Fake Blood Left on a Family Grave: How Far Is Too Far for a Creative Shoot?

Someone held a Halloween-themed photo shoot at Fairmount Cemetery in Denver, splattered fake blood across a family mausoleum, and left. Staff have scrubbed the mausoleum, its steps, and the walkway twice. The red is still there, soaked into the weathered granite. Hooray for photographers who go an extra mile for a shoot… But did this extra mile go far across the line?

“It looks like someone came and did a Halloween photo shoot and left some unfortunate fake blood behind, which is now staining the final resting space,” Karna O’Neill, the cemetery’s branch manager, tells KDVR. Rache Huszar, who also works for the cemetery, put it more bluntly: “This is supposed to be in remembrance of an actual real-life person. It’s not for playtime.”

YourErie reports that cemetery staff combed social media for the people responsible. They haven’t named anyone, but they reportedly found photos of people climbing on statues and lying on headstones at Fairmount. O’Neill says that this is “extremely dangerous” and “very disrespectful for the family,” and I think we can all agree on both. She added that, in the weeks before Halloween, photo shoots pop up regularly, and she asks people to leave.

“Typically, you just see people out here kind of dressed up. We don’t allow any sort of Halloween or nude, anything like that. It’s very disrespectful to the families laying to rest here,” she tells KDVR. Here’s the thing: like many cemeteries across the US, Fairmount permits photo shoots as long as you get prior approval, pay a fee, have an escort, and follow its rules. Those rules ban blood, gore, Halloween masks, costumes, nudes, and props.

Fairmount is a private cemetery, so it can enforce all of that. Public cemeteries may not have the same rules, or the means to enforce them. But just because there may not be clear, written rules, it shouldn’t be too hard to tell what’s tasteful and respectful, and what isn’t.

How Far Is Too Far for a Creative Shoot?

The story has reignited a debate on TikTok about whether cemetery photo shoots are disrespectful by default. A user named Jessica posted a video about it, with a caption that invites people to “prioritize empathy and context.” Most commenters landed somewhere in the middle: shooting in a cemetery is okay, as long as you do it respectfully. I tend to agree with this stance. After all, I took photos in cemeteries myself. That said, I never used tombstones as backdrops for a shoot – the gravestones, chapels and inscriptions have always been my subjects in their own right.

Spraying fake blood on someone’s family mausoleum is, by any reasonable measure, not respectful. You don’t have to be a genius to figure it out, you just have to have a dash of common sense and empathy. But apparently, not everyone has them.

None of this is new, unfortunately. We’ve written before about photographers who think the rules don’t apply to them, from the trio who burned down a historic building in Florida while light painting to the Louisville plantation that banned photo sessions entirely after photographers kept ignoring its rules. Jeff Guyer made the same point in his piece on respecting the location: one careless shoot can close a spot for every photographer in the area. And it’s the same principle landscape photographers have been preaching for years: leave no sign you were ever there.

Cemeteries just raise the stakes. These aren’t abandoned buildings or interesting backdrops. There are families who visit, grieve, and (in this case) now have to look at a red stain on their relatives’ resting place. Honestly, if I saw something like that on my dad’s or my grandparents’ graves, I’d be fuming! As I wrote in my guide to ethical travel photography, part of being a respectful photographer is knowing when not to shoot. Or at least knowing when to leave the props at home.

So if you’re planning a spooky shoot this October, check the cemetery’s rules, ask for permission, stay off the monuments, and keep the gore where it belongs: in post-production. Or if you want to use fake blood and other props, please choose a different location.

Where do you stand? Are cemetery shoots fair game if they’re done respectfully, or should they be off-limits altogether? Let us know in the comments.

[via PetaPixel]

---