Heading into a weekend at the beginning of February, 2024, snow was forecast for Friday night into Saturday morning. I had such a rough week at work that I was looking forward to sleeping late Saturday and Sunday. Cemeteries in the snow is an adventure I normally look forward to; however, I was pooped. I woke up at 8 a.m. Saturday (slept over two hours later than usual!), looked outside, and saw that about three inches of snow had fallen. It was still snowing. Do I venture out? Adventure calls. What the hey. I felt up to it. My wife and daughter wouldn’t even be awake for hours, so I decide ..read more

Faces – besides having been a great rock and roll band in the 70s, what do we know about OUR human faces? I wrote a blog on The Cemetery Traveler in 2015 called “Tombstone Faces” where I posted images like the ones you see here. I didn’t delve very deeply into the subject. Then in April, 2024, my fourteen-year-old daughter said something quite profound, which has prompted me to write this new piece on faces in the cemetery. We were sitting on the sofa watching her favorite serial killer series on television when she said, “You know how people sometimes see faces in inanimate objects ..read more

I am so wet. Just returned home after shooting cemeteries in the rain on this gloomy Saturday morning. I thought I dressed appropriately. Forty degrees, layers, rain parka. Umbrella to keep the rain off the cameras.  Why photograph cemeteries in the rain? I noticed some new images my friend Rachel posted on Instagram (@photosofcemeteries) – darkly brooding, slick and wet images of gravestones and monuments. Treacherous sky, the whole nine yards. I was a bit envious! I needed to get out there in some rain and see if I could produce something half as good! The work of other artists can sti ..read more

Oddly, after twenty years of hanging around in cemeteries, photographing, researching, and writing about them, I have only this past year learned about “the sad hour.” And I have my friend Sarah Amendola of Mockingbird Lane Artistries to thank for it. Sarah and I have exhibited and sold our cemetery-related art and art objects at various shows and events (both physical and online), like "Market of the Macabre," at Philadelphia's Laurel Hill Cemetery and the "Darksome Art and Craft Market." We've been friends for about ten years. Sarah creates jewelry and objets’ d’art that run toward the dark ..read more

This is my gratuitous Valentine’s Day post – you’ll just have to bear with me. Valentine’s Day is not the subject of the post, but apparently, there is some love involved. Tough love, maybe? You only hurt the ones you love? Again, bear with me (nyuk nyuk). If you’ve ever walked through a cemetery, you’ve probably seen stuffed toy animals on graves. Usually childrens’ graves. A common practice, leaving such an offering, a remembrance, perhaps. But in abandoned cemeteries?  Abandoned cemeteries are a form of dystopia, to be sure. The environment – meaning nature – is usually in the p ..read more

Okay, no more ChatGPT tricks. This is really me writing this. Really. No, wait, how would you know? Hopefully, my personality will suffuse the text to the degree that you’ll be able to tell its really me. I’m interested in my readers’ take on how I compare to AI, so please comment! I should have named this post, “Falling In the Snow in the Cemetery,” since that’s one of the things that occurred during the recent January snow week while I was shooting cemeteries. But more on that as we slide along. I’ve photographed cemeteries in the snow many times, and recounted those experiences on this blo ..read more

"Jesus, its cold out here ..." Intro: If you were weirded out by my previous post, “Photographing Cemeteries in the Snow: A Frozen Elegy,” which I admitted at the end was generated by the IA program ChatGPT, here’s a doozy. I thought I would test the ap by inserting the word “funny” into my request. To wit, write a “500 word funny essay on photographing cemeteries in the snow.” Here’s where we landed. Like my previous post, I just added photographs that I took last week during and after a couple snowstorms in the Philadelphia/south Jersey area. The title was ChatGPT's idea. Cal ..read more

Harleigh Cemetery, Camden, New Jersey Cemeteries are often regarded as serene spaces, where the echoes of the past reverberate through weathered tombstones and ancient trees. When winter blankets these sacred grounds with a pristine layer of snow, a unique and ethereal atmosphere emerges, providing photographers with a captivating canvas to explore. Calvary Cemetery, Cherry Hill, New Jersey The snow-covered landscape transforms cemeteries into a surreal and hauntingly beautiful realm. The soft white blanket conceals the intricate details of tombstones, creating a minimalist ..read more

Do You See What I See…? No, this is not a Christmas blog, even though I am posting it as 2023 ends and 2024 begins. Maybe its about seeing into the future. I don’t see the way you do, and you don’t see the way I do. Does that make either of us wrong? Not only is it healthy to see things from another’s point of view, but it can also help your creativity. What other people see I posted the image above on Instagram and Facebook recently and had a comment that said, “For all the time I’ve spent there, I’ve never seen this!” Even if the person HAD seen the stone, they would never have seen it, or ..read more

“On a dark desert highway…” as the Eagles' song goes. You can picture such an accident in a remote locale, but it actually occurred at a reasonable well-lit city intersection. I wrote this in the summer a few months ago, watching the Atlantic Ocean on a peaceful day, far removed from the grisly accident scene. So far from such pain. Near the Philadelphia International Airport is the intersection of Lindbergh Boulevard and 84th Street  - a highly trafficked area. When I lived near there, I used to pass through the intersection daily on my way to work. For about a dozen years, there was a ..read more