I took many photographs for this project in 2012; you can find 3 sets of them on the As We Are Now series page. This is a collection of some of my favorites from the year. They were taken in upstate New York and Texas.

In 2012 I found myself exploring the subject of modern cemetery folk art from a somewhat broader (and hopefully deeper) perspective. While I’m still very interested in the subject matter itself, I’m more sensitive these days to context – to the settings that may surround the folk art I’m photographing. This project is also creating a record of how this folk art appears around the time it is created. As a visit to the older section of any cemetery will bear out, time and the elements inevitably take their toll on this kind of folk art.

Early 2012 also featured Nikon’s introduction of a special new camera – the D800. Along with its sibling the D800E this camera offers a full-sized 36 megapixel sensor that provides much better resolution than the predecessor D700 – which I had previously been using for this project. It took me months to actually get the camera (it was very popular on introduction), and it then took me a while to get a handle on how to best use it and to find the best lenses to take advantage of its capabilities. This will explain why all of these images were created in the second half of 2012.

As my familiarity with both this project and the D800 grows, I’m looking forward to working further on this series in 2013.

(Clicking on any image will open a slide show.)

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All photographs are © Dave Higgins and “Dave Higgins Photography,” 2013; all rights reserved.