Fine art photography of the Last Angels who watch over us.

Long entranced by cemetery statuary, I fell in love with these last angels, watching over the fields of the dead. These images were shot in cemeteries up and down the east coast, although my first and favorite is Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Va.

In the mid-90s, when I began shooting these, I was using Kodak Ektachrome Infrared color film (EIR). I loved the look of EIR, because the false color effect was, to me, reminiscent of B & W, only in color and with additional nuances. The infrared sensitivity of EIR allowed visualization of subtle differences that would otherwise be visually similar – the effect of wear and mosses on the stones, for example.

EIR produced false-color images, since it is sensitive from near-UV through the colors our eyes perceive, and into the near-infrared (IR) spectrum. The effect of compressing the wider range into an image our eyes can see produces a color shift. The final image predominant color is also modified by the amount of reflected IR light present.

However, a number of years ago Kodak stopped making EIR, so I switched to digital – at first with an Olympus 2020, which has a poor IR cut filter, and then to a Nikon D70 that had been converted by removing the IR cut filter.

The effect, with the right color balance, is very similar to EIR, with similar color shirt, although more pronounced IR effects.