Gravestone Pillar

I was out driving around on Saturday, looking for something interesting to shoot after doing some shopping. I ran across this tiny old cemetery in the middle of the country. There were gravestones with dates back to the mid-1850s. A couple of them stood out--a 23 year old woman who died in 1866 (in childbirth, maybe?), a stone enscribed 'Baby, son of W.A. & J. Lumley' who died at the age of 6 months old (they hadn't named him yet?) in 1880. There were modern trinkets left at this gravestone, for some reason.

I took this shot at the base of the pillar looking up into the perfectly blue sky. I debated whether to post this one, or the one I took at f8.0, which had the whole pillar in focus. I thought the composition of this one was slightly better; I missed all the flowers at the bottom on the other photo.

I may go back on a warmer day and shoot some more stones; I was out for not quite ten minutes, and my fingers and ears were starting to freeze.

When I got back home from shooting these pictures, I learned a deranged man had shot Representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, along with at least 18 other people. While I was in a cemetery. I was a bit spooked.