The Photo Detective

Stuck at home during this pandemic looking for something fun to do? Look no further than the National Museum of American History’s Photographic History Collection and the Smithsonian Learning Lab.  The Photographic History Collection (PHC) represents the history of the medium of photography from the daguerreotype era to the present.  In numbers that adds up to over 2000 identified photographers an...

Have you ever wished that you could verbally tell the story of a photo and connect it to the image?  Suppose you could do that through an app or a phone call.  And it was FREE.  There is a company that offers a way to save those photo stories by putting pictures and words together. It’s pretty amazing.   It’s called Storyglory.me On a visit home to Minneapolis one holiday, my guest  found a box of...

Perhaps you have a mystery photo and you’re wondering what a photo consult is like.  During the course of a photo consultation, I look at your photos and discuss what you know about the pictures in question.  It’s often a deep dive into your family history. Together we discover and discuss the clues in the photograph and look at connections to your family history. Frankly, I never know where a pho...

There are unscrupulous folks in every field. Even in historical photography.  Imagine going to the effort of learning historical photographic methods, buying appropriate materials all to dupe a buyer.  It’s unfortunately true.  When I heard my guest at a conference, my mouth fell open in disbelief.  Spotting the fakes requires sharp eyes and a knowledge of historic images.  I’ve seen some at Brimf...

Imagine being able to save your digital family archive without spending a lot of money. And being able to share it too.  That’s the premise behind Permanent.org.  I’m not sure how I missed my guest at two RootsTech conferences but I did.  Thank you to Nancy Desmond of MemoryWeb for reminding of of their service.  I have to admit I still didn’t believe it was real.  An archive for genealogists?  Ho...

Postmortem images can cause quite a stir and for some it’s a fascination due to the disturbing subject. These photographs chronicle a family loss in a graphic manner. Often taken as a last attempt to capture an image of a loved one. There were photographers that specialized in the medium making the deceased as life-like as possible. These types of images were particularly popular during the Victor...

Fashion clues in pictures can document trends over a decade, but specific details can sometimes pinpoint an exact year or two.  Like the puffy large crown hats of circa 1910 or the Paul Poiret tapered narrow skirts of the circa 1912, supposedly influenced by bi-plane rides.  Or the Garibaldi shirt style popular in the early 1860s.  In 1864, walking skirts that belled out above the ankles were the...

All those little details of a photo such as the who, what, where, when, and why can be embedded in your pictures with metadata.  Imagine never losing that data. Today metadata isn’t always transferable from product to product or website to website. There is room for improvement. Now there is a project called the Family History Metadata Working Group that is trying to standardize the way this infor...

Our nineteenth and early twentieth century female ancestors couldn’t vote but that doesn’t mean they didn’t want to.  In the mid-nineteenth century a group of female activists tied together dress reform, political activism and abolition using dress to broadcast their beliefs and their daughters and granddaughters followed in their footsteps. After listening to my guest’s description of what women...

All this hot humid weather has me thinking about how our ancestors coped in the heat. Long dresses and undergarments in light weight cotton seemed like a sweltering combination. One of my podcast guests loves dressing in period attire. She claims that the outfit is cool, but I’m not convinced.   Hot summer weather makes me think about swimming.  But what did our ancestors wear and when. Of course...

It’s likely that if you listen to the Photo Detective podcast that you love family history from the stuff to the stories, but do you love all the parts of collecting, preserving, and sharing your family history?  I bet there are pieces that appeal more than others.  According to my guest, genealogy might be part of your personality.  That’s right. If you’ve ever felt a need to find facts, tell tal...

Forget the luxuries of early 21st century travel, early 19th century tourists who visited wartime sites usually dealt with bad roads and shoddy lodgings. Instead of the romantic visions of history depicted in paintings and writings, they found sites littered with discarded armaments and bodies of the fallen. Veterans greeted these tourists with reminiscences of their wartime memories.    Historian...

Scratching your head over what your ancestor did for work? The answer is usually in a census or city directory, but it also might be in a photo. The late 19th century saw an interest in capturing people at work and businessmen in formal portraits. Such images hold clues to the kind of business in the tools and attire shown. In your own collection there are probably images of individuals wearing cl...

Everything has a story. That hat your grandmother wore at her wedding. The china passed down for generations. A photograph perhaps. Or maybe you have inherited something else. It might be something that’s special to you from your lifetime. Sharing the story of the “things” in our lives can help us share the past with our family.  That’s where my guest comes in.  Martie McNabb is a story facilitato...

Pinup photos usually feature young barely dressed women, at least that’s what’s popularized by Sports Illustrated but suppose I told you they don’t have to be.  That you could pose in period dress and look like a glamorous turn of the century, Evelyn Nesbit or like a silver screen star ala Gloria Swanson. Pick a period. Choose clothing and have your make-up done in the style of the era. Smoky eyes...

I have three uncles  and a great uncle that served in the Navy during World War II. While aware of resources for images for Army service, I didn’t realize that the U.S. Navy had a museum and a photo archive.  Well. They do and a lot of their material is online thanks to my next guest. Robert Hanshew served with the United STates Navy and his interest in history led him to a career in archives.  He...

A few weeks ago I was in the kitchen of a cousin on my Dad’s side scanning her photos and recording her thoughts on them.  All of a sudden she leaned over and pointed at an image. “That’s my favorite photo,” she said. “ I don’t know why. There is nothing special about it.”   The color snapshot from the 1960s showed her mother stuffing a turkey getting ready for Thanksgiving. It wasn’t the best ima...

These are very interesting times in which we’re living.  I feel the need to leave a record of this behind for my descendants and maybe you do too. Thankfully my two guests are busy collecting and documenting our experiences in a project for the State of Rhode Island. If you live here you can participate. Anyone of any age can add material to the new RI Covid-19 archive. Pictures, stories and video...

Family historians in the United States are likely familiar with our genealogical conferences–NGS, FGS, Regional Conferences and of course the mega conference that’s Rootstech, but there are other conferences held around the world. MyHeritage offered an international conference in Norway, then the Netherlands and this year its being held in Israel.     In the United Kingdom, I attended the Who Do Y...

It’s a great time to work on your photographs. I’ve been working on some photo-related distractions. On the Photo Detective Facebook page there is a photo reunion challenge. Thirty days of identified photographs from my collection. These are images I’ve picked up here and there over the years. Help me find them a home! If you spot one of your relatives send me an email with how you’re related to t...

For two decades I’ve searched for images of the Revolutionary War Generation.  The individuals who lived during the war who lived long enough to be photographed.  Often there is a name but no image. Not everyone sat for a likeness even far into the nineteenth century. It’s possible that some folks did, but the images were lost, misplaced, or destroyed. It happens.    In volume two of my Last Muste...

It doesn’t matter where you live. There are constants in a search for genealogical facts and details that transcend geography. For instance, we know that family gifts can spur an interest in family history. This week’s guest is proof positive of that. As a teenager his grandmother sent him a box of images and those pictures gave him the gift of discovering his family’s past. Good record keeping in...

Have you ever thought you’d love to interview a member of your family about their life?  In this episode, personal biographer Francie King shares tips on how to get individuals to talk and the importance of listening as you record. As a former journalist she knows how to refine a story and gather the facts. We chat about ghost writing, the process of putting it all together and the power of hearin...

In this episode I’m sharing tips on dealing with twentieth century baby photos and news from Rootstech.  You’re probably thinking I wish I was the Photo Detective. I bet she doesn’t have any unidentified photos.  Well...that’s not quite true. I have some. Most folks do. I’m working through the few I have by studying the clues and my family history.  One of them is a group portrait. My Dad identifi...

Imagine working on your family history and suddenly you’re sidetracked by a bit of information.  That’s what happened to my guest, James Castellan. His pursuit of one man’s story led to a new understanding of World War I and to his becoming a film scholar on American cinematographers in Germany.  He won a writing award fromThe International Society of Family History Writers and Editors for his art...