Digital Photograhy

Going to Green-Wood Cemetery was a really interesting experience. It is a big space fill of beauty and sadness at the same time.

Comparing with what I learned  at the Brooklyn Historical Society and being at the cemetery, was seeing the difference of the rules that many years ago they had and how they have changed through the years. Before they talked about horses as main transportation. Now they talk about cars and motocycles.

They preserve all the areas very well, so it is a place where you don’t feel the time that has passed since the build. It is hard to believe that the cemetery has been there for over 100 years.

During our trip to the Brooklyn Historical Society, our group learned that part of the cemetery was farm land that eventually became land to be sold to build homes on in the early 1800s, but at some point must have been bought out to become part of Greenwood cemetery.

This made me think that the area has an extensive history as being intended for the well-off. Weren’t the poor basically living in the slums in the 19th century?
I thought it would be a good idea to try and capture some degree of luxury in my shots. Some of the statues and elaborate graves in the cemetery indicate that some of the people buried there were either very important or very affluent. Maybe both.

Going to Green-Wood cemetery was really a good experience because we got to take many interesting pictures; I really liked the trip because it really got a variety of subjects to choose from and therefore it was really easy to get nice shots. One of the things we got to see was the monument dedicated to the victims of the Brooklyn Theatre Fire, which we learned more about during our visit to the Brooklyn Historical Society. Also, when we got there we were given maps of the place and it reminded me of that map we saw at the BHS that showed the main recreational points of the Cemetery that was used as advertisement back in the 1800s.

My experience at Green-Wood was a very refreshing one. This was my first time there, and it was interesting. At first, I was kind of skeptical about the whole thing, because it is a cemetery, but actually Green-Wood is very beautiful, with a lot of historical moments behind it. I think that the photos I took of Green-Wood came out pretty well. I love how the range of photos vary.

I enjoyed my time at greenwood. I got a lot of shots and I even had to get a new memory card since I took so many pictures! I took many great shots and it was difficult to choose twenty or flickr but there are definitely two pictures I love that I want to print. To think a place that houses so much sadness and sorrow, it’s a really beautiful location and I’d love to go back there one day in the future.

Before going to the Greenwood Cemetery we went to the Brooklyn Historical Society library in order to learn some history about the place. In my group we learned about a tragical theatre fire where a lot of people died and a lot of their bodies were not even recognized so they were put in a mass grave with all the other bodies. It was a good experience because once we got to the cemetery, the following week  it created a different mood for me as a photographer because I thought about the tragedy and all the people that suffered so the images I was really looking forward  to take were full of darkness and sorrow, even thought I still took other ones.