A Weekend Link - Orphaned Photos

While browsing the Genealogy group on Flickr today, I saw an account name that I recognized: DeadFred.com. It turns out that the man behind DeadFred.com also has an active flickr account where he posts "OOGP's" (aka old orphan genealogy photos).

Take a few minutes to review his set of orphan photos and see if you can identify anyone. There are 1550 photos posted to this collection. Some of them have names and places listed, so try searching for names and places to narrow down the photos you're looking at.

A Weekend Link - Vintage Halloween

Halloween's coming up and I'm remembering some of the different Halloween's from my childhood. Feeling nastalgic, I started looking for vintage halloween photos. Check out the 'Vintage Halloween' group on flickr for a selection of photos from throughout the 20th century.

New on Flickr: People in Photos

My favorite photo sharing site, Flickr, has added a new feature: People in Photos. It's just about the same as the ability to tag people in photos that you've uploaded to Facebook. (See their blog announcement)

All you have to do is go to the photo you'd like to add people to and click and drag a box around the individual's face. A box will pop up, asking if you'd like this to be a note or a person. When you select 'person,' a box pops up and you can type in the person's name. It will search for user names or real name from your contact list. You can now view all photos of a tagged contact.

There's the drawback: the only people that you can add are people that you have marked as contacts on flickr. So, your mom doesn't have flickr? Can't mark her. All of the ancestors in my photos? Can't mark them. This is a major drawback to this great new feature, and I'm not sure why flickr has designed it this way. On Facebook, you can add a name regardless. I hope that flickr will adjust their People feature to be more flexible - I'd love to be able to add 'people' to all my genealogy photos.

Sharing Family Photos

I like to post all of my family photos to my Flickr account. My hope is that relatives will see the photos and leave a note with information or identify individuals. This has happened, but not often.

But I've noticed something lately: folks are finding the photos and taking them to add to their own online family trees. I've found my photos (and yes, they are my edited scans) being used online on trees, like those hosted at Ancestry.com. And let me say: this is fine - it's why I put them out there. I want to share my photos with other family members.

But, I'm missing out on another goal: connecting, communicating and sharing information. For example, I recently checkout out my "shaky leaves" for my Craft family line at ancestry.com and found a few exact matching trees. From there, I once again saw some of my scanned photos (shown). I only knew the identity of three of the folks in this photo, but the person who'd added it to their tree had identified everyone!

I was very excited to be able to identify these relatives, but at the same time it's a little frustrating. I'm sharing my information and would hope that other researchers would reciprocate by sharing their information - not just take mine and run.

Also, there is no information on where the photo came from, or "credit" given. Personally, for my research, I want to be able to talk to the person who owns the original before I take the photo for fact.

I hope that in the future, researchers will consider an information exchange in such situations, and not just take and run.

Photos Used at GeorgiaInfo

When I go on vacation, I often like to go places that have historical significance and I generally take a lot of photos. I then place these photos on flickr. A few days ago, I received a message from web developers at GeorgiaInfo, a website developed by GALILEO and the University of Georgia Libraries. They had seen my photos of Andersonville Prison and wanted permission to use them on their site. Because of the educational purpose of the website, I agreed.

25 of my photos were placed on the website under the Georgia Historic Site Photos section. They are shown along with photos of other locations, such as Fort Pulaski, Jefferson Davis Historical Site, Wormsloe Plantation, and Warm Springs.

This website might be of interest to genealogy researchers who have ancestors in Georgia. They have pages devoted to genealogy links, information on demographics for each county, historic photos, and maps, both contemporary and historical.

photos "tear the fabric of space-time itself"

Photojojo.com has a neat idea on how to combine photos, both old and new. Their article shows you how to combine a vintage/antique photo and a specific location today - it's simple and creates a very neat effect. You'll be able to overlap the timeline of your ancestor's lives and your own. Check out some examples.

But many people say: I don't have any old photos of my ancestor's! That's ok, Flickr has the solution. Like the original photographer, take advantage of The Commons on Flickr. This is a collection of photographs from museums and archives from around the world - and they are copyright free!

Finding Photos on Flickr

I love flickr.com for photo sharing and storage.  It's a great place to find photos from others, including family history and genealogy photos.

Flickr has a section, called The Commons, where museums and archive can post their photos to share.  Institutions such as The Library of Congress, The State Library of South Wales, The National Galleries of Scotland, Imperial War Museum, The National Medium Museum, George Eastman House, and Nationaal Archief have posted part of their collections online.  In general, most of these photos have no copyright, due to expiration. 

These groups are great places to find photos because, just like the rest of the photos on flickr, you can search the tags, titles or descriptions to find photos.  When you find a photo, if you have a flickr/yahoo account you can comment on the photo - many people comment with wikipedia links to describe the person, place or thing in the photo.

But searchers shouldn't limit themselves to the commons when searching for family and genealogy photos.  Small museums and archive might not be connected with The Commons, but may still have a flickr account.  I found out that a local archive, the Kenan Research Center, has a flickr account.  Searching for "snow" and "atlanta" turned up a variety of photos that they have posted online.  I'm always looking for photos of atlanta to try and find photos of where my ancestors lived.  I was very happy to find these.

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PS: If you have an unusual or not-so-popular surname make sure to search for it.  I just found senior portraits of my aunt and uncle from a fellow classmate who's scanned his yearbook into flickr!

school photos

True Love

My aunt sent us scans of a photo and some documents that belonged to my paternal grandparents.

This is a photo of my paternal grandparents. My grandfather carried around a copy of this photo in his wallet all the time. He wrote "True Love" on the back

We have a pack of negatives from my maternal grandparents side. Today I scanned them and reversed the images. They came out really well. The only thing: I don't know who these people are!

The package is marked Globe Photo Service, Greenville, SC. The customer's name looks like Paul Hand. It's written in pencil, and the photos are probably from the 40's, so it's hard to tell for sure. Here are some of the photos, let me know if you recognize them!

This photo (below) was identified today as brothers, Eugene T. Albea and Johnny G. Albea, the sons of Melvin Anderson Albea & Elsie Lindsay. See if you can identify any of these photos.

I've also begun to add thumbnail photos to the family group sheets. These are small photos, but all are available in larger sizes on my photo storage website.

I've compleatly re-done this site. Using Reunion software for Mac I've been able to create a complete website. It should also be easy to update. Certain pages, such as cemeteries and photos have been deleated, although all of my genealogy photos are now hosted off site at flickr.com