Who is in the Photo?

A common situation . . . you find yourself looking through vintage family scrapbooks and come across people from the early 1900s  you don't recognize. You find yourself wondering, "Who is in the photo?" And, I am crossing my fingers for you . . . that it's not too late to find out who it is.

Time is stealing away the story of you. And, my goal with this blog is to get you thinking about family stories with a new sense of urgency.

As photo estate planners, our goal at Pixologie is to help you preserve the stories of your life so that the people who come after you will know . . . you. And what your life was like during the days you spent on this earth.

Make a Habit to Find Out Who's Who

If you are fortunate to have relatives alive who can identify the people in old photos, don't waste any time. Find out who is in the photo you don't recognize. If you are the family member who knows who is who, please be sure to start recording names on the backs of photos at the least with a photo labeling pencil.

Each time I visit my mother who is in her early 70s, I take old photos (that she's given me in the past) and ask her who's who in the pictures. Every week, I am uncovering and preserving more of her story. It's my story too. I am fortunate she is still alive to talk about the memories. I am learning about my great aunts and great uncles, some of which have fascinating stories.

This past weekend, my mom was telling me about an uncle who died in a moonshine accident. She recalled that he and his wife were an extremely good looking couple. We had been looking at the first of four portraits and I realized I had a VERY attractive couple in a wedding party portrait. I thought the groom actually looked like Clark Gable - it's the top photo on this blog, what do you think?

So I asked my mom, could this couple be Great Uncle Herman and Great Aunt Elmira? She looked closely and said it was! I had already recognized my grandmother in the wedding party. My mom also pointed out another uncle in the portrait. I learned that Herman and Elmira had ten children, possibly eleven and that Herman was making moonshine for one of the daughter's weddings. It was a very sad situation but my mom recalled that the accident was a major childhood event for her. (She had been visiting her grandmother who wasn't very nice. Because of the accident, my mother was able to return home early.)

Start Creating Your Photo Estate Now

If you have photos that you can identify the people in, do it now. If you have family members who can identify the people in the photos, meet with them as soon as possible. The stories are fun to hear I love jotting notes down so that I can be sure I have recorded my mom's reminiscences from her childhood growing up on the family farm.

Want to learn more about what a photo estate is? Click here for a full article where we break it down.

Watch how we break down the steps of creating a photo estate with our YouTube series here.

Or, purchase our inexpensive book "Create Your Photo Estate" on Amazon by clicking here.

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