The first and easiest label to put on still photographs or videos is the date. Next any occasion such as birthday party, restaurant meal, at home in (city, street, type of building), holiday in .. hotel .... Add names of the people, such as Sarah Brown's uncle John Smith. If they are deceased, add their birth and death dates.
I used to work in a photographic agency. Their policy was to write or type on labels which were stuck on the back of photos. That was to prevent people writing on the back of photos and indenting across faces or any part of the photo.
I am wary of labels falling off. So I write around the edge of the photo, especially if there is any white margin. I write very lightly, neatly in capital letters to be sure that my writing can be read.
Add anything you can see in the photo such as>
The name of a hotel.
The name of a boat.
A landmark.
A description of the plants and animals.
A description of the buildings and structures.
Add your own name to photographs of yourself.
Label your own wedding photos.
Name the country, city, village, street. Postcode.
What if you cannot identify photos?
1 Identify the photographer.
eg, photos taken by my father John Brown (and if deceased give the dates he lived). This gives your photo(s) a before date. You can add the before date. Label both the box and individual photos. If you do not have time to label all the photos, at least label the box or album.
2 Identify the country.
It may be obvious to you that the photo is taken where you have lived all your life, in my case the UK, But then I went to live in the USA and later Singapore. Maybe you grew up in one city but later moved to another. It could the USA.
I remember coming back from a holiday in France. I knew the location of every photo. A year later I had photos of cathedrals all jumbled up. We had driven home through Belgium. At least if I had labelled all photos with the country. Or the majority which were from France. Or the minority which were from Belgium.
Luckily I needed the photos for a travel article I was writing only a year or two later. But ten years further on, after several more trips, it would be very hard to remember.
It may be that you always take your holiday in the same place. Why bother saying so? Because those photos are of historic value to you. The older you get, the older the photos are and the rarer.
What can help you date a photo? The people in it. (eg those who have died. Your child as a baby. The fashions worn by the women.
The type of car or boat or plane or train.
Type of bridge.
WHY?
I gave a talk about the importance of labelling wedding photos. You know who you married, in which country, at which hotel or venue. When it comes to your ruby wedding, decades later, you are likely to have forgotten the name of the hotel and the name of the minister. Your in-laws and parents will be dead. Your children or grandchildren will not necessarily be able to identify your parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts, sisters and brothers and cousins.
My Wedding Photos
I looked at my own wedding photos. By now both my parents and in-laws had died. My future daughter in law if yo son marries will not know the names. When my grandchildren inherit the photos, they will be very glad to have the names of their grandparents and great grandparents. I know my parents are on one side of the picture, my in-laws on the other. But I have a photo of a wedding from about 1910.
Historic Photos
I have a mystery photo. Is it from my mother's side or my father's?
I know it's in the east end of London, in a back garden with a broken fence. I know it must be before The Great War.
It should be of my mother's mother, married in 1910. But I don't recognise the people. If only they had written a date and the name of the bride!
A photo album fell off my bookshelf, asking me to label the photos. I started detective work. Write down the obvious. Write what you would need if you published the photos and needed a caption. Nobody except you knows why you took the photo. Is it to show the woman in the foreground, or the boat on the lake, or the mountain behind?
If you can, label all three. For example, I have, my mother (name and dates) in (country) in front of a ship. I added my white haired mother. Wearing a red jacket and carrying a black bag. Why? ANytobyd can see that. Why should they care. It shows how old my mother was.
I find another photo of her and notice it's the same jacket and bag. Does that tell me it's the same day and place? Or that she had only one outfit? Probably the former. Then I looked at the ship.
I compare two photos. I write on one, hotel. On the next swimming pool. Then white pool chairs. Red flowers. I find a photo containing the same elements. Next a ship with a name.
My mother is in a hotel bedroom overlooking a harbour. Another photo, orange curtains. Label the first photo - bedroom with white curtains, not the same hotel (unless they changed rooms).
After all that, I discover on the underside of the box the name of four countries and the year, 1999. Now I can narrow down my search.
I remember staying at a hotel at a resort and being told it was the only hotel with an outdoor swimming pool.
Doesn't every hotel have a pool and a beach? A sandy beach, a pebbly beach, a rocky beach.
What are the people wearing, summer clothes or winter clothes? Is it spring, summer, autumn or winter?
I keep adding to each photo just a minor detail. But every five minutes I have found one more piece of the puzzle.
(I shall add photos later. I am taking a coffee break but will come back.)
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
type in Angela Lansbury, author or travel writer or poet. Fortunately there are only four people with my name. Most people I look up on Facebook and google and linkedIn have twenty namesakes worldwide. As for people called Patel, Cohen and Levy, Singh - several million of those.
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