go through a long illness - the slideshow you mention was a lot like what I did.

Setting sun idea is interesting, be sure to use a flash to try to balance the light on the stone against the bright background. Actually, a large white reflector would probably be even better - a big sheet of foamcore. Just because of how I think, I'd be trying to shoot the stone at sunrise, though, if there were great clouds in the background in particular. I'm one of those people who thinks that a beautiful sunrise or sunset takes place on both ends of the sky. Black stone makes this a hard technical problem. You might also want to try putting on your widest angle lens, and placing your camera at the base of the stone shooting up to show it ascending to the sky.

I also think you should play around with infrared effects, reversing the image, doing a black and white by selecting only one channel (red channel often works best.) For a subject like this, a photograph may capture the light and how it looks, but it usually will fall short of how it feels to be there. Let yourself play with the image until it feels right.

valeriecook wrote:

Thanks for all of the great ideas. The sun sets behind her stone -
so I have thought about doing it with the sun setting behind it.
The one idea that REALLY jumped out at me is doing a 'time lapse'
type of thing. If it was a day when the sky had great big wonderful
puffy clouds - maybe I could do something like that.
Photography and all of my 'fancy' (as mom would say) equipment was a
part of my life that I shared with my mom - every shot I take I would
think about showing her - I am having such a hard time getting back
into it now that she' s not here to show them to. Maybe if I get
this done - it will help.
The slideshow was very very hard, but helpful for me to make - Mom
had given me the box of pictures a couple of months before she really
got sick. I put it off and put it off and finally realized I better
get it done or I wouldn't get it done. My 11 year old boy ended up
scanning all of the older pics for me. I worked late at night and
when mom was napping putting it together. Dad and I sat up late
previewing it over a couple of drinks many nights as I worked on it.
I ended up basically moving in over there for a month. We showed the
slideshow on a big screen at her memorial service and it worked great

• I was able to hold it together b/c I put myself in 'tech' mode and

could pick it apart as it played - thinking of all of the things I
should've done on it...
This has been the hardest thing I have ever faced in my life - mom
was my best friend!
Anyway - I know I am WAY off topic here - I appreciate the great ideas!!
--

Val
http://www.flickr.com/photos/vals_photo1class
Just learning as I go.....