Date your photos!

[Elphaba]

No, I don't mean going to dinner and a movie. I mean don't procrastinate on dating your photos as soon as you get them.

I’ve been working on a project where I scan in my family’s photos, tag them, and add a caption. In doing so, I’ve learned that historical dates can be precarious and unreliable.

I’ve only scanned about 150 pictures, out of a good 500 or so. Out of those 150, only ten had a date written on the photo. I’ve had to make my best guesses on all the rest. So, if someone in the future were to read my dates, s/he would assume they were correct. They’re not.

In each caption I’ve written the date as: "19** I think." There are so many “I think’s” that I suspect my future historian would ignore them altogether.

Here’s the thing: Without accurate dates, it is difficult, and I'm sure sometimes impossible, to determine sequences, relationships, context, etc. For example, when we think one date is firmly imbedded in an entire history, if we later learn the date is incorrect, there could be a domino effect where all the known-facts come tumbling down because the sequence of events doesn’t make sense anymore.

I realize this has always been a dilemma historians have had to deal with. But in this information age, there's no reason to make our future historians think so hard.

All of this is to say, be sure and write the date, the names of the people, and all other pertinent information on your photos as soon as you get them. Don’t assume you’ll just remember, because twenty years goes by in a snap, and you won’t even recognize yourself in the photos any more, much less remember the dates.

Elphaba

[pam]

Awesome advice.

[RainofGold]

Elphaba,

I agree with you completely.

Lately I've been scrapbooking my kids school, birthday and vacation pictures. And I have to admit that in a lot of the photos I have to guess on the year. The birthday pictures I actually have to count the candles on the cake to figure out what year we are celebrating:o so I think having the numbers on the cake makes it a lot easier .

Rain

[Ozone]

What A wonderful Ideal, It did not even dawn on me to date my photos until you brought it up, Thank You...

[Dr T]

Good call Elph :)

[pam]

My mom has a bunch of pictures from my dad's side of the family. Old pictures. But no one ever wrote down who they are etc. Now there is no one left that can identify them. It's sad. What a great piece of geneology right there and we have no idea who is who.

[StrawberryFields]

See how smart YOU are Elphie!!!!

[BenRaines]

I have a bunch of those pics too and scanned them and then put a note next to them to "Ask Mom". Mom will be gone six years next month. Too little too late.

Ben Raines

[DigitalShadow]

Here's some better advice: get a digital camera. They do that for you

[Elphaba]

Here's some better advice: get a digital camera. They do that for you

I thought of that after I wrote my post.

My advice is for those of us old enough to remember film.

Elph

[BenRaines]

What was film? Was it like the kind where you had to start rolling it on one end and make sure that it took before you could close the back, like on my Brownie Kodak camera or like the one I later had that had a cartridge that slid in the front on my Polaroid Instamatic or the little 110 Kodak camera that I had that had a little cartridge that you dropped in the back or the one like my Olympus 35 mm camera that had a cartridge you had to thread or the ones where we dropped the 35 mm cartridge in and when you closed it it wound itself? Oh how I love my digital camera where I can shoot 1,000 shots of something if I want and delete all the stuff I don't want. Nice.

Ben Raines