No matter what it is that you are taking a photograph of, you are going to want that photo to be a good one. Genealogists who are visiting their ancestor’s graves in cemeteries may want to take a picture of the gravestone. Here are some tips you can use to make that photo come out a little bit better.
Personally, I know very little about photography. If I wanted to travel to various cemeteries, and take photos of the gravestones of my ancestors, I would require some help. I probably would see if I could hire one of my friends, who happens to be knowledgable about photography, and convince the friend to come with my when I visit the cemetery.
If you don’t happen to be a skilled photographer, (and you don’t have a friend or family member who is one), don’t panic. There are some things that you can do that will help your photo of your ancestor’s gravestones to turn out rather well.
First, you may want to clean off the gravestone. Make sure you are doing this the right way (which means in a way that will not actually cause damage to the stone). One quick trick that tends to give good results to many people is to use water. Adding water to the front of the stone can cause the carved letters and numbers to “pop” a bit better in your photo.
Since your subject is the gravestone itself, you may want to take some steps to remove distracting things from the background of your photo. In some cases, this could mean editing your photos, and cropping out the tree, power line, or parking lot that you can see in the background of the shot.
Or, if you want to plan ahead, you could bring something with you that can block the background before the photo is taken. You could bring a large cloth that can be used as a backdrop. You might be able to make use of a piece of folded cardboard, like the kind that students use to display information about their Science Fair Projects on. These are just a few ideas. Make sure whatever you use is a solid color, and non-distracting.
Check the weather forecast before you visit the cemetery. For best results, you are going to want to be there on a day that has nice weather. You want the sky to be blue, and the sun to be shining. Good lighting will help the details that are on the gravestone to be more apparent in the photo. In some cases, you may want to plan to arrive at the graveyard at a certain time of day, or a certain time of year, in order to get the best potential results from lighting.
It is a good idea to take more than one photo of a gravestone. Take one that shows the entire stone, and several that focus on the smaller details that are carved into it. You may want to take a photo that shows that your ancestor was buried next to his or her spouse, or near other family members.
Since you cannot be certain that a particular shot will come out as you expected it to, you will need to take multiple shots from every angle that interests you. If you are lucky, one photo among them will be exactly what you hoped for!
Image by Natalie Maynor on Flickr