Exploring Fallen Graves: Capturing Beauty Amidst Foliage Growth and Overcoming Challenges

In this photo shoot, my objective was to capture the beauty of the fallen graves that I stumbled upon during my first visit to the site. The graves were being engulfed by foliage growth, which added to the overall effect of the photos. However, I encountered a few challenges during the shoot that ended up making the experience more interesting.

One challenge I faced was locating the graves. Initially, I had the wrong location when I googled directions and double-checked the surrounding cemeteries. After some exploration, I discovered that the graves were actually off the Warriston path along the Water of Leith path. This unplanned diversion to the new site ate into my scheduled time for the photo shoot. Although I spent less time than I originally planned, I realised that this wasn’t a major problem. In fact, it gave me the chance to explore the area and take note of other potential spots for future photo shoots.

Another challenge was that I had only brought a 50mm lens with my Canon EOS R6, which limited my ability to experiment with different perspectives of the graves. Shooting with a prime lens felt quite restrictive. To solve this problem, I am planning to bring my 24-70mm lens to grant me the ability to capture different perspectives with a wider angle. I will use a higher f-stop to capture all the details and get some environmental shots that give the viewer context for the photo series as a whole.

During the shoot, I considered how I would be printing these images onto Polaroids using the Polaroid printer. Given the smaller frame I had to work with, I opted to capture as much visual information as possible, using a deeper depth of field to ensure everything was in focus. This was a departure from my usual shooting style, but in retrospect, looking at the images, it was a good call. It will provide me with a diverse range of images for the whole series. For a future shoot, I’m planning to explore the area at night and use light painting to draw further interest from the viewer, inspired by the lighting painting from my mood board.

When shooting outdoors with natural lighting, one must consider the varying lighting conditions. During this particular shoot, the partly cloudy day caused the sun to dip behind the clouds, resulting in slightly underexposed images. For my next shoot, I will make sure to shoot in Raw, and I have already adjusted my settings to allow for either file type. As I believed I was shooting in Raw, I had intentionally used a lower exposure to retain visual information from areas where the sun was hitting with greater intensity. This allowed me to avoid blown-out highlights and fix any issues in post-processing, as seen in my contact sheet above.

Overall, despite encountering a few challenges, I was able to capture some great shots of the graves. I plan to return to the site next week or the week after to shoot from various perspectives and make fuller use of my camera’s capabilities. I’m also planning to visit other cemeteries in the area to find more interesting locations for future photo shoots.