This post is about our visit to Highgate village, which I'll divide into two sections, the first for Waterlow Park, walked through on our way between transportation and the main destination : Highgate Cemetery.
Part 1 : Waterlow Park.
These 4 photos were taken with my previous smartphone : Cubot X18. They were backed-up onto my google and I finally took care of editing them, first on google to reduce a bit of the light, and then further edited with Gimp 2.10.18.
Part 2 : Highgate cemetery.
After a few minutes wait in line to get it, we paid our fees and headed into the cemetery itself. The overcast sky, and shade from the trees made it difficult to get the best quality photos in the numbers that I shot, especially that I hadn't taken half of my gear with me from France for this trip (nor would I for any, it's too bulky and heavy).
However, strolling this cemetery - whose admittance fees help for its preservation - I saw more variety in tombs compared to my home town, and far more incursion from nature into these graves and memorials for the dead.
Another difference was a public WC, right outside of the field of view of this first photo - taken with my bridge Fuji HS10 camera, like the majority of the following photos.
There were all edited with Gimp 2.10 but I don't know which build, some time in November 2019, shortly after our return home.
So, I turned this first one into a piece of art, by altering it like a sepia, but with exacerbating the yellow and temperature - and sadly, I couldn't avoid this photo-bomber who stood there even after we'd left this corner.
This second photo wasn't super interesting in itself, but turned into a kaleidoscope, it gained greatly, though it doesn't show the original elements much. The green are evidently all the trees, and those black shapes are those of the tombstones.
In the third, turned into a black & white, I show the outlines of a statue, just across from the WC and the location of the first photo. I made the contrast even more pronounced, but not overly so.
This leaf is for a 'plants man' grave, and went by the name of ...Beacher, a name meaning 'near the beech trees' ! I thought it was touching and so fitting!
Nature and a tomb, almost as one...
We know cemeteries for their tombs, and all that we attach to death, but they're also full of life. We saw a fox, who got scared when another person tried to rush and photograph it, so I didn't even get to lift my camera, and we saw some birds, but what I felt more special was this ladybug.
These tombs were completely overtaken by fallen foliage - and rendered into black and white, with extra contrast, and altered shadows and highlights, which I also did on the subsequent statue photo
back into color, this angel was striking in its poise - this is one of two shots, the other showing from the front but not as astronishing.
This angel, however, pointing upward, was more interesting from the front.
I didn't take my full time setting up my Fuji for Karl Marx' tomb, so editing it to get rid of the massive darkness that resulted from my haste (hurrying to leave Highgate as it was about to close), I snapped it again with my phone, edited first with google's back up photo, and then again with Gimp 2.10.18
We remained in this cemetery about 2 hours, and didn't even finish this East portion of it, because it's so big, and we lacked the time before closing. Extra difficulties due to the cold and humidity, whilst exploring, looking but not always immortalizing every single tomb, plant or scene, still yielded many photos, from which I selected the above, all reduced in size so not to display 5-13 MB images that would take far too long to upload.
If you want to know more about the cemetery and the Waterlow Park, in Highgate Village, London, follow the links to their official websites.
I hope you enjoyed this second trip with me, though it was a couple days before Holland Park and Kyoto Garden, glimpsed in my previous entry.
No comments:
Post a Comment