Why you should label family and travel photos

Problem
The day after my mother died I started going through family photos to find a nice photo of her to display at the funeral, and put on the dining room table for the prayers and meal at home afterwards.

I stayed at my father's home to comfort him and went through my father's photos. He's with my mother and somebody else. "Who's this?" I asked. "Where was this? When was this?"

Dates, Places, People's Names
Some of the photos had nothing written on the back. Others had one word such as Venice, or a date, such as 1999. From the one word, helped by the pictures, he was able to identify many of the photos. From the date, he could identify a place. From a place name, he could identify a date.

He could identify family, friends, and strangers. I added as much detail as I could. "Aunty Carrie? What was her surname? Who was her husband? Your aunty or mother's aunty? Did she have any children?"

If she had children, I wrote the children's names. I might want to call them later, or recognise them on a genealogy site such as Ancestry.

I didn't bother to write childless. I should have done. It would save time searching for possible descendants, who didn't exist.

Writing Carefully
I wrote carefully behind the white frame of each photo, careful not to indent the photo, especially not the faces. When I worked at a photo agency, we typed out the captions and stuck them on the back of photos. You never wrote on the back of a photo. However, with a funeral to arrange, I didn't have time for such neatness.

Now, go back to your family's wedding photos. Add as many names as you can, and dates, and the place where the photo was taken.  When you have time, type it all up neatly. Stick the label on the back. Add a caption inside the glass of any framed photo.

If you have just got married, or recently married, type out a label giving the date, the venue, the people in the main wedding photo, and another sheet listing all the guests. Years later you will be saying: "What was the name of the people you used to work with? What were your parents' neighbours called?"

I have an old wedding photo taken in around 1910. I have no idea if it's a family wedding or one they attended. I don't recognize any of my relatives in the picture. I wish they had written the date on the back, and the name of the bride and groom.

 I went back through my family history to see who would have married then. The only people were my late mother's parents in 1910. But they are not the couple in the photo.

Now that another ten years have passed, I am starting to wonder whether I had mixed up photos from my family with my husband's. Could it be somebody on his side of the family?

When you write your family history or memoirs, you will want captions in the book, giving the names of every person in the photo, the date and place.

Please label your photos.

You can thank me, later.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
Writer of family histories:
My Secret Life Revealed.
The Mad Musician - a musical by Angela Lansbury.
This is your life Pearl Sharot.
Soup and Sympathy.

Art restoration from Australia; & DIY restoring photos, onto canvas?

Art restoration is taking place in Australia for major art works.

In another story, in the UK an old painting with a hole in it was saved and found to be a lost masterpiece.

In London a business restores old photos.

Don't discard damaged paintings and photos. They could be next year's treasures.

I stopped speaking to and seeing a relative who threw away a huge oil painting of my father as a three year old with his grandfather. She said, "We didn't have room for it when we moved. It had a lovely frame, too."

What a shame she didn't offer it to the nearest charity shop, or better still us. She told us over dinner in a restaurant. My father went silent.

My late father. Now I just have a tiny postcard photo of my father. All my life I had wondered what happened to the painting. Dated 1915.  Not speaking to her isn't out of spite on my part. I am just too upset every time I think about it.

Please keep all old paintings. Somebody, somewhere will want them. They can be restored.

Unique art restoration business spreads wings into Asia: South Australia’s Artlab looks to commercial sector to maintain broad spectrum of expertise.

Restoring Photos
To restore old photos you can use a computer program such as Photoshop Elements, the home version, a cut down version of the more expensive professional version.

Photos on Canvas
Other companies will copy your family photo or ancestor photo or holiday photo of a beach scene or castle and print a photo onto a canvas or with a kind of mesh which looks as if it's on canvas so you have the illusion of an oil painting.
http://www.my-picture.co.uk/photo-on-canvas/

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer.