How to photograph a headstone with your phone

A good photo of an existing headstone is the difference between an AI proof you can sign off on in two minutes and a back-and-forth with the dealer that drags into next week. Five rules and a brief shot list are all you need.

The five rules

1. Stand straight in front of the stone. Get the camera as close to perpendicular to the stone face as you can. Tilted angles distort letter proportions and confuse the AI's measurement step. If you're on uneven ground, move until you're not.

2. Include a reference object. A US quarter, a credit card, or a Monumize calibration card placed flat against the stone gives us a known dimension we can use to measure the stone in millimeters. The reference doesn't have to be perfectly aligned — it just needs to be fully in the frame and clearly visible.

3. Fill the frame with the stone. Crop with your feet. The stone should fill at least 80% of the photo. Cemetery context (grass, other stones) is interesting but not useful for the AI; it just steals pixels from the part that matters.

4. Diffuse light. Overcast is ideal. Direct midday sun creates shadows in the inscriptions that hide depth and confuse the AI's font detection. If you're stuck with bright sun, shade the stone with your body or come back early in the morning.

5. Hold steady. Either brace your elbows against your ribs or rest the phone on the top of the stone. A blurry photo doesn't mean the AI fails — it means the AI returns a low-confidence result and the dealer has to fill in by hand.

A short shot list

If you have time and want to be thorough, take four shots:

• The full face, perpendicular, with a quarter for scale.
• A close-up of any existing inscription so the AI can detect the font precisely.
• The empty area where the new inscription will go, framed tightly.
• The whole stone in context (you can see the grave plot edges) — this isn't for the AI, it's for the dealer when they schedule.

You only need the first one to start. The others help the dealer if they have questions.

What not to do

• Don't filter or color-correct. The AI uses color to identify the stone material; "warming" the photo can flip granite from gray to red.
• Don't crop in your phone's photo app. Upload the full image.
• Don't shoot through glass (some plinth-style stones have glass fronts). Shoot at an angle if you have to.
• Don't try to "photoshop in" the new inscription before you upload. The AI does that; you don't need to.

After the upload

Within about a minute, your job page will show:

• The detected stone color (gray_granite, black_granite, etc.)
• Estimated dimensions in millimeters
• The detected font of the existing inscription
• A confidence score per field

If the confidence is high, you're ready to pick a font and generate a proof. If it's low, the dealer assigned to your job will fill in by hand — your job continues either way.

That's it. Photograph it like a kitchen-table receipt: square, well-lit, unfiltered. The rest happens automatically.

Read more in How to add a second date to a headstone or open the cost calculator to see the price range for what you're considering.