The Most Important Question To Ask Cousins About Old Photos
Way back in the 1990s, Roma Bennett's cousin gave her this photo. At the time her cousin told her she didn't know anything about this tintype. Hmmm. In my experience, people usually know something about a picture, but they don't know they know it until you ask the...
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Why I Love Old Photos (And You Should, Too!)
Happy New Year! Collection of the author, 1898.It's that time of year for resolutions. If you feel you need to make one, here's an easy one that's simple to keep—but very important: Take care of your photos. Investing in a few of the right kind of storage...
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A Year of Passionate Photo Detecting: What Did You Miss?
On this Photo Detective blog, 2016 was a year of early color (and colorized) photos, photo-ID tips and crowd-sourcing. If you missed the most-popular posts, don't worry. The links in this 2016 wrap-up will take you them. Photo Identification TipsNewspapersWe started the year off right with a big...
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Colorized Old Photos Offer Rare Glimpses of Your Ancestors’ World
Recently a collection of colorized historical images of immigrants at Ellis Island went viral. It's a pretty snazzy group of pictures. And these images are historically accurate: The historians behind this project researched actual colors in use at the time. You can see the photos here. Somehow, the color makes...
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Clues in a Curious Old Family Photo: The First Mannequin Challenge?
It's not the first time a family photo begs the question "What were they thinking?" That's the case with this image of family sitting as though they're doing a mannequin challenge. The story behind this clowning for the camera has been lost, and the picture lacks identification. It was...
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Clues in a 1900s Mystery Photo of the Old Family Farm
Thanksgiving is right around the corner. Planning a menu for that important family meal makes me think about how all that food ended up on my grandmother's table. There are no farmers in my family history, so I love to see reader's photos of rural life. Darlene Sampley...
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Death Photography: Is it For Real?
There's no shortage of creepy postmortem photography on the web. But are those images the real thing? Here's a bit of history to separate fact from fiction.
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How to ID Strange Faces in Six Kinds of Old Group Photos
Whether an old family photo has two or 20 people (or more), it's considered a group portrait. When you find one in your collection, it may generate a groan rather than a cheer. Solving those types of picture mysteries is a challenge and a some might say a curse. You...
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Tintype Photos: Best of Photo Detective
Photo Detective was a long-running FamilyTreeMagazine.com blog. Here, we've combined the best posts about tintype photos.
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A Pair of Photo Mysteries: Charcoal-Enhanced 1840s Portraits
Darlene Sampley isn't sure who the young woman is in the painted tintype featured in last week's column, but she working on figuring out the mystery. But that tintype isn't the only problem photo in Darlene's collection. This week it's a pair of portraits, of a mysterious man and woman...
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