Photo captions can be short, incomplete, mysterious, or full of clues. It all depends on who’s writing it and when. The caption on this image is different. It’s in two parts in a different script and the authors are arguing. When I saw this image sitting in a bin, I had to have it. It’s…
A Box of Trouble
In the late 1970s, my mother decided to organize her pictures. It was way before acid and lignin free materials were readily available. In fact, product advertising was often misleading. She decided it would make a nice present for her children if she placed some of our pictures in albums. She chose the low-cost and…
Solving a Photo Mystery With a Little Help
Helmuth Voigt’s story in this blog and that argumentative caption about his life captivated a lot of readers. In that post, I outlined the photo clues in the image then presented what I found. Solving a photo mystery sometimes requires help so I asked for assistance solving the following questions: When and where did Helmuth…
Photo Code-Breaking
American Views. Concert Grove House, stereograph, circa 1874. New York Public Library. Robert N. Dennis collection of stereoscopic views. In Alice Quinn’s new book, The Rose Code, women (and a few men) work tirelessly to break German codes to further Great Britain’s World War II efforts. For them, it’s about recognizing the patterns. If you’ve…
Summer, Lemonade, and Nana
This week was a scorcher. Three 90 degree plus days in a row. One humid afternoon my grandmother popped into my head. She made the best lemonade. In a second I was time traveling in my memories to when I was 4. My Mom worked and Nana watched me and my sister. It was the…
An Altered Reality: One Man. Two Photos
One time a reporter asked me to tell them how many photos I’ve seen in my career. I’m simply not able to estimate that number. As a picture person, I look at client images, ones for my collection, and then the ones I use for research purposes. Suffice to say I’ve looked at more images…
What’s Your Photo Story? A Wedding
We make a lot of assumptions when we look at a photo and try to tell the story. Sometimes we fill in the blanks of the who, what, where, when, and why of an image. Take this photo for instance. Without knowing all the details we can assume that this is a special occasion, perhaps…
How Many Photos Represent A Person’s Life?
There are images in our family collections that jump out at us. I hear it from clients over and over how a few photos stand out more than others. I have pictures like that too. I’ve recently started grouping images together to tell the story of a person. It’s an important way to pass on…
Animating Your Photos with Deep Nostalgia™ from MyHeritage
MyHeritage has done it again. They created a photo sensation with a new offering. I’m sure you’ve seen it. Social media is awash in videos of ancestors moving. Some find it emotional while others think it’s creepy. I’m getting emails and texts asking me to weigh in on this new offering. So here goes. I…
Metadata and Family Photos
The Family History Metadata Working Group chaired by Christopher Desmond is working on a set of standards to enable us to embed metadata, share it, and download it. View the video above for more information. Here’s a transcript of the webinar. And the press release.
Family Photos on Instagram
Discarded and re-sold photos appear all over social media, especially Instagram. If you’re looking for a picture of your great uncle Hubert, it might turn up online. The genealogical community hasn’t embraced Instagram the way they have Facebook. That’s too bad, because industry influencers are sharing information there too. It’s no secret that I love looking at…