Photo Detective
Humidity and Photos
As I sit in my air-conditioned home office, it's hot and humid outside. The combination of these two weather Hs are bad for family photos. Resin-coated color images tend to stick together when it's humid. The H and H also creates the perfect environment for mold to grow on your...
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Tracking Down a Famous Relative
Attached to the inside velvet of this cased photo is a cryptic note, “may be great-grandfather Swale author of Geometric Amusements.” It’s a mystery to the photo's owner, Susan Wellington, who can’t imagine how Swale might be related to her. Is this a family photo or a 19th-century collectible...
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Look to the Past (Columns)
If you're new to this blog you probably aren't aware of the lengthy archive of past "Identifying Family Photographs" columns available on the Family Tree Magazine Web site—just click on the Photo Detective Archive link on the left of this page. You can read about submitting your own picures by...
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Understanding a Traveling Photographer
In this Photo Detective article, Maureen Taylor delves into the mysteries of an unknown photographer and when the photo in question might have been taken.
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It’s Confession Time: Developing Old Film
Kelly posted a question to the Forum in February about developing old film.She found a camera with film in it from the 1960s and her camera shop sent it out for processing. It's confession time. This is your chance to sound-off in the Forum about film you've forgotten to...
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Porcelain Complexion (Literally!)
I own a pillow case with a photograph of my grandmother taken in about 1910. You’re probably thinking it’s an unusual picture format, but it’s actually not. In the early days of photography, daguerreotype buttons and jewelry were common. Once paper prints and light-sensitive chemicals became readily available, photographers could...
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Blanket Backdrop Identified!
Thank you to everyone who wrote in about the beautiful bed covering featured in my April columns. (If you missed reading them, they're posted below.) My public library is a wonderful place for books, but the staff members are also great resources. One of the circulation librarians...
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Church Clues
Jan Oliver thinks this picture of an older man and a younger woman shows her great-grandfather John Henry Smith (born 1861) and his daughter Alice (life dates 1888 to 1962). Oliver knows Smith was alive in 1921, but she can’t find mention of him after that year. Will this photo...
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Making Dates
Questions from readers of this Identifying Family Photographs column range from "which wife is it?" to the more-general "who is it?" A date for this photo would go a long way to help Kellee Eubanks-Stevenson determine the woman's name. Is it her great-great-grandmother, who lived from 1842...
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You’re Kidding
Kathy Culbert owns this carte de visite captioned "Dora and Frank" and is having trouble dating it. Children's clothing can be confusing. Mothers often dressed boys like girls until they were school age, but you can tell the difference by their hair. Girls had center parts; boys had side parts...
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