I visited a graveyard yesterday

I visited a graveyard yesterday. The brown grass crackled under my feet in the 90 degree heat, and I didn't quite get what I was hoping to find. A Melville quote that I always hated..."Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope"...was not evident. Instead I was drawn to a large stone statue that appeared to look to be of a native American chief from behind, and turned out to be a local Polish Priest named Marianus Matkowski whose congregation obviously loved him. His marker is on a slight crown of a hill, surrounded by towering firs, and graves arranged circularly around his. The deer scat was thick in one shady spot, and a hawk called periodically at me from the tallest tree. I don't go to graveyards because I don't believe spirits would hang around their spent bodies of dust, but this time it did feel spiritual. Not dead, but alive. I can only find a mention of Marianus in a 1959 directory of Priest of Polish descent, but I know there must be a story concerning such an expensive grave marker. (Update below)

These were done with IR converted 5D, and the Nikkor-P.C 55mm f3.5 ai'd micro lens

 

Looking south from Marianus - at the time I shot this it looked like a tunnel of light

 

 

Looking East

 

UPDATE: FROM THE PLAGUE - MARIANUS WAS THE FOUNDER OF THE CEMETERY

 

VIEW FROM BEHIND

Near the entrance was this massive blood red stone crucifix

 

 

One of my First "Real" Cameras

 

Meet the Argus C3 (well over two million units of this model were sold)

 

 When I first got into photography in the mid 1960's, my father owned some really nice cameras, but didn't let me use them. He had a 6x9 Zeiss Super Ikonta, Kodak Retina IIIc, & a Voigtlander Vito. I purchased a used bakelite plastic camera called the "Brownie" that shot 620 film at a garage sale for about 25 cents, and 100 rolls of expired Agfa 120 film for one dollar from a camera store.

 

I would then transfer the 120 film to the 620 reels in the dark, shoot in the brownie and soup them in a stainless steel daylight tank in the bathroom. Initially all I could do was contact prints between a big piece of window glass and some tempered Masonite. (I think they were about 6 x 4.5cm prints).

 

I financed my photography and optical hobbies through multiple lawn jobs. After a few years, at about age ten, my father bought me my first "real" camera as a birthday or Christmas present.

It was made in Ann Arbor Michigan, and affectionately called "the brick" by it's literally millions of owners. It featured a die-cast metal body with heavily chromed accents and edges.

It seemed that it's primary purpose was to survive a fall, but the optics were actually pretty good. I was more determined than ever to get a more elegant, better quality camera after his gift.

All photos are shot with the Canon 5DS-R and Nikkor-P.C 55mm f3.5 ai'd lens

 

 

Whites Bridge

 This beautiful bridge no longer exists. After serving it's purpose crossing the Flat river since 1870 near Smyrna Michigan an arsonist burnt it down in July 2013. These Photos were taken a few years earlier.
It took until 2021 to raise the money, and rebuild the bridge - which I haven't seen.  A wiki page contains more of the story here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whites_Bridge

 From the west looking east during a light rain

 

From the north looking to the south during peak fall colors

Looking through the single lane bridge towards the hills south of the bridge

 

Looking north from the south side of the bridge in winter

Infrared

 Infrared Photography is something I had not explored until recently. There are companies that convert digital cameras to shoot in various pre-determined wavelengths of infrared. Usually they range from about 500 - 850 nanometers for digital photography. The lower numbers have altered colors to visible light, and the higher (800-850) tend to be black and white only. I purchased an old (classic 5D) camera that was converted to IR at 665nm, or "enhanced" color.

Infrared does interesting things to a blue sky, or green foliage.

and when converted to black and white makes the sky go black

With the "enhanced" conversion you can adjust the color quite dramatically