photos

  • 1800s Photos – No Smiles

    Aug 1

    So many of your early family portraits, no one is smiling. There are several reasons. Back in the 1800s, wide-mouthed, toothy grins were considered inappropriate for a portrait. People in normal life still smiled and laughed but not for a portrait, including a painting. Here is a quote by Mark Twain about smiling for a photo. “A photograph...

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  • Vintage Cameras

    Mar 1

    For your family history you are very dependent on family photos. To have such a collection someone had to have a camera or have a photo taken at a studio or traveling photographer. Before cameras there just a few drawings, painting or silhouettes images available. The camera began in 1839 with the daguerreotype. Over the decades of the 1800s th...

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  • Trading Tiny Portraits

    Sep 9

    If you inherited a collection of photos and there are some people may be from the 1880s to the turn of the 20th century you do not have a clue about, it could be those photos were part of trading. During the Victorian era (1850s – 1900), it was the practice to have a calling card, the wealthy Victorian socialite’s version of a busin...

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  • Collections from Pomona, CA Library

    Aug 3

    Pomona, California is one of the cities in Los Angeles County in California, located in the Pomona Valley. It is just 30 miles east of the city of Los Angeles. In the last census in 2010 there were about 149,000 residents. It has been an incorporated city since January 1888. The Pomona Public Library has put together a vast collection of d...

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  • Vintage Russian photos 1909-1915 – PT 2

    Jul 9

    The US Library of Congress has online a wonderful collection of vintage Russian photos covering 1909 to 1915 (before it Russian Revolution and it becoming a communist nation). It is the Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii Collection features color photographs. There are about 2,606 images of people, religious architecture, historic si...

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  • Multiple Appearances

    May 17

    As one views countless times the vintage photographs taken of our ancestors to be very formal and straight-laced. However, in reality, there were some humorous and additional candid photos taken. Numerous fun photos were done when the fair or carnival set up in town for a week or more. Yet many were also done in professional photographic studio...

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  • The Youth of 1907

    May 13

    Young people in their mid to late teens have always enjoyed hanging out with their friends. Teenagers of the 21st century may believe that they invented the concept of peers enjoying each other's company but instead, it dates back to a time in memorial. Illustrated in the photo of 1907 in Manchester, Maryland was a large group of boys and girls,...

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  • Heirlooms – Preserve

    Mar 31

    This might be a good time for most people to make sure they have family heirlooms in their possession or those belonging parents / grandparents are documented. Heirlooms can include photos, household items, clothing, blankets, jewelry, silverware, certificates, documents, family Bibles, rifles, swords, furniture, dishes, or anything of import...

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  • Resolution for Scanning Family Photos

    Mar 7

    Sometimes overlooked by individuals when they are scanning family photos, but you do need to know the different necessary resolutions to scan a photo. First, the higher the resolution (measured in dpi, for dots per inch), the more you can enlarge the image without getting that grainy, pixilated look. Depending on how you plan on using photo...

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  • Finding Current & Historic Photos

    Oct 7

    Oh, it is so great to have photos of family members, family homes or businesses. Unfortunately, it can be very hard to sometimes locate such photos for your family History project. The next best thing would be photos of a town, typical house, town landmark, automobiles or similar businesses owned by your ancestors. A new website 'Uns...

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