The Old Cemetery layout for a Narrow Shallow with Porch

Photorealistic evening photograph of a one-and-a-half story craftsman bungalow house on a narrow shallow with porch, 40 ft of street frontage with a 15 ft front setback, photographed from the public sidewalk straight up the front walk, so the covered porch and the full width of the small front yard fill the frame, camera height 5.5 ft. The yard is decorated in a the old cemetery theme. Leaning stones, an iron fence with a gap in it, and candles along a path that nobody has swept in years. The one Halloween theme with nothing alive in it, which is what makes people slow down instead of laugh. Decorations, in position: 1. The star: a small group of gray weathered headstones at three different heights, leaning at slightly different angles, one of them broken off short, 2 ft tall. Lean them. A stone standing straight looks like a sign; a stone tipped four or five degrees looks like the ground moved under it. Vary the angle and vary the depth they sit at. Group them unevenly, with two close together and one apart. Cemeteries are laid out in rows and then two hundred years happen to them, and it is the two hundred years you are building. 2. Sidekick, left: a low run of black fence panels staked along a bed edge, purple and orange light in the rails, the line of it bending rather than straight, 0.9 ft tall. Eight panels, and the run matters more than the count. Set it along the front of the plot rather than around it, so people read a boundary they are looking over instead of a box. Leave one panel out. A continuous fence says the place is maintained. 3. Sidekick, right: five gray foam headstones at slightly different heights and leaning at different angles, mossy and cracked, 1.4 ft tall. Five at 17 in., which is small, and small is right here: these are the stones further back that give the plot depth. Put them BEHIND the big ones and slightly off to one side. Do not line them up with the tall stones. Two sizes at two distances is what makes a lawn look like it goes back further than it does. 4. Path and porch edge lights: a line of short stakes throwing cold purple light up the edges of a walkway, no cords between them, 1.3 ft tall. Both sides of the short walk, then carry the line along the front of the porch. On a yard this size the lighting is doing most of the work. 5. Porch and roofline: a dense run of small orange bulbs following a roofline, warm and slightly sickly rather than festive, 0.2 ft tall. Outline the porch roof first, then the main roofline above it. Two stacked lines of light is the entire trick on a shallow yard. Shot at dusk with the sky still faintly blue, every lit decoration switched on and brighter than anything else in the frame, warm light spilling onto the lawn. Palette: #8C93A8, #2A2633, #7E8B6A, #E4DCC8. Nothing floats; every piece sits on the ground at the stated distance. Scale reference: the front door is 80 inches tall.