Tribute To Departed Loved Ones | #Monomad Challenge

In place of the All Saints' and All Souls' Day celebrations, the Philippines will get to enjoy a long weekend, and with that, we can visit our departed loved ones together with family. And despite the heavy rain that has pounded most of the country, still many people visited churches to pray for the souls of their departed and paid their respects to the graves of their loved ones with flowers and candles.

It has been almost two years since the pandemic prohibit people to visit their loved ones in cemeteries and this time around as lives gradually went back to normal so with the festive atmosphere of memorial parks. For this content, I will share the typical scenes of cemeteries during All Souls' Day. I turned these photos into mono which I think is appropriate for the celebration and my entry as well for the #monomad challenge of @monochromes.

To begin with, the above photo is of an angel statue right at the entrance of the graveyard standing on one of the pillars of the gates. Going inside the cemetery I saw individuals who are lighting candles and offering flowers in the tomb of their departed loved ones, some even stayed there for a couple of hours.

While in the center of the cemetery there is this big cross where you can also light candles which most cemeteries have in the Philippines wherein most people go directly instead just like in the photo below.

On the other hand, other than people visiting their departed loved ones vendors also are busy during the celebration as they sell candles and flowers going after to individuals to peddle.

Moreover, more people are still coming into the cemetery, most probably these individuals came from the city and are native to this town but seeing that it was as a non-working day and happened to fall on a weekend it may likely come across in their thoughts to pay a visit of their departed loved ones.

The above photos were all captured by yours truly using Nikon D5600 with an 18-140mm Nikkor lens.