How old is this photo

There was a great deal of change in women's clothing styles throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which makes it a great clue for dating photos. While men's clothing and children's styles changed over the years, women's clothing shows the most dramatic changes.

Here's a general sense of how the styles changed through the decades:. It's also a good idea to look at the vehicles and other items that are in the background of the photograph. This is especially helpful with early home photographs, since they often show vehicles, farm implements, furniture and other helpful items.

Use your magnifying glass to examine these items closely. Now that you know how to figure out the age of a photograph, you can use the rest of your genealogy information to identify the subjects and the place. Your family history research will show you which family members were living at that time, and you can approximate the ages of the children to help in your photo labeling.

Good luck! Genealogy About Genealogy How to Determine the Age of a Photograph If you have a box of unlabeled photographs in your basement or attic, you aren't alone. Identify the Photographic Technique A quick glance at your box of images will tell you all photographic techniques are not the same.

Daguerreotype This was the first type of popular photography, especially during the s and s. Ambrotype Similar in size and format to a daguerreotype, an ambrotype is developed on glass instead of metal. Tintype Similar to the daguerreotype in that it had a metal backing, the tintype was popular from the time they were invented in throughout the last half of the 19th century. Photo Postcard The photo postcard was very popular in the early s.

Early Home Photo The Met reports the first Kodak consumer camera, issued in , revolutionized the world of photography and allowed people to take photography into their own hands. Women's Clothing There was a great deal of change in women's clothing styles throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which makes it a great clue for dating photos.

Technology, Furniture and Vehicles It's also a good idea to look at the vehicles and other items that are in the background of the photograph. If you can identify the make and model of the car in the picture, it will help you pinpoint the period for the photo. The Antique Automobile Club of America has lots of photos of old cars and helpful forums where you can post photos and questions.

Furniture styles can also help you date a photograph. If there is a piece of furniture in the image, use your magnifying glass to examine it. Identifying antique furniture can be rather a complicated process, but if you have the actual piece in your possession as a family heirloom, that can help. The first step to finding some basic information for my detective work was to use search engines on the internet. The results were similar but not identical. This is because search engines use different algorithms to produce their results.

For this reason, it's always a good idea to use more than one search engine. When you review the search results, remember they're influenced by cookies that have been placed onto your computer by your previous internet use. I recommend you clear delete the cookies before you start your research. This should bring up a more objective results list. My initial search inquiry suggested I take the following steps to learn more about my photos.

There are no identifying marks or names on the back of my photos. However, using the guidelines above, I narrowed the years down to their being made between and The sepia coloring, the type of paper, and paper size all point to the prints having been produced in the late Victorian period. It can be frustrating but dating old photos is not a precise art.

At best, pinpointing the relevant year can only ever be an educated guess. If, like me, you don't know where your picture was taken, you need to become a detective. I turned to YouTube for help and found the interesting video above. In it, the narrator describes how to use the Image Search function on Chrome to find matching or similar photographs on the internet. I uploaded a PDF of one of my sepia Victorian photos and the Chrome image search produced lots of images that were similar in layout to my pictures.

I was surprised by how good the results were. There were several photographs of groups of young men in similar clothing. One was dated and showed a British military battalion. Another group showed some hospital orderlies in India dated Cambridge University, UK.

The background setting of the Cambridge cricket team set me thinking. In the old Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the enclosed grassy areas are called quads or quadrangles. You will have a much easier time identifying the time frame for a photo this way. You should make it a point to know the difference between a:. Sometimes, this can be done with great precision. Other times, it is guesswork. However, with the right knowledge, you can turn guesswork into pretty accurate guessing, where you can be reasonably sure of who you are looking at in the photo.

Location : If you can identify the location where a photo was taken or the approximate location , you can often identify or make a reasonable guess as to the family or person in the photo. If you know your family or a particular ancestor lived in a certain place at a certain time and was a certain age when they lived there, knowing the location of the photo can give you a reasonable assumption as to who is in the photo.

Just compare the ages and time period of the people in the photo to your knowledge of your family. Family Heirlooms : If you spot any recognizable family heirlooms in an old photo and have any idea of where those heirlooms originated which you probably do, thanks to oral family history when the heirlooms are handed down , you can make a very reasonable guess as to the person or people in the photo.

Recognizing them, as well as the age they appear to be, can help you make reasonable guesses as to who the other people in the photo are likely to be. This is especially easy when it is a child with a family around them, or a husband or wife posing with their spouse and children. In fact, in many cases, military museums even hold events through which people can find out more about dating their old photographs through their assistance. As such, going to a session or an event might help you greatly with your own task.

If all the above details are not able to provide you with the information you need, your best bet would be to reach out to your family and relatives. If your pictures are related to your ancestors or your family, chances are that other members of your group may have similar photographs in their picture collections as well.

Even though this seems obvious, the fact that the date may be there on the back often passes over our heads, especially if the picture has been placed in a photo frame or an album for a long time. However, if you are not able to remove said photo because it had gotten stuck to the frame or the photo album, make the right choice and go to your local photo restoration service. Heritage Photo Restoration and Genealogy offers comprehensive digital photo repairphoto repair services to all customers in Houston.

As a trusted name in the business, we are your best choice if you want to preserve your memories and moments the right way. Want to find out more? Contact us or call us at —— to learn more about photo dating and repair.