Père Lachaise Cemetery

Père Lachaise Cemetery is the largest cemetery in the city of Paris, France (44 hectares (110 acres) though there are larger cemeteries in the city's suburbs. Père Lachaise is in the 20th arrondissement, and is reputed to be the world's most visited cemetery, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors annually to the graves of those who have enhanced French life over the past 200 years. It is also the site of three World War I memorials.

The cemetery is on Boulevard de Ménilmontant. The Paris Métro station Philippe Auguste on line 2 is next to the main entrance, while the station called Père Lachaise, on both lines 2 and 3, is 500 metres away near a side entrance. Many tourists prefer the Gambetta station on line 3, as it allows them to enter near the tomb of Oscar Wilde and then walk downhill to visit the rest of the cemetery.

Père Lachaise is still an operating cemetery and accepting new burials. However, the rules to be buried in a Paris cemetery are rather strict: people may be buried in one of these cemeteries if they die in the French capital city or if they lived there. Being buried in Père Lachaise is even more difficult nowadays as there is a waiting list: very few plots are available. The gravesites at Père Lachaise range from a simple, unadorned headstone to towering monuments and even elaborate mini chapels dedicated to the memory of a well-known person or family. A lot of the tombs are about the size and shape of a phone booth, with just enough space for a mourner to step inside, kneel to say a prayer, and leave some flowers.

Oscar Wilde's Grave

Edith Piaf's Grave

Jim Morrison's Grave

Dedications to Jim Morrison on a tree next to his grave

The cemetery manages to squeeze an increasing number of bodies into a finite and already crowded space. One way it does this is by combining the remains of multiple family members in the same grave. At Père Lachaise, it is not uncommon to reopen a grave after a body has decomposed and inter another coffin. Some family mausoleums or multi-family tombs contain dozens of bodies, often in several separate but contiguous graves. Shelves are usually fitted out to accommodate them.

Tribute to Flight AF447

In relatively recent times, Père Lachaise has adopted a standard practice of issuing 30-year leases on gravesites, so that if a lease is not renewed by the family, the remains can be removed, space made for a new grave, and the overall deterioration of the cemetery minimized. Abandoned remains are boxed, tagged and moved to Aux Morts ossuary, in Père Lachaise cemetery. Plots can be bought in perpetuity, for 50, 30 or 10 years, the last being the least expensive option. Even in the case of mausoleums and chapels, coffins are most of the time below ground.

There are a large number of famous people buried at Père Lachaise cemetery including Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf, Stephane Grappelli, Marcel Marceau, Jim Morrison, Michel Petrucciani and Gioachino Rossini.

Abbotshall Parish Church

Abbotshall Parish church is in my home town of Kirkcaldy in Scotland and contains some graves of my distant family. Around the middle of the seventeenth century it was decided that a new church was needed to ease the pressure on the Old Kirk in Kirkcaldy, and thus the parish of Abbotshall was created. The land was on the Abbotshall Estate which was owned at the time by Sir Andrew Ramsay, and became a Burgh of Barony. The first church is said to have been built in 1679, although there is a reused date stone from 1674 on the present church. There is no record of the appearance of the church before it was rebuilt in 1788, and the rebuild is the church which stands today. In 1876 the parish was absorbed into the Burgh of Kirkcaldy. There is a graveyard containing some good examples of historic gravestones and a mort house.

Cryptic Message

It's Halloween so a picture of a graveyard is entirely appropriate. This lovely old cemetery in the centre of Georgetown in Penang is interesting to wander through and has a large range of differently designed tombstones. I like the cryptic epitaph written on this headstone:

Erected by his shipmates and friends
Father in thy gracious keeping
Leave we now thy servant sleeping

Have a great Halloween.

Goodbye to Udbye

This is the grave of Martin Andreas Udbye at the Nidaros Cathedral graveyard in Trondheim, Norway. Martin Andreas Udbye (June 18, 1820 – January 10, 1889, Trondhjem) was a Norwegian composer and organist. He was born in Trondheim, Norway to Ole Jonsen Tollrorskar Udbye (1785-1856) and Birgitte Øien (1781-1866). Udbye was employed as a teacher at Domsognets primary school in Trondheim, where he worked from 1838 until 1844 when he became the organist at Church Hospital in Trondheim. In 1851, Udbye took a trip to Leipzig, where he concentrated on organ and composition. The following year he was back in his hometown, where he was hired as a music teacher at the Trondheim Cathedral School.

Largely self-taught, he produced an impressive output of diverse and complex works including the first Norwegian opera, Fredkulla. Part of Norway's first opera was promoted locally in Trondheim during 1858 and met with enthusiasm.

Nidaros Cathedral is a Church of Norway cathedral located in the city of Trondheim in Sør-Trøndelag county, Norway. It was the cathedral of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Nidaros from its establishment in 1152 until its abolition in 1537. Since the Reformation, it has been the cathedral of the Lutheran bishops of Trondheim (or Nidaros) in the Diocese of Nidaros. The architectural style of the cathedral is Romanesque and Gothic. Historically it was an important destination for pilgrims coming from all of Northern Europe. It is the northernmost medieval cathedral in the world.

Graveyard Greenery

This old Christian graveyard in the center of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia lies overgrown and run down providing an atmospheric environment of tropical crumbling, decay. It's fascinating to explore these types of abandoned urban areas which provide opportunities for HDR photography. 
Urban exploration (often shortened as urbex or UE) is the examination of the normally unseen or off-limits parts of urban areas or industrial facilities. Urban exploration is also commonly referred to as infiltration, although some people consider infiltration to be more closely associated with the exploration of active or inhabited sites. It may also be referred to as "draining" (when exploring drains) "urban spelunking", "urban caving", or "building hacking". 

The nature of this activity presents various risks, including both physical danger and the possibility of arrest and punishment. Many, but not all, of the activities associated with urban exploration could be considered trespassing or other violations of local or regional laws, including—but not limited to—invasion of privacy and certain broadly-interpreted anti-terrorism laws.

Six Feet Under

These rows of old headstones are in an Christian graveyard in central Kuala Lumpur known as the Birch Road Cemetery. This cemetery has a very large Chinese section but this older part of the cemetery was retained as a Christian burial area. I like the rundown and delapidated feel of this graveyard which adds a very atmospheric feeling to your photos particularly with all the overgrown, lush undergrowth and tropical plants which are obviously thriving on the rich nutrients of the soil!

Final Resting Place

This Chinese grave in the Birch Road Christian Cemetery in central Kuala Lumpur offers a very peaceful resting place beneath a lovely old tree. This small graveyard has been left abandoned for many years and is a wonderful place to capture these atmospheric images. The rich tropical greens of the trees, the overgrown undergrowth and the dilapidated grave stones adds to the overall atmosphere of the place.

St. Heinrich Church and Cemetery

Beckenried is a small town on the banks of Lake Lucerne in Switzerland and this image shows the beautiful St. Heinrich Church and Cemetery. In the background you can just see a cable car which is the longest cable car in central Switzerland bringing tourists up to Klewenalp, a major holiday resort.

R.I.P.

The Birch Road Christian Cemetery in Kuala Lumpur is a wonderful place to wander through and take photographs. The place is run down and overgrown offering a multitude of moody and atmospheric images portraying decay, collapse, death and destruction. I don't know why but I really like the place and although you have to suffer from the many mosquitos that inhabit this place you usually get some worthwhile images, particularly if you are shooting multiple brackets for some HDR post processing.

This shot is a normal 3 bracket shot post processed in Nik Software's HDR Efex Pro, then converted in Silver Efex Pro 2 and the colour recovered in the red lettering for effect.

Rain Tree

This magnificent rain tree is situated in central Kuala Lumpur in the small Christian Birch Road Cemetery. It is so nice to see some mature trees like this still standing and has probably only been spared from development due to the burial ground it sits in. These trees with their large spread of branches and foliage provide welcome shade from the tropical sun.

Birch Road Christian Cemetery

Once again I continue my morbid theme on cemeteries. To me, however, they provide an atmospheric and peaceful setting for photography and particularly so when combined with HDR photography which seems to add to the mood of the images. 

The Birch Road Cemetery is a Christian Cemetery which lies just to the north of the Kwong Tong Chinese Cemetery and sits in the corner between Jalan Maharajalela and Jalan Dewan Bahasa.  Birch Road originally ran from the small roundabout at the end of Petaling Street, now enlarged to Bulatan Merdeka, in front of the Chinese Assembly Hall, past Stadium Merdeka and Victoria Institution to the Edinburgh Circle, no longer a circle but a large junction with an underpass. Birch Road is now Jalan Maharajalela, named after the local Malay chief who was, ironically, involved in the killing of James W. W. Birch, a British Resident in Perak, in 1875.

Video slideshow can be see here.

Kwong Tong Cemetery

The Kwong Tong Cemetery is a Chinese cemetery located in central Kuala Lumpur which covers around 343 acres and houses the largest number and oldest graves in the city. It has been in existence for 112 years and is the final resting place of the prominent city pioneer Yap Ah Loy.

In 2007 the Kwong Tong Cemetery was renamed “Heritage Park” and landscaping turned the park into one of the few city’s “green lungs”. In addition a cultural museum was built housing a comprehensive collection of information related to the prominent Chinese pioneers.

Rest in Peace

There's a strange air of peace and tranquility in a cemetery. Even in the heart of a bustling city such as Paris a few steps into the grounds of the Montparnasse Cemetery provides a reflective environment to ponder life, death and of course photography. Interesting shapes and designs of tombstones provide a wonderful opportunity for interesting photos.