Tree Shaped Tombstones. Afton Minnesota.

There are few communities from the late 19th and early 20th centuries where "Tree Shaped Tombstones" can't be found.  Oh, in any given town the cemetery may or may not contain them.  Local taste, cemetery association rules, what product line the local undertaker was pushing, sometimes you find them, sometimes not.

A particular category for me are the many small cemeteries that were once on the edge of a village but are now in the tiny old core of a modern suburb.  You go past mile after mile of tract housing with its random serpentine roads and eventually end up in a tiny pocket of older houses and businesses.

Here is the cemetery in Afton, Minnesota.

One odd thing about photographing these monuments is how different they look with different angles of light.  I do sometimes bump the color filter up on the wider shots but still, the difference between that and the close up is striking.

It may also be that the detail view here is on a more weather exposed side.  With this close in focus you can see the structure of the stone, made up as it is of a mass of compact fossilized creatures from eons past.