Spring is my favorite time of the year, affording me the perfect opportunity to take a few pictures of this eastern North Carolina river city, Washington, as Winter transitions into Spring. Consequently, I often take some time to make a few images of the town that I consider my home base. This was my mission for about 1 1/2 hours on Sunday, April 3, 2011, just before the sun set. The best part of that 1 1/2 hours is what is known by photographers as the golden hour - the hour the sun sinks low upon the horizon casting golden light and long shadows.

    In 1 1/2 hours, how many stops can you make? Not many, so I hit just a couple of high spots: Oakdale Cemetery and along Washington's vaulted waterfront / nature walk.

    I began my time measuring the landscape and making its image under the guise of taking a walk. Mine and my wife's favorite two locations in Washington is Oakdale Cemetery and Washington's downtown waterfront. With my wife absent, as she was showing one of our rentals, I chose to begin with the City of Washington Cemetery.
    The three main reasons we enjoy this locale for walking is threefold: It is quiet, the hilly terrain, and its natural, and somewhat unnatural, beauty. We usually power-walk the paved and unpaved, often grassy, lanes amid the tombstones and monuments, often askew, and it just seems so peaceful.

     The left side of my brain loves the many angles blending together with the low light: Above. The Confederate-War-Dead-Monument sits upon one such slight knoll that populates the undulating terrain of Oakdale Cemetery: Below.


    As one can surmise, from these pictures, Oakdale Cemetery's terrain suggests that this is the perfect place to lay the town folk to rest: Above and below.

    The golden light of the last hour of the day is beginning to kick in on these two last pictures of loved ones' final resting place: Above and below.