I did this years ago with all of the family photos that I acquired, as well as backing them on several different platforms up so they won't be lost. I didn't want future family members to be left wondering who the people in the photos are. A relative of mine lost many photos in a fire but I was able to give them copies of the photos that were lost

I agree and wish I had did all those things you mention. Unfortunately for me I don't have anyone to ask and that is so sad. Now I am the grandmother and one of a few elder people in my family. I try to write on all photos but must dedicate a time to catch up with that task. Hopefully 2023 will be the year. Thanks Devon.

Excellent advice. Sometimes I just rush through adding pics because I know who they are.

My father passed in 2005 & my mother in 2015. I eventually wound up with my mother’s pictures that consisted of her mother’s and her aunts and uncles. I spent the winter on 2021/2022 scanning 5,000 pictures and labeling the ones I could ID about 1/4 are marked as unknown. I have sent flash drives to cousins and nephews and nieces with all the pictures hoping to get some Identified. Thanks Randy

When I started doing genealogy last year I asked my father and mother to share with me any photos they have to do just this. However, they have yet to find the photos; I might have to do it my self. One thing that terrifies me as a genealogist is people dying that may have information that would help solve a brick wall before I can speak to them. This is why I message EVERYONE when I notice they are a family member. Who knows how much longer they have.

Finally was able to get my brother to send the unidentified photos from my grandparents. Scanned and posted to an Amazon photo share folder, which I've started sharing with cousins who have begun to identify a few, which is better than where I was previously.

Thanks for this prompt! I am the oldest of two daughters. When my dad passed in 2018, my sister and I were going through photos. She recognized me as a child but didn't know who the older woman was in so many of my toddler photos. It never occurred to me that my sister wouldn't recognize our maternal grandmother, who passed when I was 4 and my sister was 10 months old. As my mom was an only child, I'm the only one who knows who the woman was in those photos. Happy 2023!

I use a good flatbed scanner to digitize every negative and print I can find. Negatives almost always result in a scan with a lot more detail. And the file name allows a lot of meta data, starting with the date for sorting purposes. Then, there's the software I use to organize, which allows associating keywords to each file. I use an old version of ThumbsPlus and it serves several other helpful functions, importantly being able to find similar images which are often duplicates with different filenames. It also has basic image editing functions. Trying to pin down dates is the biggest challenge. To start, I give the filename an approximate date. Sorting by filename puts the collection into rough chronological order, and from there it's possible to narrow things down a little. I also have a list of family members and their birthdates. Using normal development clues for children can get a big help when cross-referenced with the birthdate. I've been able to get dates from newspapers laying on a couch and from TV-Guide and other magazine covers. Therer's so much to learn and to DO. I'm afraid I'll be gone from this Earth before I finish. But, maybe someone will pick up where I left off. Which brings up a very important point when you're dealing with digital media; always have backups, preferably more than one and stored at different physical addresses.

This is excellent advice! I helped clean out my grandma's house and found over 1,000 documents and photos. I sat with her many times and she was able to identify 99% of them. I also made some videos of her stories while she talked about the photos. I'm so thankful I did all this before she died. I have photos from the other side of my family and many aren't identified so I'm trying to work on this.

Thank you for reminding me of this important issue in my genealogy work. I recently received a inquiry from some one in Australia who wanted to verify individuals from 1940s from his fathers photo file. He saw that I had my step mother and her parents attached to my tree on Family Search. Since I knew the family since the late 70s I was able to ID her parents in the photos.

My mother died when I was eleven and we had only a couple of photos of her. When I got old enough, every time I visited a relative, I asked them if they had any photos of my mother. I acquired quite a few photos of my mother in her younger years plus other photos of older ancestors, which I promptly labeled, copied and shared with cousins and other relatives. I had several photos of g-g-g's professionally restored. Expensive, but well worth the cost in my book.

What I find really scary is almost all photos today are digital and stored on someone's computer, IF we are lucky. I know a lot of folks to take the picture with their cellphone and there is stays. No paper copies or anything else. One of my friends said they attended a family reunion, took hundreds of pictures with their cellphone, and then lost that cellphone on their trip home. No back up, no nothing. Gone! As well as all of the new contact info, etc. Scary stuff.

I used to hate photos with things scrawled across the front - now I don’t care where the information is, or how bad the handwriting, just as long as it’s there somewhere. Of course neatly written full details on the back with photo safe marker is the best, but these days I’ll take anything from ‘Jessie was a tart’, scrawled across the front, to ‘Jessie Smith, mother of illegitimate daughter May born 1886, lived in Bealiba Australia’ neatly printed on the back. At least I have half a chance of working out who Jessie is. My handwriting is terrible, but these days I’ve let my perfectionist procrastination go and I just write whatever I know with almost whatever I can find to write with, whether I have time to scan it or not - but I do write on the back ( unless its in one of those awful albums that you usually can’t remove the photo without destroying it. Though I have been known to tear the pages apart and leave the page as a backing for the photo.)

You are SO RIGHT! I started doing that with my mother's photos. But, so many photos and so many memories. Plus, I did not prepare with the correct materials to record the info with the old photos. I did not dare write on them. I ran out of time and most remained unlabled.

One more thing. Scan and upload all your photos to some website. Or external hard drive that can be put in a safe place. I had a house fire and lost totes full of old family photos.

Thanks for this video! I started working on our pictures last year, then got distracted and haven't done any for a while. Once we get my Mom's funeral taken care of this month, I'm going to start again and try to get them all done this year.

This is definitely my goal this year. I plan on digitizing my photos & adding the Metadata. Great tips! Have a great year!

My Dad labeled hundreds of photos, before he passed away. I have them and they're digitized and labeled. Now.

This by far is one of the most important tasks for anyone to do. You don't have to be a genealogist, just get them identified if at all possible. It will be helpful to someone somewhere down the line. This is on my to do list. Thanks for the reminder.

So many people think modern things like Facebook or Instagram make labels unnecessary. These accounts will eventually be disabled and even if they aren't the names on them won't survive.

Very good advice…!

My late mother did this a few years before her death. She made lables and put them next to the photos of her mother's and then put them in a box. Unfortunately the box was too heavy for her to put away and it fell and all the content fell down in a great mess. She never sorted that pile. It seemed too much. So I inherited a box full of unsorted lables and photos starting in the 1920ies. I felt it too big a task too but perhaps I should at least try.😮‍💨

If you use a document, you can create a UniqueID that you write on each photo that refers to your main notebook which contains the story. Both can also be digitized, and you can use the "properties" box for some info. The two relevant sections in the Details tab for jpegs are Description and Origin, which contain the fields: Title, Subject, Rating, Tags, Comments, and Authors; Date Taken, Program Name, Date Acquired, and Copyright respectively.

Happy New Year! My sister-in-law has a family book full of old tin plate photos. I have an idea which family line they belong to, but identifying who of the 10 siblings is who will be a struggle. Ever since I started using digital cameras, I stopped printing photos. I have an album full of photos of my son, but hardly any of my daughter! I think I'll call my mom and plan a day to go through photos...and maybe I can convince her to do the dna test (fingers crossed). BTW, I had 2 breakthroughs! An ancestor on the India line, I found his birth in London and parents finally (except no maiden name yet for the mother). The other was while reading about the Loyalists and events leading up to and during the War of 1812, I kept coming across familiar names. I realised not only was my husband's relatives involved or married into these historical families, but so were my siblings spouses families. (including smuggling guns from the US to Canada for the 1837 Rebellion shhhh). Anyway, I found the original family farm and where they relocated to. The militia connections that lead to family/marriage connections and the land grants from Lt. Gov Simcoe, which explains how they ended up with property all over Upper Canada. It's been a sucessful week.

I suffer from ADGD - Attention Deficit Genealogy Disorder. It is where you start researching one ancestors, but get distracted by another ancestor's record, which causes you to bounce around to different ancestors only to end up doing a lot of work with very little to show for it! Does that sound familiar?

My goal is to buy a scanner and scan ALL photos in my possession. If possible I will be dating, location, and who is in photo. For our children I will be doing ALL photos on a CD. In turn I will be giving the original photo to the child who is the main subject along with a CD. This will not only get the photos organized but also help declutter stuff in my home.

🖼 Organize Mountains of Old Family Photos Easily 👉🏼 kzfaq.info/get/bejne/gbxxmrierdyYZ3U.html

I am in the process of sorting and organizing photos, photo albums and scrapbooks. I was wondering how to handle the albums and scrapbooks. Do you keep the items in these and just take pictures (scan) each page and each photo? or do take photo(scan) each page and then take the items out of these. Thanks for any help you can give me or any resources I can look at to get an answer to this.

I’m 14 about to be 15 and I’m getting as much information from my elders as I can

I am looking for good archiving pens. I've found a few that are not true archiving tools for photos, so I'm still interested in recommendations or links to websites of information or even (dare I say it) sales of these items. Devon mentioned that they are important tool for labeling. I'm hoping for some specifics.

Where did you guys go? I haven’t seen any new videos in quite some time and the emails stopped coming to my inbox. I hope you folks are okay!

One area of strong disagreement: Please do not simply toss unknown photos! I had pictures of people whose identities were unknown for decades. My grandmother, the last of her family, had no idea who they were. After she was gone, there was no one left alive who could have told us. But.... I FOUND OUT WHO THEY WERE. I did the research. I discovered parts of the tree that were long abandoned in the crossing of the Atlantic, and now I know who they were. Don't give up! I discovered the family left behind in Europe, including generations lost in the Holocaust. It was only through years of research, but yes, it took a lot of time. Those photos are precious!

Unfortunately some of them thrown away by my great grandmother or so the story has been told. I also cringe a bit when photos are taken to the PBS antiques roadshow and discussed like they are a random antique. No, they obviously belong to the descendants of that person. Don’t sell them at auction, put them up on a genealogical site.