Including Identification Details

I really like this picture of my great-grandparents and their two youngest children. Unlike many photographs I have, it doesn't seem staged--the clothes are on the line, after all. And the daughter seems to be shooting her father a funny type of look. 

But identifying the picture got me to thinking...

I'm still toying with ways to include "metadata" with pictures. I realize that when creating graphics files there are other ways to include details such as those I've written in black on this document without putting them on the actual image itself.  One concern I see is that not all users of graphic images readily access such metadata and some may inadvertently bypass it entirely.

Genealogists who are not necessarily adept with their computer skills may simply copy and paste the image into their own graphics program or genealogical software--thus bypassing any "metadata" that is not an "immediate" part of the image and unintentionally overlooking key information.

Who is in the picture is important, but I'm starting to become convinced that some of the "chain of provenance" and "how" we know who is in the picture or where it is taken is important too--just as important. There are many pictures on the internet that are identified, but if one simply "copied and pasted it," how does one know if the identification was correct?

And if the image gets saved without any identifying information, then it's just an old picture of some dead people.

Haste Makes Waste and "How" Do I Know?

This post began with an error.

In my original haste to post this picture to another website, I incorrectly identified one of the children. The back of the original had the individuals identified, but when I was placing the names on the image I relied on my memory. The older lady in the picture I correctly identified as Nancy Jane (Newman) Rampley. She was the only person in the picture that I never actually met. The young lady on the right was her granddaughter, Nellie (Neill) Shanks (my grandfather Neill's sister). As I looked at the picture, the resemblance of the boy to my Grandfather Neill's brother Ralph was striking--striking enough that I incorrectly identified the young boy in the picture as Ralph.

The only problem was that the boy in the picture was not Ralph Neill. It was his younger brother Herschel L. Neill.

And I knew that. There were four children in the Neill family into which Ralph, Nellie and Herschel were born. Nellie was born in 1910, Herschel in 1912 and Ralph was older than them both. The boy in the picture is clearly younger than Nellie and, in my haste to post the image, I identified him as the wrong child in the family. But this is not a post about the pitfalls of hastily compiling information or identifying people in pictures.

The error was unintentional and the individuals have been correctly identified. But it got me to thinking. How do we know the identity of individuals in pictures we obtain on the internet? And, better yet, how to we track that knowledge when we do have it?

There is metadata associated with this picture of which most of us are aware:

• when it was taken
• who was in it
• who likely took it
• where it was taken

With the exception of who likely took the picture, genealogists are pretty good about the importance of who is in the picture, when it was taken and where it was taken. Usually we are not so concerned about who took the picture. 

But there is more about the picture that we need to record in some way:

• how did I get the picture?
• how did I identify the individuals in the picture?
• how certain am I that these individuals are who I think they are?

In this case, the picture was identified on the back by Nellie (Neill) Shanks. The identification of Nellie as the identifier was based upon the handwriting and the fact that she was in possession of the picture upon her death. She would have been old enough to remember the individuals in the picture and might even have remembered the fact that the picture was taken. That information is just as important as who is in the picture. 

The identification of people in pictures is more than just "who" is in the picture. It is also "how" that picture was identified.  

A Church in the Distance

How closely do you look for clues in the backgrounds of pictures?

When the below was enlarged, there was a faint shadow as shown in the oval:

photo of Frederick Ufkes (1893-1960), taken near Basco, Illinois; digital image (c) 2013 Michael John Neill

Had I not known where the photograph was taken, the church would have been a clue. It is the Immanuel Lutheran Church east of Basco in Hancock County, Illinois. The church is in close proximity to the farm on which Fred spent his entire life.

Are there clues lingering in the background of your pictures?
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Reminder: Copying and publishing or posting pictures from the websites of others is not only considered bad form, it's also unethical, illegal, and an indication that the copier was too lazy to bother and ask if they could use the image.

That Photo With the Vague Back

This is the front of the photograph whose back we posted a few days ago. Fortunately I knew one of the individuals in the picture without the identification on the back.

This is the reverse side of the photograph as published in an earlier blog post:

I'm not exactly certain who wrote on the photo, but here is what the back says, along with some annotations.

Geos' Tena
Freds Tena Nov 1986 di
Bert's Margaurite
Tena myself & Tena 3
Ufkes inlaws left.
1982

The photograph was apparently taken in 1982 and is of Tena (Janssen) Ufkes, Tena (Bruns) Ufkes and Margaurite (Wetterich) Ufkes. The three were sisters-in-law and were married to brothers George Ufkes, Fred Ufkes, and Bertus Ufkes--hence the phrase "Geos' Tena" and "Freds Tena."

The "Nov 1986 di" reference after "Freds Tena" is an apparent reference to her date of death of November of 1986.

I'm not certain where the photograph was taken, but if I had to bet, it was probably in July of 1982 at the Ufkes reunion.

Sometimes without knowing a little bit about the family it makes it difficult to really understand what the person meant--especially when the clues on the item are a little cryptic.
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Note: Tena (Janssen) Ufkes, wife of Fred, is my great-grandmother.