Thankfully there are many people photographing cemeteries. This is important in helping to preserve history, and also is great value to genealogical researchers. There are numerous sites online that hold repositories of submitted photographs. Some are personal pages, while others are large databases encompassing a county, State, are nationwide, or global. Some have strong ethics, while others seem not to care where their data is obtained.
One site I have had numerous problems with is Find-A-Grave. Some contributors to that site have "harvested" photographs, databases, and other copyrighted data off of my web site - without my permission. Despite correspondence to the individuals, website managers and their domain host, these infringements still continue. This is not only unethical and lazy, but also violates copyright law. Granted, most of the contributors have done their own work, but without any recourse through that website, it appears that those who are allowed to violate the law continue to legally jeopardize that project, as well as significantly reduce the credibility of that site. My work is available for free access to the public, but after spending hours, months and sometimes years, compiling that data, I get more than a little peeved at those who steal my work - or the work of anyone else.
In my years of photographing cemeteries, I have come across lots of people - - some also photographing parts of the same cemetery. I have been amazed at how many persons are not aware of some key issues: 1) The engraving and design of the stonework is copyrighted by the carver. 2) The stones belong to the descendants of that person, so are considered private property. 3) Based on these two facts, photographs of headstones are not to be sold for personal profit.
I would advise you to research laws regarding cemeteries, photographs, websites, etc. before undertaking any work. It could save you a lot of heartache and financial disaster!
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