I returned to one of my favorite locations, today - the Smith-Appleby House in Smithfield. This is the historic cemetery on the property. It contains the graves of at least three centuries of Smiths and Appleby's. The oldest stones in the foreground are now illegible and date back at least to the 18th century and quite possibly to the 17th. The house, as mentioned before, was built in the late 1600s. The further back you go in this shot, the further forward you move in time, as evidenced by the increasingly modern stones towards the back of the cemetery.
Post processing was my standard black and white conversion. I started with a shadow recovery filter in Topaz Adjust. This had the very pleasant effect of smoothing the blur in the background. The photo was intentionally shot with a very shallow depth of field, and that filter really enhanced the background effect. I then did the black and white conversion using a gradient map in color blend mode. From there, levels were slightly adjusted, and I also increased the contrast a bit. The top layer is the typical sepia photo filter.
This is really amazing. I just love anything historic and old graveyards really make me sit and think of all the people who have been before us... thank you for sharing.
I find old cemeteries quite interesting places to spend time... some of the tombstones have rather curious inscriptions. Love the patina of the weathered stones as well. Great processing on this!
@victorypuzzle@calm@janets Thanks, everyone! I enjoy historic cemeteries as well. We've quite a few in Rhode Island that go back to the 1700s, and the inscriptions can be fascinating. (Before about 1780, internment was typically on the person's property, and not in a cemetery, so we don't have many graves earlier than that.)
