Problem
How to find photos you took years ago, or at an unknown date?
Places And Useful Labels
In my photos system, I have a section called places. This can be very handy. I used to leave my photos unlabelled. Now I tag them with every tag I can think of.
Eiffel Tower, Paris, France
It's obvious that the Eiffel Tower is the Eiffel Tower, is in Paris, and that Paris is in France. However, if I have a moment, I will label it, with all three pointers. The reason is that, a week or year later, if I am writing about Paris and want a symbol, I can find one quickly.
When you have several photos it is handy to have as much detail in labelling as possible. For example, I might have two dozen photos of a famous building, or even my own garden or balcony. I can see if one picture is a sunset or a daytime or nighttime photo. I can see if it is lawn (green grass), or a rose, or even a tree.
A Rose
Cut Red Rose on table.
But these labels will be handy hours, days or weeks later if I am looking for a picture of a rose, contrasting drought or weeds with green grass, or comparing the pine trees of England with the palm trees of Singapore.
I could label my rose as flower, or rose, or red rose, or red rose in vase or flower container, or red rose on table, to contrast with pink rose in garden.
Pink rose growing in garden in London, England.
I have to search only one file and everything is in date order, the date of the email. In photo storage, the photos are stored when they were taken.
Downloading Photos
So If I download a free photo from Wikipedia, which was taken at the Notting Hill Gate Carnival in 2017, I would have to recall that it was taken in 2017 in order to find it.
Queen Victoria. Where?
I once downloaded a photo of a statue of famous composer and the photo instantly disappeared. I thought it had failed to be downloaded from the server to my computer.
The Statue of Liberty. When?
For weeks I did not realise what was happening. Then started looking for another Photo and found my statue picture. I finally twigged that my photos were being stored under the date they were taken. The solutions?
Important Dates
Firstly, to notice when the picture was taken from the detailed description in Wikipedia. I never used to take much notice of dates. Now I make a point of noticing every time.
I used to hate out of date pictures. Who needs a picture of their own high street or a shop from five years ago or ten years ago. For a travel writer, an out of date photo, even six months in a four-season country is a waste of time. A snowy scene is useless when you are writing in summer. Unless you are writing about booking a ski holiday for next Easter.
As a travel writer, I used to be selling stories immediately I came back from a trip. I had up-to-date photos and experiences.
Photographer?
You want to label the phtographer to give credit. I also want to know whether a photo was taken by me or by soembody esle. I might prefer to have a statue with a live person beside it.
Angela Lansbury standing by statues in Singapore. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.
Statues by railway station in Singapore. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.
Statues in Singapore. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.
Old Photos - Out of Date?
Now I can see the point of the old photos. You can show before and after photos. Has the new decor of a restaurant improved on the way it used to be a year ago? Will I or you or another reader be able to see that the place they remembered and didn't like has improved for the better?
I was at a meeting of travel industry people at the annual World Travel Market in London. One member of the audience complained that Tripadvisor kept old reviews. He said any review more than a month ago was irrelevant. The chef might have changed. The seasonal menu would have changed.
I disagreed. I had been to a hotel which has a broken window in a bedroom. The owner told me it had just happened and he would fix it. Should I believe him? I went online and discovered that people had been complaining about that and similar problems for years. Nothing got repaired or fixed. If I had only had this week's complaint, I might have thought it was one off. By carefully analysing all the reports over the years, it was clear that those people in the renovated top floor rooms gave the hotel glowing reports. Those in the middle floor rooms were all complaining.
Another interesting point. If all rooms in a hotel are the same size, you don't know whether you will get a good room or a bad one. Since the rooms were different sizes, you could see at a glance that a three-bed family room on the top floor was in good condition. So, you had to ask for and only book if you could get a three-bed family room.
You might think, if the place is run down in some areas, surely you should not give them your business at all. However, if you didn't want to pay twice the price for bland chain hotel room which could be in any country of the world, the hotel with the piano-playing owner, statues in the garden, board games for children, a clientele of bohemian and off-beat visitors to talk to, might be just thing - provided you got the renovated room and not the one with the broken window.
The other point is that I hesitate to say anything bad about a hotel or restaurant. What I think is a small portion might be just right for somebody else. Better to show a photo and let the viewer judge for themselves. My family can't agree on a meal. We have totally different tastes.
The old saying, a picture is worth a thousand words, holds true. An old picture showing the place is just the same, or tally changed, may be very useful.
But how do you find the old picture? We have come full circle.
Author
Travel writer and photographer, author and speaker, Angela Lansbury. Please bookmark your favourite posts and share links with your family and friends.
Map of Europe showing Sweden.
