How to Date Photos When Even Your Family Can’t Remember Them!
“A couple of years ago, I started organizing my digital photos the way you showed in your naming scanned photos post, instead of by subject, etc.
I'm just now starting to archive all the photos my Mom has. As we are taking them out of the albums (which, by the way, I hate those old “magnetic” albums–the photos stick to the pages), she is telling me who is in the pictures, etc.
Most of the ones we are doing now are the real old ones–her family photos and my Dad's family photos. Some are dated and/or have captions to help identify them, but several don't.
The problem is she can't always narrow down the date enough to come up with a year. So that's causing me to have a lot of photos with '19xx-xx-xx' as the date. There aren't really any other family members who will know the answer so I doubt if the dates will ever be completed.
Any suggestions as to how to handle situations like this so I don't have a long list of '19xx' photos?
Thanks for your help.”
Patty, you are certainly not alone. I would suspect that most family photo collections have a considerable amount of paper prints that weren't dated or even captioned.
Back then, it was probably so easy to think you would always be around to tell someone anything they wanted to know about your photos. But, now we know that simply isn't the case. Important people's memories fade over time, forgetting these fine and seemingly unimportant details.
And even sadder, important people in our lives eventually pass, leaving us with only the memories they have successfully communicated to us.
I must admit, my Mother is the last link to many of my family photos. Every day I wait to have her assist me with captioning info and dating our collection, is a day closer to the time I will be on my own for all of this information.
My Photo Naming Method
In Patty's question, if you are confused by what she meant by naming her photos with “x's” like in the example “19xx”, she is referring to a 3-part post series I wrote that explains a method I came up with to name your photos that will chronologically sort them in the folder they are stored in when you know the dates they were taken — as well as the times you don't.
The basics of it are that you start off the filename of a photo with the date it was taken. If there is any part of the date you don't know, you replace it with an “x”, keeping the length of the date consistent with all of the other images in your collection.
I find it to be very useful in many ways.
The Unseen Benefits of This Naming Method
First, and most importantly, I wouldn't worry about having too many images labeled “19xx-xx-xx” when you are first starting out. Personally, I would rather see you mark them this way now, even though you are still a little bit hesitant and uncomfortable with how many of them you have. Because, if you remove this information, you might be upset with yourself later for not making the effort to keep up with it. It won't hurt anything for this info to be there.
In fact, it can only help you later to save time.
Sometime later, when you are going through your collection and you find an image marked “19xx-xx-xx”, this will immediately let you know this is an image you are still doing investigative work on. If this highly specific formatting wasn't part of your workflow, then you might mistakenly make the assumption that you just forgot to include any kind of dating information in the filename or the caption within this photo.
This will possibly cause you to spend even more time recreating the research all over again to find out when this photo was taken that you initially spent time doing. Additionally, it will now be documented for whomever inherits all of your work, that you didn't know this information.
It's possible for some of us who are taking it upon ourselves to archive our family's photos that we can just glance through many of our photos and remember what work we still have to do on them. For example, we might know all of the photos we have sitting in a certain generically marked folder on our storage drive are all ones we still don't know the date when they were taken.
But, put yourself in the position of someone who might take over your collection at whatever state it's going to be in. They won't have all of your knowledge still in your head from all the time you spent working with your collection. Just seeing those photos marked with x's will let this person know you did your best to find out when the photo was taken, but just never found out for sure.
Even though it may not seem so at first, having “198x-xx-xx” really will be far more helpful than no date at all.
So if you can help it, don't “burn your clues.”
Some Suggestions How to Find the Missing Dates for Your Digital and Scanned Photos
There isn't one single system or method I know of that will work with all photos. Like it or not, this is going to become investigative work for you.
And so, if it makes it seem more fun, think of this entire project like you're putting together a giant and colorful jigsaw puzzle!
A few pieces will fit together easily and give you immediate confidence and satisfaction. But other times, you're going to have to set pieces aside and wait until you gather more clues to help you figure out how they all fit together as a whole.
So here are a few ideas that should help you find dates for these photographs.
Look For Processing Dates on Your Photographs
You shouldn't rule out looking for missing date information in places that are sometimes obvious yet easy to overlook. One of these places is the markings photo processors left us when developing our film.
When I was growing up, my Dad shot slides with his big fancy camera, and my Mom shot prints on her “point and shoot” one. A while back, I found a collection of prints from a family vacation we took to Disney World. I wasn't sure of when exactly we went on this trip from looking at them. My Mother was nice and wrote captions on the backs, but this time she didn't include the month or even the year that it happened.
Months later, I happened to come across a few slides my Dad took at a big theme park. Come to find out, they just happened to be from that same trip to Disney World! And it gets even better. Most slides have a date printed or stamped on them when they were developed.
Wahoo!
I can't say for sure this is the exact month and year we took our trip. But chances are, my Dad had the film developed that same month or at the latest the month after. So this date gets me really close at least!
So now, I can merge my Dad's slides with my Mom's prints from this same trip into a single event folder in photo managing software. Then I can label all of them with this month and year I found on the slides.
Like I was saying, the project really is like investigative work at times. As I piece together groups of photos, misplaced in different boxes and bags in my parent's house, I am finding clues that add up over time. And then I can really get a lot further into the process of chronologically placing these groups or events in order.
As far as prints, I rarely see any identifiable markings on their backs from processors. But, occasionally I will find a batch or two that were developed by a company that did mark the processing date. Usually they are really faint and appear as almost watermarks. So don't rule this method for prints out completely.
Look For Dates In Original Packaging Materials
Look on the outside and inside of any packaging your photos have been stored in all of these years.
Sometimes, they are actually being stored in the original envelopes or boxes the prints and slides came back from the developers in. There might be processing date stamps, printed copyright dates, or other visual clues to help you narrow down a date.
I've actually found a few paper cash register receipts from the developers with the date of purchase right there at the top, stuffed in the envelope with our stored prints!
And it's possible that original Kodak envelope your prints might still be stored in will have “Copyright Kodak © 1983” in fine print somewhere.
Study the Aging Process In Your Photos
Try getting a good start organizing your un-dated photos chronologically by how people are aging in them.
Some will be harder than others to decipher — sometimes a person won't appear to change much from one year to another. But, other times it will be noticeable and you can say, “Well my sister was clearly a baby here in these, and she's a senior in high school is those.”
So even though you don't know the exact years yet, you now mark the baby photos, “198x-xx-xx” and the others in the high school group “1999-xx-xx”. Then you can start putting other age groups of photos in and around those two “tent poles” of dates.
This might be the best way for old photos of your parents — especially the ones before you were present.
Sometimes just getting a few “tent poles” of big or medium-sized groups of time like this might help jog the memory of family members or friends that can help you.
The initial unorganized state of chaos could be overwhelming to some people. But, once you have the beginnings of actual order, memories might start coming back. Such as a sister looking at an old birthday party photo and immediately saying:
Oh look, I remember when she got that pony!
I was so jealous! I remember exactly three years later I asked Mother for a pony for my birthday because (our older sister) Emily got one that year!
And now, that photo of your sibling riding her new pony has a “date” correlation to the photo of another sibling getting her first pony. I know, this is an extreme example I just made up. How many girls really get ponies?
Or do they?
Write Out Timelines To Create “Tent Poles”
This goes along well with the last suggestion about ordering photos by how a person is aging in them.
If for example you are trying to organize a large collection of photos of your Mom, ask her to write out a simple timeline (outline) of her life in chronological order. Note as many dates as she can remember or you can help her recover. Be sure to list all major life events and the locations they occurred. Think of it like a “road map.”
These big “life moments” will be established now as these “tent poles” that are so important when you come upon photos you don't know where they chronologically belong.
My Grandmother travelled with my Mother all over the United States while she was growing up. They lived in many places before finally settling in Kentucky as adults.
For someone like myself who isn't good maintaining this chronology of “history” in my memory, having a timeline written or typed out is extremely beneficial in reconstructing someone's life in photographs.
Find Clues From the Time Period In Your Photos
I have few really old photos in our collection — I mean ones that date back into the really early 1900's and mid to late 1800's. But for these, identifying clues such as the type of photograph, or the fashion subjects are wearing in the photo, could be important clues in discovering when the photo was taken.
For someone like myself who still knows little about any type of photo before the film stocks used in the 1970's, research will show there used to be types of photographs called daguerreotype, cabinet card and tintype.
Who knew! Right?
For example, if any of these are found to be represented in your collection, you will be able to narrow down a period of time when this type of photography was often used.
The same with fashion and clothing — even in more recent decades. The 1980's here in the United States wasn't the only year for iconic fashion! Other periods had their own stand-out identifying style you can be on the look-out for. Especially with hats and other decorative accents like jewelry, scarves and shawls.
Also, take into consideration the colors and patterns used not only in clothing, but also in the furniture and items throughout a photograph. These are often clues to help you pinpoint a date range of a photo.
Seek Help From Outside Family and Friends in Your Photographs
Of course it's probably already occurred to you to ask your immediate family about the missing dates of certain photographs. But, you should also consider going outside of your safe “comfort zone” and get in contact with distant family members and even friends of the family that appear in some of your photos.
Now, I know you probably haven't spoken to some of them in years or maybe even decades. And there might even be a good and unspeakable reason why you haven't!
But putting those negative stories and police records aside, consider how much knowledge they may recall that you and your immediate family can't.
You could call them up — yes speak to them live on your telephone (read as “cell phone” for the younger generations). Or you could friend them on whatever social networking site is popular at the time or maybe just email them. And while the U.S. Postal Service is still in business, you could even send them a real paper letter! (gasp)
They may LOVE you for showing or even giving them a copy of an old photo they were in! Stories you had completely forgotten about might start gushing out of them.
Remember, a photo of a birthday party may represent just another party you had growing up to you. But to your cousin, or that oddly hairy neighbor who lived down the street from you that just happened to drop by that day, it might have been a life changing experience for them!
Everyone is unique and files away memories in their brains differently than someone else.
So don't be surprised if you hear something insane yet useful from your long-lost friend like:
Oh of course I remember that birthday party of yours! You were so cute then. You had that cake decorated like a choo-choo train!
And it was 1976. I remember that because my son had just turned 4 as well, just the month before, and so I knew exactly what present would be perfect for me to get you. It was popular at that time and so it was difficult to find in stores, so I bought one for both of you at the same time!
Start Organizing By Using Batches
After reading all of this, you too might feel just like Patty D. currently does — completely stressed out when looking in your one giant folder on your computers' storage drive full of hundreds of undated photos.
You probably feel like you aren't getting anywhere when you see all of your undated “misfit” photos.
Please know that, when trying to implement any of the suggestions I just gave you, just making small baby steps of progress now will feel like great strides at times later.
Just get a start.
You can do this by putting your “misfits” in small “batches” rather than by the specific years that might be your ultimate goal.
For example, if you can't figure out if a photo was taken in 1984, 1985 or even 1986, maybe a way to make it easier for you to organize right now is to store this “198x-xx-xx” photo in a folder or “Event” called “1980s Unsorted”. Then make similar folders for the other decades, just like this one, for the remaining “misfit” photos.
Or maybe you could break it down a little bit further. You could create a “1980s Early” and “1980s Late” if having 2 for each decades is then possible.
See… baby steps.
Another system entirely could be to make a “Mom” and a “Dad” top-level folder. Then inside of each of those, have folders to separate out your ‘misfits' like “Baby”, “Toddler”, “Early Childhood”, “Late Childhood”, “Teenager”, “Young Adult” …etc
Do whatever it takes, just to get you a little bit further along in organizing, sorting and labeling!
Get the ball rolling.
And if this helps you to know, I scan my prints and slides completely out of order. And then I move the photos around in my photo manager to put them into some sense of chronological order using many of the above techniques. I find this method to be easier for me because I am quick and comfortable with computers. So know this is a great option if you are the same way.
Others however feel better organizing and sorting their prints first before scanning them.
If I personally had to do it this way, I never would have gotten started because, like I said, our photos are almost completely out of order and my parents live 2,500 miles away. It would have been extremely challenging to organize the entire collection first without their physical presence and help.
Whichever works best for you is your best course of action.
So wrapping this up, Patty D, I am so glad to hear you have such a good start on your photo collection. I bet it feels good!
And this was a great question you asked by the way. It's a question without an easy and single definitive answer that will work for everyone. So, that means there are many people out there asking it. So thank you for asking me!
I hope some of this will be of help to you too. Likely some of this was obvious to you. But, maybe the way in which I wrote it out will shake loose something in your head that could possibly help you out even more..
And for you, reading this, I am sure these suggestions are just the beginning of what could help Patty and others out with this problem.
Can you think of any other ideas that could help someone organize and date their photos that I didn't mention here?
I would love to know your ideas. Just let me know in the comments below.
Cheers!
I have been using the 19XX method for a while, but I am blocked on the fact that my off-site backup is Google Photos, and Google Photos requires a specific date in order for the photos to not show up in a weird place. So I either have to lie about the date, in which case it basically closes the door on future updates (because it’s a royal pain to try to re-upload when meta-data changes because Google is somewhat buggy in reliably detecting that it should update an existing photo, and also doesn’t properly update the file itself to incorporate meta-data if you enter it in Google’s interface). On the other hand, with as many pictures as I have I start to question why I would even care. I have thousands of pictures without firm dates, including quite a few from the 1940s when my mother was growing up. I don’t really have any extended family members, and I suspect that if I don’t care nobody else will care about these pictures. My descendants might enjoy them for a few minutes and then their attention will move on to other things. It seems like a whole lot of effort for minimal benefit. Really the only reason I even try to do it is for some sense of duty to properly preserve and document things as best as I can even if nobody will ever look at it, and a fear of losing something if I were to just delete all the digital copies for which there are no paper backups, and throw away all the film and paper photographs in order to free up mental space for more important things.
Oh yes! Sense of duty or something, but I’m doing it
I found that by sorting the printed photos into their packs in order if the negatives are available help date a few photos in that pack and can then give a rough date to the others in the same pack. For instance, I was convinced that one photo was Christmas 1988. Once i’d sorted it in order with the negatives, there was a photo after the Christmas shot of my 7th birthday. This meant the Christmas photo had to be 1987 and not 1988. Order of shots in a pack and where one pack leads onto another (same event but film changed midway through) really helps to start getting them in order.
Is there any software “out there” that can read the date on scanned pictures? These pictures have the date as part of the image in the lower right corner? Red LED ish looking dates.
I have lots of photos with code numbers but no decipherable date, i.e. <No.8A>WPL 00+00 NNNN–09AM 513. It’s printed on Kodak Royal Paper. Is there any way to figure out the date of the photo with info like this?
Nothing date related found in those codes… I’ve heard some stores would print the date on a separate line on the back.
–EDIT– Oh! I’m scanning old photos now and I found one where the PRINT date is printed on the back of the photo. (“06FEB00”) I know this is the print date because the digital camera was set the print the photo-taken date on the bottom corner of the actual photo, which is there as 12-25-’99.
So the photo was printed about 12 days after it was taken.
This is rare, though. Makes me wanna start using a camera that will always put the date right on the photo.
I have an Epson fast photo and I just organize photos by decade. So it shows up January 1st 1950. Some context is better than no context.
The photo naming method you explained in your course content has been so helpful as I start the scanning of my photos. I am so grateful to have a proven system already figured out for me. Thank you for these additional ideas in researching dates for photos.
Googled your article I am scanning over 50 years of photo’s and slides for my church’s youth mission group. Not sure how I’m going to organize them for display but for now it’s by year. I have found some slides that have Jul 77017 stamped on them. Would I be right to assume they are from July of 1977? I’m not sure what the 017 refers to but the same is stamped on all the slides.
The july of 1977 is when the slides were developed, so depending on how long the roll took to use, could have been that month, or a few months prior. 017 could be the roll number. Film was taped together into huge rolls for developing and that number would have been where to cut so the right person got the right pics
You can use items in the photos that tend to not be around for long and keep changing or tech that can be dated to a certain year. See a CD player in the photo? Can’t be earlier than 1983. A can of “New coke” – likely 1985. Box of cereal, candy bars or something else with packaging changes can likely be looked up.
Great, thanks for sharing this post.Really looking forward to read more. Much obliged.
Hey William, Thank you! And you’re welcome! Glad you enjoyed it. :beer:
Last night I found a very interesting and FREE ebook, in .pdf format. It’s a collection of posts from Maureen Taylor’s blog, The Photo Detective. Copy and paste into your browser’s address bar this url:
http://www.google.ca/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=best+of+the+photo+detective+pdf&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&redir_esc=&ei=vj8XUYGnE-iEygGbyoC4CQ
You should arrive at a Google search results page with the desired link at the very top. Click on text (probably blue to indicate a link) that reads:
[PDF] Best of the Photo Detective – Family Tree Magazine
Your browser should give you the option to ‘Open’ or ‘Save’ the actual .pdf file. Click on the ‘Open’ button to view the file on your screen, then save it using the menu File>Save or Save As. To download the file and save it to disk for later viewing, click on the ‘Save’ button instead.
Since it appears to be a reprint of articles from the print magazine, minus columns of ads on many pages, the .pdf pages vary in size from what appears to be the top 1/2 or 1/3 of a page, to a full length single column, to a full 3-column page. The information seems to all be present, the layout just looks a little unusual when viewed in Acrobat Reader as ‘single page’.
The price is right, there’s no need to provide an email address or any other information, and there’s lots of good information in the publication.
Art.
If you haven’t checked any of Maureen Taylor’s (no known relation to me) books, I highly recommend them. For anyone seriously interested in family history, including photo identification, they’re excellent reference books and should be in your personal library.
Halvor Moorshead, publisher of Family Chronicle magazine and editor of several books about dating old photos, has one of a series of articles about dating photos at http://www.familychronicle.com/quickguide.html. Also visit the shopping page on the Family Chronicle site for other good reference books.
Curtis, you might be surprised to learn that there are likely many families with their own printed and bound family history/genealogy books. They are often works of love, frequently privately published in limited numbers for distribution only to family members and perhaps a few very close family friends. Serious genealogists sometimes feel that the results of their years of research work and effort should be shared with the rest of the family, often as a form of reward for contributing information and possibly photos to complete the family tree and history. The age of the POD (Print On Demand) publishers, which arrived about 10 years ago, has made it much easier for individuals to get their work into print at a reasonable cost. The current availability of user-friendly software for page layout has also been beneficial to such individuals. Genealogy magazines in general may carry ads from PODs who specialize in family history publications.
“Photo Detectives”, while possibly a trade marked name for Ms. Taylor, would certainly be another potential category for your Photo Services Business Directory. There are a few others in the field, although Maureen is the established leader of the pack.
I have read in several places about Maureen Taylor photo detective. There is lots on information to find by looking up her name. Here’s a couple of interesting links I found, but there are many more http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119214969916756801.html
http://www.familytreeuniversity.com/free-webinar-photo-detective-live The webinar can’t be viewed anymore but the pdf was still downloadable and had useful information and many links.
Mary, that’s a really interesting article. I guess I should have assumed there was someone that did this for a living — I mean people can make money doing what seems like anything now. But, I guess I had never heard of a “photo detective” until now.
Maureen obviously knows a lot about everything — history, culture, fashion, even animals! That photo that opens up to show you the clues she used to deduce the age of the photo was an incredible example.
Her occupation sounds like a whole new category for my Photo Services Business Directory.
Thanks for sharing Mary!
Hi Patty,
Glad to have been able to help. As you’ve discovered, having some genealogical information available can be a BIG help in dating photos. Conversely, IF there are names, dates, or other information, on the photos or recognizable within the images themselves, that information can be helpful in writing genealogy books, even if such books are never released beyond the family involved. As you’ve found, genealogy research results can be helpful for identifying photo collections so if one should come across old post cards, birth, wedding, or death notes among photos, they are also well worth scanning and including in the same sequence as the accompanying photos so they are also preserved for future generations.
Pols’ book about dating 20th century photos concentrates mainly on the years up to about 1950 with only limited information about later photos. He does, however, stress the importance of those of who can remember the people and places shown, and hopefully, the occasion when each photo was made, actually recording that information in a form and place that we and/or others in the future will be able to find and use. As he says, our memories tend to fade as we get older so we won’t necessarily remember all the details of any particular shot. Also, if something should happen to us so we no longer are available to work with our photo collections, anyone else who might inherit our work won’t have access to that information if we don’t record it while we can. They’d be in the same kind of situation we’re in now with many of the photos we’ve inherited that have little or no information with them.
Curtis and I have agreed to me doing one, or more likely a series, of guest posts about the topic of dating and identifying old photos but it won’t appear before April this year since I have several time commitments until then. However, keep following the blog and you’ll be seeing more about the topic in a few months. (We’re also considering some posts about memoir writing and perhaps touching on genealogy, again for sometime later this year.)
In Curtis’s reply to my first comment, he mentions a number like [23-4]. My guess is that, as he suspects, that’s a reference to the negative number on a roll of film, especially 35 mm film. However, unless he finds a strip of negatives with the negative of the print’s image, it’s not likely to be of much help in dating that shot, unless shots before or after that one, but on the same strip of negatives, are datable. IF the strip of negatives is with the other strips from that roll, which should have numbers like [00-01] through to [35-6] or maybe [36-7], [37-8], or [38-9], if the film originally had a nominal 36 exposures, there might be other negatives that provide dating clues. Originally 35 mm film was available in 12 or 24 exposure rolls, then 36 exposure rolls were made available. Later, the 12-exposure rolls were discontinued and 24-exposure rolls were replaced with 27-exposure rolls. Since film manufacturers like Kodak and Fuji usually include a generous amount of leader film to load the camera and still get the nominal maximum number of frames on a roll, even if a bit of film at the start of the roll got exposed to light during the loading operation, some photographers managed to become very familiar with loading their particular camera(s) and could usually squeeze in an extra frame or two. With the Minolta Maxxum cameras I used, I was disappointed to not get 38 frames on a 36-exposure roll and often I managed to get 39 frames. In any event, it helps if you know how often the photographer took photos since if the same roll of film has shots of two Christmas trees, two summer vacations, or two of any other event, it’s likely to be difficult to date any intermediate shots accurately. If the photographer went through several rolls on a single vacation, it’s much easier to date a group of related shots if one can be dated. There might be a helpful clue such as a legible calendar visible in the shot to establish at least the year and month, unless it’s obviously an old calendar saved just for the picture on it. This should be evident from other details in the photo, at least if you’re lucky.
Art
Wow! Didn’t expect such a detailed answer. Thanks to both of you for your suggestions. Part of the problem was the photos we’re presently going through are the ones my mom got from her aunts after they passed away so the photos are quite old. Although the photos were in albums (but not the original albums) some of the photos are not necessarily in order. However, we did come across a photo the other night that I said looked like a previous one and we believe they go together so that’s helping a bit.
One thing I did was browse through the remaining albums and put in somewhat of an order. Hopefully, that will allow us to match things up better.
I have also found a couple of other things that may be helpful in dating some of the photos. My mom also has a copy of a genealogy book my uncle (from my dad’s side) had started. This allows me to look up some birthdates, etc., so when a photo is labeled “John at age 12”, etc., we have a pretty good idea of the year. We even found copies in the book of some of the photos we have. However, in one instance, a photo stated an age and year it was taken, but the genealogy book had the person born a different year. I defaulted to what was on the photo.
Another source we found is some documentation my mom had regarding citizenship of one her aunts which listed some birthdates, marriages, etc. If we found a photo stating someone was a certain age or it was a wedding photo, we were able to determine the date.
Of course, not everyone will have a genealogy book available or have old records they can reference, but if they do, these may come in handy.
Once we get to the photos of my immediate family (we’ve already come across a few), I’m sure this will be easier as I’ll remember events/dates too. Thanks again for all the suggestions.
You’re so welcome Patty!
I like your use of documents. Clever. Yeah citizenship documents and other government paperwork like this is an excellent idea. That didn’t even occur to me when I was putting this post together. Great suggestion.
Your genealogy book is intriguing to me. My father has one too. It’s actually a real book — bound, printed and everything. Whoever in our family put it together obviously spent a LOT of time. It’s crazy amazing.
Is this the type of book you have? Or is it more like a written journal?
I ask because I have been wondering ever since I saw my Dad’s book how many other families have such a bound printed book. I wonder how common this is.
Thanks for commenting in here Patty. I was very happy to hear you had been able to read the post. 🙂
Hi Curtis, someone turned me onto Blurb.com and I now have bound books on Pop, Mom, and the in-laws. Pops has pictures of his parents, childhood, high school, including a scan of his dance card!, college, navy, job, newspaper articles, etc. Mom’s has her grandparents, childhood, immigration and naturalization papers, copy of the plane she came over on, college, wedding, job pictures, then our family album of scanned pictures. I wish I had read your articles before I started- I’d have done a better job organizing the scanning and labelling the pictures! However your website has inspired me to continue with scanning the pictures for what will be my current family’s book, and will hopefully eventually “re-do” those scanned for the other books (eventually!) Thank you for providing this rich resource and to all your contributors (like Art!) who also add so many helpful suggestions.
More tips to help with dating photos
One way that MIGHT be able to help with dating photos is a set of negatives (and possibly prints) or slides that have a date and time printed in the image area by the camera. Some point-and-shoot cameras, and definitely some SLRs dating back to the early 1980s had the ability to print the date, the time, or both date and time, onto the film with each exposure. Sometimes the information appeared in the actual image but sometimes, as with the Minolta X700 with the optional Multi-function Data Back, the printing was intended to be exposed in the black area between frames. When slide film was processed, cut, and mounted in the slide mounts, sometimes part or all of the data was visible along one edge of the mounted slide. Other times, it was covered by the slide mount, although it was still there. If a contact sheet of negatives from such a camera is printed, any such data will be visible in the contact print.
HOWEVER, even if some photos do show this information, it MAY NOT be accurate! The clock and calendar electronics required battery power, often separate from the camera’s exposure meter and shutter battery so a dead or absent battery meant no date or time information was printed. Whenever the battery was changed, the clock and calendar needed to be re-set to the correct time and date. If they were not re-set, any data printed on the film would show only the default time and date programmed into the camera by the manufacturer. This potential problem exists also with today’s digital cameras. I have an entire set of shots on one memory card from a 2005 vintage digital camera where every shot was exposed on 01-01-2001, while in reality, some were shot in March 2008, some in high summer, and some with colored leaves in September or October. This particular camera uses two ‘AA’ batteries for its power and when they were replaced, the date and time did not always get re-set.
If negatives are available, it might be possible to establish at least the date the film first came onto the market so a ‘not before’ date could be determined. Most, if not all, 35 mm films have the film type name printed in the black area next to the sprocket holes so if you have 35 mm negatives or unmounted slides, you should be able to see what kind of film was used. Many roll films for medium format cameras (120/220/620, 127) also have this information visible along the edge of the film. Sheet films, (4″x5″, 5″x7″, 8″x10″) have code notches near one corner so the person developing the exposed film in the chemical or wet darkroom, could tell in total darkness, just by feeling the notches, what kind of film was to be developed.
Several references are available to interpret what the sheet film notches mean and provide dates of first available and withdrawn from the market for Kodak and other brands of film. If you have negatives available, you may be able to use this information to help in determining the approximate dates of the particular photos.
The actual size of the image of slides or negatives also offers a clue to the type of film and hence, the time span most likely to apply for a given photo. Again, there are several reference sources available on the web and probably in print as well.
Art Taylor
First item: Photograph or scan entire album pages BEFORE removing any photos or other items so you can preserve the original sequence of these images. This will also link any written notes from the album pages to the relevant photos, especially in older albums that have black construction paper pages with white pencil notations beside, above, or below the actual photos, which may be held in place with triangular photo corners. Chances are good that they were added in some kind of order, either chronological or by specific event or trip. If you can identify the date, time, location, people visible in any one of a related group of shots, it’s easier to identify the rest of the group. Curtis’s experience with the Disney World shots he found is a good example. (In that particular instance, a little research into when Disney World opened would establish a ‘not before…’ date. If the photos are just randomly removed from the album(s) before any record is made of their original sequence, you will likely need more effort to properly identify them. About a week ago, I came across an envelope of prints and negatives that had no obvious date. One of the prints, with matching negative, is of my parents’ wedding. Another is of a building, most likely a large hotel, in a major city. There are street car tracks and overhead wires, as well as a city bus, visible in the shot. I have not been able to positively identify the hotel or the street or city but since my parents honeymooned in Montreal after their mid-September 1948 wedding, it’s likely to be the hotel they stayed in while on their honeymoon. If these two prints had not been stored in the same envelope, it would have been much more difficult to identify the street scene so retaining the sequence of unidentified photos is critical for possible later identification.
For family group photos in particular, even the people who are NOT shown can help with dating. I have one photo in my collection showing my aunt, uncle, two of three cousins, my mom and dad, and me but not my brother and youngest cousin. Since these two boys are absent, and my cousins and I are obviously quite young, I’d say the shot was taken in the summer of 1952, before my brother was born in Feb. 1953 and my cousin in June ’53. There’s no other obvious date on the print. Another photo of my maternal grandfather shows him with my uncle’s (Mom’s brother) 3 children, my aunt’s (Mom’s sister, shown in the previously mentioned photo) three children, and my brother and me. Again, there’s no date on the print but since my brother and youngest cousin, at least for a few more years until his younger brother was born, appear as babies, this shot must have been taken in the summer of 1953.
Recently I sent a scanned image to a friend. I had scanned it some time ago but have not recently seen the original slide which was scanned so I couldn’t check for a date on the slide mount. Knowing that I didn’t get a 35 mm camera until March 1969 so couldn’t have taken it before then and that I had moved away to college in 1971, I knew it must have been taken some time within that time span but guessed at some time in 1969 or 1970 as being most likely. His response acknowledging receipt of the image included the note that it must have been taken during 1969 before he and his family moved to another town. Now I know it must have been taken some time between 1969-03-01 when I got my camera and 1969-12-31. This just confirms Curtis’s suggestion to seek help from extended family members and friends.
Styles of clothing, hair styles, vehicles, buildings, the presence or absence of telephone poles and wires, TV antennas, large satellite dishes and small satellite dishes, pay phone booths, gas stations on many street corners, and other items visible in any particular may offer clues to possible dates, even if only to ‘not possibly before …’ or ;not likely after….’ time spans rather than specific dates.
External TV antennas become prominent in the 1950s and lasted mainly into the 1970s when cable TV became popular. In perhaps the late ’70s and early ’80s, large diameter satellite dishes started to appear. About 2000, the current small diameter satellite dishes arrived on the scene and have become fairly common.
Before cell phones, PDAs, and similar devices became affordable, pay telephone booths were commonly seen in commercial parts of town, at gas stations, and elsewhere. Lots of luck finding a pay phone today if you don’t have cell coverage or your phone needs to be recharged! Some still exist, but they’re not nearly as plentiful as they once were.
Until the early ’70s and the first ‘energy crisis’, gas stations often were found on every other city block, if not across the street from one another. Since then, such service stations have become very few and far between, and the days of full service, including free windshield cleaning and oil checks have virtually vanished. They’ve been replaced by gas stations with self-serve pumps, a convenience store offering snacks, magazines, oil cans, windshield washer fluid, and in colder climates at least, anti-freeze, all for sale.
If any of these items appear in external shots in a collection, they may help establish at least a rough date for the photo(s).
Robert Pols, a British author, has written several books about dating 19th Century and 20th Century photos. There are also several other similar reference books that have been published, although they’re not all necessarily still in print. Look for books about ‘memoir writing’, ‘family history’, and ‘dating old photos’ on-line and in your local library.
As Curtis has mentioned previously, always use the YYYY-MM-DD date format when labeling your files, even if most of the spaces are just ‘x’. This will ensure that your dates will sort correctly in computer software.
There are a number of web sites that also offer tips for ‘dating old photographs’ so a Google search should be helpful. In fact, that’s how I found Curtis’s blog about a year ago when I was researching this topic for a presentation I was going to give last April.
Since I’m scheduled to give a similar presentation to a different group in March, maybe I can do a guest post for Curtis later.
Art Taylor
Excellent additions there Art.
Especially your first thoughts about studying the way in which they were stored. That is so true that even if a “group” of photos doesn’t appear at first to have any kind of logical reason for being together, you might later realize a chronology that wasn’t apparent to you at first.
That was an important point you made that for many of us, it’s important to scan pages intact and in order to preserve its original chronology. As well as loose groups of photos. I have all kinds of random stacks of photos in my family’s collection. It’s a good reminder that I try and preserve this order in whatever way I can just in case this helps me later to discover the dates on any undated photos.
I think this came up in one of our discussions earlier, but some of my prints have numbers hand-written on the bottom of the backs of the prints like [23-4]. My Grandparent’s or Mom probably made some kind of references to the roll number and exposure count. Or maybe it was just their system of ordering them in old photo albums or small “brag books” the prints used to be in. Either way, it could help me figure out their dates some day.
Any why yes Art, I would love to publish another one of your guest posts for everyone here to read! Just let me know.