Beginning 2025 in the Churchyard

It has been way too cold to be renovating a house that has no heating so I took the opportunity to go out walking with my camera. There wasn’t a lot of snow, frost or fog that I’d been hoping to photograph so I went with chasing the light, which was really beautiful. I’ve always felt weird about taking photos in churchyards because I never want to be disrespectful, but there are so many interesting stories being told there. I hadn’t got a plan in my head of anywhere else to go so I parked in front of Halesowen church with a limit of 45 minutes.

As soon as I walked through the gates I could see that things were beginning to grow again, and I couldn’t help thinking that it was ironic that the first signs of spring life I’ve seen are in the graveyard. The image on the left is a good reflection of the light I was catching and I took a pleasurable 5 minutes going back to old habits of playing with the beautiful f2.4 at 70mm and seeing what results I could get with the depths of field.

This is another of my favourite nature images from the walk. Just look at those stunning rays the camera was able to pick up in the top left corner. I’ve never seen it capture anything like this before but it looks amazing. I thought this was a fun little backlit image and the only thing I struggled with was balancing the saturation and contrast to keep the image clean.

I didn’t get many successful images from here but I did spot lots of opportunities for my next walk. I do wish I had a bigger zoom lens as I never want to walk anywhere that isn’t a proper path because you never know what you’re walking on, especially when a lot of the older graves have collapsed. I also prefer to focus on graves that are no longer tended as I like to wonder who these people were.

After Halesowen church I drove up to Cradley church, a place I’ve never been before. It was really quite and much more eerie in comparison, as Halesowen churchyard is a popular cut through and dog walking path. By the time I had parked up it was much more dull and cloudy, but still good for a walk. The image I got above was a good example of the little spots of light I was looking for.

While this isn’t a particularly good or interesting image, it’s a good example of the light and the condition of a lot of the graves in this area. A lot is crumbling and overgrown, but there are also buds coming up so I’ll be interested what these are going to look like in the spring. It’s beautiful to see nature taking of the area.

I really like the layering that you get in churchyards, and the railings that you get around some of the grave markers - they’re fascinating. I could spend ages framing up the rows and rows of graves and statues and playing with the depth.

These images are little cuties that I took simply because I thought they were sweet. I really want a birdfeeder like the one on the right, but hoping to attract more real birds than the wreath… It’s nice, though, that even though it’s as battered as everything else in the churchyard it’s still persevering and serving its purpose. The flower pot in the middle I thought hit the sun really nicely and had enough space and texture around it to create a sweet image, plus I like the little berry in the front as a tiny pop of colour.

I almost missed this little guy; I just happened to turn around and spotted him looking at me. My battery was already in the red but I was not going to miss the opportunity to photograph him. Although the quality of the Nikon Z7 is insane, I don’t know if it’s my eyes (they’re crap and I wear glasses) but it was really hard to get the cats face clear. I’m still super happy with what I came away with and although the cat is backlit which is not my favourite lighting it looks nice and ethereal.

For my last image I had just enough time to snap this before my battery ran out and I thought this angel was so sweet nestles among the wreath - a nice, peaceful finish to a great exploration. I’m not sure I will go back to the Cradley graveyard until spring when I can see how it’s budding and changing, but I hope to be back to Halesowen soon.