Retired January 29, 2020
This crucifix stands by a derelict church beside St Mary’s Cemetery, a little Catholic cemetery south of Derwent, Alberta.
Full disclosure: This image is photoshopped. The original has a broken arm.
Want to see the original?
(See map)
St Mary’s Cemetery falls under the jurisdiction of Holy Name Parish.
Catholic cemeteries (there are 5 in the Parish) are owned by the Parish, but operated and maintained by the local county, in this case The County of Two Hills.
Return to archived cover images
From the webmaster:
Why this photo?
It was an accident.
I was designing this new website while teaching myself the capabilities and requirements of WordPress.
A dramatic “parallax” feature image on the front page seemed like a good idea.
“Parallax” is an image that remains fixed while the rest of the page scrolls up over it. It’s the one impressive thing this particular WordPress theme can do.
I intended to use the Parish logo, but at the time I did not have a high resolution copy to do the job.
So it would have to be a photo.
A nice photo of something in the Parish,
not some anonymous royalty-free download.
Definitely not a boring snapshot of the front of a church.
The Parish office does not have a folder of high-res images to choose from.
I scanned through my own meagre collection for something to use temporarily, thinking, “maybe a crucifix would be nice”.
I had photos from a recent tour of nearby cemeteries
(another project…).
Well, cemeteries have crucifixes!
Mannville Cemetery 
St Joseph’s Cemetery
This one seemed like a good candidate:
Without really looking at it, I quickly plugged in this photo from St Mary’s Cemetery:
WordPress automatically cropped it.
Something like this:
A frustrating couple of hours later I had cropped and edited a version with the proper dimensions for the front page cover image.
I changed the font colours to complement the photo.
It was a startling image.
So why not keep it?
We couldn’t keep it because WordPress insisted on cropping out parts of the crucifix. It was interesting, it was dramatic but it wasn’t proper.
A crucifix must be shown in its entirety.
Why not fix it? It’s already Photoshopped, isn’t it?
I tried.
The original photo, taken in portrait mode is simply not wide enough.
No amount of cropping will make it the 2:1 “aspect ratio” (width vs height) to fit the WordPress “feature image” cover page feature.
I need to drive out to St. Mary’s
and re-take this photo in landscape mode.
And the trouble with that idea:
As I write this in January 2020, it’s -25C outside and not getting any warmer.
That will be a summertime project.
Return to archived cover images
And what about the little church?
I don’t know.
Maybe in the future we can include its story in our history pages.
-Roger
Return to archived cover images
Catholic Parish of the Holy Name