Sometimes the best ideas are the ones you have when you get home. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve written some about creative vision for my images – and this is definitely one of those images where I saw it in my head before I went and shot it. I wasn’t completely sure how I’d want to frame the church from the cemetery side, but once I got there and noticed Orion rising behind the trees, I simply worked that into what I had in mind. On this particular night, however, I was a little off my game. It was a little before Christmas when I shot this, and really cold out. As I was walking around the church to the back, I started noticing piles of bear poop laying around, which I didn’t think much of at first, until I kept seeing them! This of course heightened my sense of awareness, and I subsequently uncovered my nose and ears – and on queue, I started hearing something knocking around in the woods. Probably a racoon – most bears are taking long naps that time of year – but what’s with all the bear poop?? This is everything going through my mind.
Anyway, I found my shot and lit the inside of the church with a small light panel. I then decided I needed some light among the headstones, so I just chose a spot arbitrarily. After checking the camera I adjusted it a little bit, but it looked good enough so I went with it. While I was waiting for the long exposures to complete, I was pacing back and forth on the pathway – mostly because I was cold, but also because I kept hearing things, and I didn’t want to be surprised by a curious creature, wondering what the unusual noises were (namely, me). As I was pacing, I spotted a small wreath at the edge of one of the headstones, which caught my attention: Willie and Fred Le Quire, brothers. Both died young – Willie was few months from turning 2 years old when he passed; Fred was 42. I can’t say I know anything about the two, except that the Le Quire family was quite prevalent in Cades Cove history, and clearly someone still thought of them. At the base of the headstone was an inscription that struck me, “They live with us in memory and will forever more”.
My session wrapped up and so I loaded all my things and rode my bicycle out of the Cove. The next day I was looking through my images and it occurred to me – why had I not lit the wreath?? I stood there and looked at the whole thing for quite a while, but for whatever reason, the idea escaped me. I thought about going back and reshooting the whole thing, but the weather was bad afterwards until I was certain surely the park service had removed the wreath by then (I have no idea if they do this or not, but would guess they do to keep things tidy in the graveyards).
In the image above, this particular headstone is the one visually closest to the church and if you look closely, you can barely make out the wreath.
Well this concludes my winter series of night images in the Smokies! I hope you’ve enjoyed it. Next week we’ll return to the day time and will stay there for a bit to talk about travel and the Smoky Mountains!
See you then!
–Dan Thompson