Photographing & Transcribing Cemeteries
for Submitting to
The United States Cemetery Project
When going to a cemetery, write down the directions to the cemetery. If there is a physical address and even a phone number of the cemetery or caretaker, send that along to us too.
Please set your cameras to where it takes the photos to no less than 2,000 pixels! The larger these photos are the better they turn out online!
Take a photo of the cemetery entrance/gate/sign, whatever the case(s) may be.
If there are florals in front of the wording, take photo of the headstone as is, then either take down the information that is hidden by the florals or photograph the wording behind the florals. Please try not to remove any floral arrangements, etc. that the loved ones of the deceased person has put there! If you do please make sure that you put it right back the way you found it!
In consideration of others, please write down what row and what section each headstone is located at to submit with the photo(s). Several older cemeteries are very small and are in no particular row, don’t worry about writing down what row or section those are in.
If there are no clearly marked signs of what section is what, make your own up. Start at 1 end of the cemetery and work your way through.
If you can obtain a map from the cemetery, you can send that to us to put on line as well. If not, maybe you can draw a layout and explain how you numbered it like on this site: http://www.uscemeteryproj2.com/illinois/piatt/mackville/mackville.htm
When taking a photo of the headstone, please take the full headstone, not partial or just the transcription part of it. We want the FULL headstone, including the base of the headstone. Best bet is just to stand back a little bit, take the headstone photo and let there be some of the surrounding area in it as well. We’ll take care of the cropping and resizing. You may however take a close up of the writings on the headstone along with a photo of the full headstone! This will help us in double checking with what’s in the transcription. Also, if there is a photograph of the person on the stone, take a close up of it so we can put that online also.
If there is a photograph and/or a drawing on the headstone of the person, please take a close up of the photograph.
If there is just a surname on the back of the headstone and the surname is already on the front of it, you don’t need to take photo of the back. If the surname is only on the back and not on the front as well, please do take photo of the back. If there are other writings/drawings, etc. on the back of the headstone, please take photo of that as well.
Please photograph the Surname headstone and then all the headstones surrounding this stone, note who goes with this surname/family stone.
Take photos of every side if there’s information on it.
Also please take photograph of the funeral markers, field stones, etc., as well as any Father, Mother, Brother, etc. stones and note who these goes with. Even if a stone is sinking into the ground, if the stone is hard to read, is broken, crumbled, stacked, etc. photograph them as well. Some times we get people emailing us who identifies who these stones goes to.
Look around the headstone, many times I’ve come across in my own personal experience an older headstone or marker of some sort that is almost underneath or almost covered by grass and/or dirt. Take photos of everything!
Do not try and lift a headstone, they are very heavy!!! If there is a headstone laying down, just take a photo of the headstones (in all cases) as they are! You can also take a close up photo of what is on the headstone as it lays there.
Take photos even if there’s no headstone but just a base to a headstone…..we want every headstone for the utmost completed cemetery sites! Even if you come across fieldstones, someone is buried there and their family might not have been able to afford a headstone at the time, take photo of it please. We’ll mark those as unknown and someone eventually will come along and identify who’s is who. There’s always someone looking for someone buried in these cemeteries and we don’t want to leave anybody out. And those headstones are someone’s!
We basically want each cemetery with as the saying goes “no stone unturned”! Do not try lifting the headstones but take photos of everything.
If there’s a memorial of any sorts in these cemeteries, take those as well. There are several that has some sort of memorial, and I realize it’d take forever to write down each name that’s on those memorials. So just take a photo of the full memorial and then photograph closeups so that we can transcribe right from the photo.
If you are photographing a full cemetery and someone has submitted a headstone photo for that person, go ahead and take another one. It won’t hurt for there to be 2 of the same headstone photos online taken by 2 different people
Also needing photos of county courthouses (capitols), state capitols and county and state signs.
Do NOT resize or crop any of the photos. We will take care of that part of it. The bigger the photo that you have your camera set on the better it is on our part!
If you want to photograph and transcribe a cemetery or cemeteries, please let us know so that we may put it online that it’s a works in progress by you. If someone helps you in your transcribing/photographing a cemetery/cemeteries, please let us know so that we may give him or her credit for helping you as well.
When ready to submit photos of a cemetery/cemeteries, please contact me for further instructions on how to submit the photos/transcriptions to me.
And please spread the word that volunteer photographers are always needed!
If you prefer to zip folders and email to me as regular attachments, click here for directions on zipping folders!
for Submitting to
The United States Cemetery Project
When going to a cemetery, write down the directions to the cemetery. If there is a physical address and even a phone number of the cemetery or caretaker, send that along to us too.
Please set your cameras to where it takes the photos to no less than 2,000 pixels! The larger these photos are the better they turn out online!
Take a photo of the cemetery entrance/gate/sign, whatever the case(s) may be.
If there are florals in front of the wording, take photo of the headstone as is, then either take down the information that is hidden by the florals or photograph the wording behind the florals. Please try not to remove any floral arrangements, etc. that the loved ones of the deceased person has put there! If you do please make sure that you put it right back the way you found it!
In consideration of others, please write down what row and what section each headstone is located at to submit with the photo(s). Several older cemeteries are very small and are in no particular row, don’t worry about writing down what row or section those are in.
If there are no clearly marked signs of what section is what, make your own up. Start at 1 end of the cemetery and work your way through.
If you can obtain a map from the cemetery, you can send that to us to put on line as well. If not, maybe you can draw a layout and explain how you numbered it like on this site: http://www.uscemeteryproj2.com/illinois/piatt/mackville/mackville.htm
When taking a photo of the headstone, please take the full headstone, not partial or just the transcription part of it. We want the FULL headstone, including the base of the headstone. Best bet is just to stand back a little bit, take the headstone photo and let there be some of the surrounding area in it as well. We’ll take care of the cropping and resizing. You may however take a close up of the writings on the headstone along with a photo of the full headstone! This will help us in double checking with what’s in the transcription. Also, if there is a photograph of the person on the stone, take a close up of it so we can put that online also.
If there is a photograph and/or a drawing on the headstone of the person, please take a close up of the photograph.
If there is just a surname on the back of the headstone and the surname is already on the front of it, you don’t need to take photo of the back. If the surname is only on the back and not on the front as well, please do take photo of the back. If there are other writings/drawings, etc. on the back of the headstone, please take photo of that as well.
Please photograph the Surname headstone and then all the headstones surrounding this stone, note who goes with this surname/family stone.
Take photos of every side if there’s information on it.
Also please take photograph of the funeral markers, field stones, etc., as well as any Father, Mother, Brother, etc. stones and note who these goes with. Even if a stone is sinking into the ground, if the stone is hard to read, is broken, crumbled, stacked, etc. photograph them as well. Some times we get people emailing us who identifies who these stones goes to.
Look around the headstone, many times I’ve come across in my own personal experience an older headstone or marker of some sort that is almost underneath or almost covered by grass and/or dirt. Take photos of everything!
Do not try and lift a headstone, they are very heavy!!! If there is a headstone laying down, just take a photo of the headstones (in all cases) as they are! You can also take a close up photo of what is on the headstone as it lays there.
Take photos even if there’s no headstone but just a base to a headstone…..we want every headstone for the utmost completed cemetery sites! Even if you come across fieldstones, someone is buried there and their family might not have been able to afford a headstone at the time, take photo of it please. We’ll mark those as unknown and someone eventually will come along and identify who’s is who. There’s always someone looking for someone buried in these cemeteries and we don’t want to leave anybody out. And those headstones are someone’s!
We basically want each cemetery with as the saying goes “no stone unturned”! Do not try lifting the headstones but take photos of everything.
If there’s a memorial of any sorts in these cemeteries, take those as well. There are several that has some sort of memorial, and I realize it’d take forever to write down each name that’s on those memorials. So just take a photo of the full memorial and then photograph closeups so that we can transcribe right from the photo.
If you are photographing a full cemetery and someone has submitted a headstone photo for that person, go ahead and take another one. It won’t hurt for there to be 2 of the same headstone photos online taken by 2 different people
Also needing photos of county courthouses (capitols), state capitols and county and state signs.
Do NOT resize or crop any of the photos. We will take care of that part of it. The bigger the photo that you have your camera set on the better it is on our part!
If you want to photograph and transcribe a cemetery or cemeteries, please let us know so that we may put it online that it’s a works in progress by you. If someone helps you in your transcribing/photographing a cemetery/cemeteries, please let us know so that we may give him or her credit for helping you as well.
When ready to submit photos of a cemetery/cemeteries, please contact me for further instructions on how to submit the photos/transcriptions to me.
And please spread the word that volunteer photographers are always needed!
If you prefer to zip folders and email to me as regular attachments, click here for directions on zipping folders!
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