Category Archives: Vintage photos

The fascinating world of vintage and antique photos, magic lantern slides, daguereotypes and postcards

More automatic tagging tools discovered and tested

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I’ve just discovered two more services – Alchemy and Zemanta – and also a couple of extra WordPress plugins to use these and automatically suggest and add tags.  One simply uses the Alchemy API, but by far the most advanced I’ve uncovered yet is Simple Tags which pulls in tags from Local Tags (I think that’s a list of tags already used), Yahoo, OpenCalais, Alchemy, Zemanta, and Tag the Net.  So here’s a bit more text to test them out, focussed on geographic terms …

Hatfield has been in the papers again this week.  It’s where I went to secondary school.  I used to cycle 6 miles each way, each day, including the climb up Bell Bar (near Potters Bar) which was about half way from Cuffley.

Hull Trawler Challenge success!

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Hull Trawler H1 SS Canada Last Thursday I launched the Hull Trawler Challenge, featuring 70+ images of life on board two Hull fishing vessels from c. 1910.

It’s been a great success. We’ve narrowed down the dates, identified some more of the ships, and even had someone come forward who could well be the grandson of one of the men featured.

On top of that, there’s been a feature in the Yorkshire Post, they’ll be pieces in several magazines next month, and tomorrow I’m being interviewed for the BBC Look North regional TV programme.

All good fun!

Multum In Parvo

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You’d have thought that a foray into Latin would mean I was about to say something profound, but in contrast Multum in Parvo, or “much in a small space”, is actually the name of the old lawnmower shown in the picture! It was made by Green’s in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and features on oldlawnmowerclub.co.uk (does what it says on the tin!) as a Mower Of The Month. This is an old lantern slide I picked up recently in a box of allsorts. I didn’t really think much of it at first, but I must confess on each look it becomes more captivating.

What’s That Picture?

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Introducing www.WhatsThatPicture.com….

My personal interest in vintage photographs has inspired me to conceive a new website, called “What’s That Picture?”

c060726021.jpgIn my own rather random collections I have been struck by how many photographs simply have no provenance, yet look as though someone, somewhere, should certainly know where or perhaps when they were taken, or what or who they are of.

This new site is intended as a community site where people can post their vintage photos and have other members and casual visitors pass comment and help to identify them. Of course this then gives the photo increased historical value.

Membership is free, and when you sign up you get your own image gallery to put things in (just 1MB of space for free membership – about ten typical images – but with the potential to upgrade to premium membership and get 50 times as much space).

You will find the site at www.whatsthatpicture.com

At this point I am just at the point of extending circulating details from a limited number of friends and contacts to a slightly wider but still focused group of people I think may be interested. But even so I’ve already got a dozen or more members, from as far afield as New Zealand, Canada and across the UK.

I’d be grateful to anyone who could take a quick look and make constructive comments.

eBay bonanza!

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Much to the annoyance of the Other Half, I seemed to spend every spare minute last week doing a mass listing on eBay. Having bought many more vintage photos at auction than I could possibly want (or afford), it was time for a clearout of the surplus stuff, the ones that came in big collections but will probably never see the light of day and can’t even justify the space in a cardboard box, let alone on a shelf!

The first batch,41 lots of various stereoviews are already online and will all finish on Sunday evening. I reckon I have to take about £5 per lot to be in profit (including paying for my time), but as the total is already over £100 it’s looking good. Next week will be a collection of illustrative postcards of Scottish scenes (Tuck’s Oilettes etc) which came with a few albums of photos I bought very cheaply, and then it will be selling off the least interesting bits of the magic lantern slide collection, which will be some hand-coloured illustrated ones, plus a commercial set of 40 slides of Norway.