A few years ago I was looking into some family history online and stumbled across a great great great uncle that had lived in Yreka, a John Stout, and was pleasantly surprised that he was buried here. I knew that some of my Mom’s family, the Stouts, had moved to Klamath Falls but was unaware that anyone had come to Yreka. I assume John Stout came here seeking gold during the gold rush era.
On July 12, 2013 Bob Vishneski one of the writers for Photographylife.com wrote a great article on photographing cemeteries. This article inspired me to once again visit the cemetery here in Yreka. It had been at least 2-3 years since I had been over photographing the local cemeteries. So after my mandatory Sunday nap, I decided to spend Sunday evening walking around the Evergreen Cemetery.
This cemetery has graves that date back to the early 1800s. There are a lot of great sculptured marble and granite headstones and pillars. There is also a variety of other headstone materials from wood to metal.
Because photographing headstones is a form of portrait photography, I brought my 50mm f/1.8G lens. I chose this lens, one so I could get in more light since it was dusk and two so I could isolate the subjects better. I used apertures between f/1.8 and f/3.5 with most shots taken with an aperture of around f/2.0.
I’ve included in the gallery the other images from the evening of photographing the cemetery. On my way home the moon was very bright and full so I made a detour to photograph it as well.
I hope to return to this cemetery soon to finish photographing what I missed. There is also another 1800s cemetery out in little Shasta that I want to go and photograph in the neat future. I hope you enjoy these photographs. Thanks.