"Day at the Notre Dame Grotto & Lakes"

"Day at the Notre Dame Grotto & Lakes", a set on Flickr.

For my photography project, I exposed what it would be like to spend a day at the Grotto at Notre Dame. Arriving at 6:20am, I watched the sunrise over St. Joseph’s lake at 7:02. It took the sun 19 minutes to fully rise above the clouds sitting on the horizon and become fully visible. At 7:21, when the sun had fully risen, St. Joseph’s lake was quite choppy but St. Mary’s lake was as calm as glass.

The average person spent between three and five minutes at the Grotto. The majority of visitors did not give a donation in the collection box. As a matter of fact, no students donated money before lighting a candle. Very few visitors did. The average adult visitor lit two candles. The average student lit one. Eleven people stopped to place their hand on the rock from the Grotto at Lourdes and say a prayer. Of the visitors that came to the Grotto, about ninety percent of them knelt down to say a prayer after lighting a candle. Four people prayed with a rosary.

At 12:09 an elderly man rode up the path toward the Grotto on a blue and silver bicycle. He opened a cabinet beneath where the candles are kept and pulled out a pair of blue gloves. He began disposing of the burnt out candles and threw away the wooden sticks used to light the candles that were used up. He then pulled out a broom and began sweeping away the ashes, dirt and leaves on the Grotto floor. He then lit a candle himself, walked out of the gated area, got back on his bicycle and rode back down the road at 12:28.

It began raining at 6:48pm. The 5 people visiting the Grotto at that time quickly dispersed. For the rest of the night, only 8 people visited the Grotto. Because of the rain, none of them knelt down to pray. They spent an average of 2 minutes there.

The following photographs were taken on a DSL-R camera and edited using iPhoto. The photos are arranged in the order they were taken. The project was done on April 17, 2013.