How And Why You Should Label Your Family Holiday Photos

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.
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Bradstowe House in Harrow, Commuting, Ex-pats, Finding or Losing Friends' Addresses

Bradstowe House in the centre of Harrow was empty for months. Scaffolding. An eyesore. Everybody passing must be so pleased it is finished. I like the design, curves. Different.

Complete Community
Inside it now has one and two bed flats, two bed penthouses, and for the residents, a gym, a cinema and a lounge. No need to leave the building on a rainy day.

It would have been nice for residents to have a swimming pool. Maybe they have plans. Maybe they will, one day. (Failing all else, residents can join one of two nearby gyms with pools which are in Harrow, Golds and Fitz, currently lowest price is about £25 a month for a first or second membership. Plus the public leisure centre, Harrow Leisure Centre.)

Many blocks in Singapore, known as flats, when they have few facilities, condos when they provide much more, have gardens with benches, fish ponds, fountains, swimming pools, communal lounges you can hire, open spaces where you can erect marquees for weddings, national holidays, charity events, rows of shops and services (doctor, convenience store - in the UK called a corner shop since they used to be on corners), creche, primary school. Every group of buildings has a Community Centre with tennis court or tarmac sports area in front, meeting room with table, display cabinets, storage cabinets, pull down screens, computers, indoor sports hall, art exhibits along walls (some static, some constantly changing). Often a coffee shop and cafeteria or restaurant.

Unique Blocks Or matching Blocks?
I like the Bradstowe house design from the outside, in isolation. I must admit Bradstowe House with its stepped curves does not in any way match the building beside with brown bricks and triangular top gables.

Useful buildings
The latter building was previously an office building. It was a public service. It was very useful for the community. It was a tax office for everybody in Harrow.

Moving Offices Out of Town
I am annoyed that the tax office has moved out of Harrow to faraway Cardiff in Wales. No chance to go in to see somebody for advice. Instead letters can take over a week. Governments are selling off expensive land in city centres to raise money and moving out. The advantage, if any, is that they provide employment in rural areas. But city centres are getting more crowded. Rant over.

Victorian And Edwardian Terraces
Bradstowe house may seem a novelty in Harrow, surrounded by the two storey terrace houses. But Singapore has every big building different. We used to build long lines of identikit terraces, grander ones such as those in Bath, and the Nash Terraces in London's Regent Park. They may look pretty in pictures. But they are a nuisance when you are trying to find your way.

I drove along a long row of houses in Hampstead, NW London, once, looking for friends who'd invited me for dinner. I an my partner both assumed the other one had the address, but neither of us had it. We'd been there before (with the right address first time). We lost our friends who had moved from Singapore to London, literally and metaphorically, on that night and forever. They moved yet again. Where are you Ash and Sarah? Bradstowe House, easy to find building, count the number of floors, that should not be a problem.

Same Block Confusion
Getting lost in identikit buildings is not just a problem in Victorian or Edwardian rows of similar houses. Nowadays skyscrapers march or stand in circles leaving the newcomer gawping in the middle wondering where friends and family live. When the blocks are all the same it wastes endless time, for the young children, for the elderly, for visitors, taxi drivers, parcel deliveries. I kept going into the wrong block where I live in Singapore for weeks, until I realise one has an oblong roof overhanging the entrance, the other has an arched entrance. One buildings is set back. Even that's not enough. Every week we have a visitor turning up twenty minutes late. They would not be able to spot that. You forget the number or can't see it until you get near. An estate with different blocks has to give buildings different. In Korea I've seen blocks painted different colours, with a different flower on each one. You can give somebody a business card with a picture and when they come to visit they can find you.Conclusion - new design - I like it.

Rooftop Terraces
I also like what looks like private of public outdoor spaces on the roofs, with protective edges.They need to be protected with high fencing or plants so that people can't get drunk at parties and lean over the edge, fall, be pushed, jump. We've seen several of these accidents in London in 2015.On the other hand, platforms can be useful in an emergency for escape.

Working Near Home
Working near home. Living near work. Why? Why not? The advantage to you, if you live in the new skyscraper in the city centre, is that you are near transport to your place of work. You may even be able to walk home.

At one point planners divided cities into residential and commercial. Commercial was not allowed to invade residential areas, creating noise, pollution, ugly buildings. People were able to go home, away from their place of work and forget about it, living in a specious, less crowded area with green trees. However, the workers had stressful journeys increasingly expensive, and with more traffic, increasingly long.

Rental only or Mixed Office and Residential
Bradstowe House - I thought might be offices, or flats for sale, or a mixture, like Singapore, with offices on ground floor, and flats above two people could live above their workplace and go downstairs for shopping or dining out or services. No, not what I had hoped, I went onto their website and it's rental property.

Rental Price
To me it seems expensive. The price on the website is quoted in weekly rental. You have to multiply by four to get the monthly rental and compare it what you see in newspapers and on property websites.

However, I like the design. It's a centrepiece on the roundabout. It's a landmark. If you live there, people would find you easily. It's very near the railway and bus stations to both central London and outlying areas. Great for workers.

Medical Care nearby
Also for accidents, emergencies, and ongoing or temporary problems. Sports injuries - sports and road accident injuries can be treated by a sports physio at a nearby gym. (I was sent there for physio after another car shunned mine and the other vehicle's insurance sent my for physio for arm and shoulder problems.)

In a civil trouble you are near a hospital. The pregnant or the retired are near a hospital. The bus routes go to the nearest hospital, Northwick Park, plus the less known adjacent buildings where people are isolated, eg for cancer treatment when radiation gives you a low immune system. Two shopping malls are a few steps away.

I went away and forgot the name and had to take a picture. It needs a building name. memorable names stick, such as London's The Gherkin. How about calling Bradstowe House - The C u r v e r y?  Too similar to Carvery. Make it shorter. and less easy to confuse with anything else The Curvy? The Ellipse? The Harrow Ellipse?

Want to see more?
www.bradstowehouse.com

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.