Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with pictures

Please help my identify things in some old pictures

DrumsIntheDeep — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 15:51:40 -0800

I inherited a bunch of pictures. There area a few I am curious about but there is nobody left to ask about them, so I'm turning to the amazing people of Metafilter. Can you tell me anything about these photos? For this picture, what sort of uniform is it? Any details that anyone could provide would be interesting. My guess is that it was taken around 1920 (but that's only a guess).

For these two photos, where were they taken: First photo, second photo. My guess on the date is somewhere around 1950, and they look like somewhere in Asia.

Thanks!

Link me some inspirational words over images

ellieBOA — Tue, 28 May 2013 11:33:58 -0800

I suffer from anxiety and as cheesy as it sounds, pictures with inspirational quotes/wording really help! I'm looking for images to add to a folder I look at when I'm feeling anxious. The immediate distraction and smile I get from the below helps me interrupt a negative thought pattern. Here are the ones I've collected so far, the themes are positive self talk, optimism, and reminding me not to be so hard on myself. Also, terrible Facebook inspirational quotes over images are not what I'm looking for!

one two three four five six

Government office wants to use Creative Commons photos - kosher or no?

rileyray3000 — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 16:06:09 -0800

I'm trying to get an idea of WHICH areas of Creative Commons I can draw from on Flickr. I work for a state doing something that, while noncommercial, does support business in a way. I want to use creative commons pix for a website we're putting up. So attribution, I get. That's easy. The others I'm not sure about - as a government office are we, by dint of our setup, considered non-commercial? And the non-deriviative works...does that mean we can't even crop it? And I completely don't understand "share alike" at all. Does that mean if we use THOSE photos we have to let anyone have our website template and content (which would be our only original work) for free with complete unrestricted use?

Protocol for Photos on a Blog?

amicamentis — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 09:36:26 -0800

What is the protocol for 'reblogging' photos you find at various places on the internet? I run a photo-only site where I feature a ton of my own work. I use Tumblr and love the 'reblog' feature when I come across other users' photos that are relevant. Question: what is the best way to do this with images found through other sites (Flickr, personal websites, newspaper websites, etc)?

I would love to be able to highlight their photo on my site while giving full attribution and a link back to the original source. Do I need to contact each person individually? Is this a common thing to do?

Don't want to commit a bad internet faux pas or inadvertently insinuate that these are my works.

Thanks!

Websites with lots of pictures, photographs, etc

Ideal Impulse — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:00:28 -0800

I'm a student of Speech Language Pathology with a child client this quarter I'm doing a lot of picture description tasks with. I'm looking for websites/blogs/tumblrs/pinterest boards/etc with lots of pictures of varying complexity and familiarity. I've been using a lot of google image searches but would prefer caches of pictures that I could just scroll through: looking for pictures of people doing things, scenes, actions, animals, etc. Drawings or photographs. Can be normal everyday things like grocery shopping, or less common things as well.

I'm particularly looking for pictures that show a normal scene with one weird detail (like, playing baseball. . . in space! or something) but am mostly just looking for libraries of images.

Thanks in advance!

Would you show me some great front porches?

davey_darling — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 12:30:25 -0800

I am looking for google street view links to neighbourhoods or streets that have nice front porches as design inspiration for an upcoming renovation. I am adding on to my house and part of the addition is a 8x20 front porch across the front of the house.

I have the basic design down and I'm now looking for some styling tips.

My porch will look something like these: 1, 2, 3.

More specifically the porch will have windows across the entire front with the entry door on the side. The gable end of the roof will be facing the street and tying into the roof "face" of the existing one story house. This is not an open "veranda" style porch but an enclosed, insulated room.

Here is where you come in. Does your town have a street with particularly nice front porches? Do you know of a street anywhere with nice porches?

I'm looking for google street view links of houses with nice or interesting looking front porches. I want my house and new porch to look "old" and blend in with the street as it is currently. My house is the red one in this streetview if you want to see what the surrounding area looks like.

Can you identify this unusual neurological (?) reading phenomenon?

zresearch — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 11:33:29 -0800

It's when "words fall away to pictures" occasionally , perhapps particularly when reading the text of physical books, usually novels, of a large size. It doesn't happen with reading online or e-book readers or textbooks. It's as if the visual imagination (without deliberate activation) overrides what's actually been seen by the eyes, so that the story unfolding is actually being "watched" in the mind's eye in an immersive, vivid way where one becomes virtually unaware of the actual text print and the outside world (so it's not even like watching a movie in a cinema, where there is more consciousness of the real surroundings). This is not just getting immersed in reading - the strong, and not deliberately activated, visualization is crucial. Based on anecdotal evidence, what I'm describing (not from my personal experience) appears to be a rarer rather than a common experience. Anyone have ideas what this neurological (?) trait might be?

Solution for attachment-free photo downloads over email?

wavejumper — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 20:55:43 -0800

I help this sweet old lady with computer stuff. She's running Windows 7 and uses an SBC account "powered by Yahoo!" (terribly out-of-date interface). She often receives emails with family photos from her daughter-in-law's iPhone. She CAN download them, and I'm teaching her how to wade through the attachment-folders that seems to create (for virus-scanning I presume) and then copy them over to her Pictures folder, where she can organize them. However, they are often rotated incorrectly because of some iPhone - Windows issue, and they are often checked "Read-Only"... Fixing both of these things is an easy thing for -me- to do, but she's an absolute beginner and not technologically literate - and she really wants to be able to handle photos on her own. She's unwilling to turn off her Norton virus protection settings, etc. She's loathe to switch to a different email program, either, though I suspect that would be the best solution...

Anyone know the best way for an old lady to download photos over email in as few steps as possible? What's the best email program that's going to make this as easy and intuitive as possible?

I know, she should get a Mac really, or an iPad. But within Windows, what would be your solution? You gotta think like a 75 year old. It's not easy to cut-and-paste. Opening a new window is a huge concept. The difference between a browser window and a Explorer window are not at all obvious. Anyway, thanks!

Heavily Illustrated "Serious" Books

cmoj — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:40:11 -0800

I'm looking for examples of informative nonfiction books that are heavily illustrated, but are not textbooks. David Hockney's Secret Knowledge is pretty much exactly what I'm taking about. Lots of straight up art history books would seem to fit but might stray into textbook territory.

I will stress that I'm not looking exclusively for art relate books. Science, history, pop-science, space, etc. are all welcome. Anything (that's good) with lots of informative illustrations, photos, charts, graphs, etc.

A thousand words for your pictures

man down under — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 21:16:37 -0800

Help me find excellent writing about visual arts. I have an English student that is very bright and has excellent ideas, but they are a very visual learner. They really struggle to put their ideas into words, and the kinds of language they tend to use suggest to me that they can visualise the answer but their words fail.

With that in mind I would like to show this student examples of excellent writing from people that are obviously strong in their appreciation of visuals (a strong visual aesthetic sense, I guess), who also have an excellent way with words.

I imagine something like a writer that reviews the aesthetics of fashion, architecture, graphic design, dance, or any other heavily visual creative art. Web-based would be preferable to magazine subscriptions.

My hope is that encouraging them to read more writing in this style will help quicken the synapses between words and images in their mind, and hopefully give them a style to emulate that they can more readily connect with.

--

I'll also read with interest any suggestions fellow English teachers have for making 'picture smart' kids more 'word smart.'

I seem to ask a lot of questions about photos lately

jacquilynne — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 16:06:51 -0800

Can you recommend some scanning software for me? I need to scan a whole bunch of older photos, and I'd like to do it relatively quickly. I have an HP8500A Scanner/Printer combo, which is attached to a Windows Vista desktop.

My main requirement is that I be able to scan multiple photos at a time and have the software automatically break them up into individual images. My mother's came-with-her-printer scanner software did this, but mine doesn't seem to, or at least I haven't been able to figure out how. I've also tried to do it in Irfaan View and GIMP, and neither of those did it, either, that I could find.

Although my mother's did not do this, I've also determined that some software will deskew those images, as well, straightening up the alignment. That would also be nice.

If there's anything else I *should* be looking for in scanning software, feel free to tell me.

Normally I'd just go to download.com and pick whatever the highest rated thing is, but I'm getting a lot of stuff that's not image scanning software at all, and I don't know what the right keyword is to search to get just what I'm looking for. I don't mind paying a smallish amount for this software if I have to.

The end goal is to use the photos to make a photobook for my family, so this doesn't need to be a super high end solution, but I have about 150 photos to scan now, and I'd estimate this is only about 10% of the full set of photos to be dealt with.

Can't find pictures of army that reveal progressively more information

swimbikerun — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 06:28:37 -0800

I want to use this image for a critical thinking exercise in my classroom. I once saw a series of images that depict, what I remember to be a series of images that reveal more information as the frame pans backwards. But I can no longer find it. The images went something like this:

1. a homeless man eating from a bowl
pan out
2. a gun muzzle pointed at the man's head
3. the man is a military prisoner and the army has him hostage

I can't remember what the last image is.

Also, my terrible mind is tricking me and I cannot remember if the image is from a modern war, or if the whole thing was a political cartoon.

Anyone have any ideas?

Posters to finish my coworker's office makeover

Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 19:21:33 -0800

One of my developers just had got an "office makeover" (mostly a much needed paint job), and now has about a half dozen Ikea RIBBA frames on the walls. Unfortunately, he hasn't figured out what to put in them. Fortunately, we're all here to help him out. I'm looking for suggestions on what I can print out and stick in there when he's gone this week. We're an e-commerce company selling flower bulbs and gardening products, so anything that's either over-the-top geeky or over-the-top flowery would be perfect.

Bonus points for images that work well in the square aspect ratio, match the blue walls/b&w frames, and/or give the frames a theme. Additional bonus points for anything wide format that fits into 4 of the frames that are all in a horizontal row.

Recommendations for a carrier/double cat carrier please!

roomthreeseventeen — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 18:38:57 -0800

Cosette and Herbie (kitty picture here) need a good carrier. We have a large, hard-cased one that we brought Cosette home in several years ago, and a soft one that we brought Herbie home in last summer. However, Herbie has outgrown his, and I want to buy a second one in case we ever need to get both kitties out of the apartment in an emergency. Cosette is about 11-12 pounds, and Herbie is considerably less. Something that has a shoulder strap would be preferable, and something I could get from Amazon would be a huge plus. If they are reasonably priced, I might just buy two and ditch the one we have now. Thanks for your recommendations in advance.

How to transfer pics

jtexman1 — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 09:53:03 -0800

How do I copy photos efficiently to my computer? When i insert my SD card from my camera I used to be able to choose from an import menu on where and how I wanted to transfer pics to my system. For some reason this no longer appears (running Windows 7). What I have been doing is moving the pics to the desktop, creating a new folder, and the moving the folder to my pics directory. There has to be a more efficient way.
I use Lightroom and Photoshop too, but I don't want to transfer directly into those programs, I prefer to import into those programs after the pics are on my system.
Thanks.

How do I import my pre-organized photos into Aperture?

primethyme — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 09:03:23 -0800

What is the best way to import my 10+ years of photos into Aperture without screwing up the existing on-disk organization? I have over ten years' worth of digital photos, summing up to about 400GB. I have them archived in folders as Year/Month/Day/YYYY-MM-DD-. So, for example, 2012/09/15/2012-09-15-IMG_1234.JPG. I like this organization for a few reasons:

1. It keeps each folder to a reasonable size (instead of having one folder per month or year or something).
2. It makes it easy to find things if I know what date they were taken.
3. All of the photos from a given day/session are together.
4. The file name keeps the photos unambiguous, even if they're copied out of the archive folder (so if I'm making an album, I don't end up with two IMG_1234.JPGs; as long as they were taken on different days, they'll have different names. And my import system deals with name collisions on the same day, in the very rare case that they occur).

I have gone through a few phases of how to catalog the images, which I won't bore you with here. I'm considering trying Aperture as a new solution (I already own Aperture, but I just use it for processing RAWs and making books), and I'm wondering what the best import strategy is.

The biggest problem I've encountered so far is that if I do "Folders As Projects," which seems the most logical, it ends up creating projects with just the name of the base folder (which is the day of month). So I end up with a bunch of projects called "23" for the 23rd of every month of every year. Not very useful.

Now, I could go in and rename all the folders so the bottom level folder has the full date in it. It wouldn't be very hard to write a script to do that. But I'd like to hear about other solutions first. I like the elegant simplicity of the year/month/day paths, so I'd rather not soil it by changing it to year/month/year-month-day. Also, I'd have to update a bunch of scripts and such that assume the current organization. I'm hesitant to invest that much effort when I'm not even 100% sure I'm going to stick with Aperture for this.

So, what am I missing? What strategies did you use if you imported a huge existing archive of photos into Aperture?

Slideshow that plays video as well as pictures?

atayah — Sun, 09 Sep 2012 11:51:54 -0800

Looking for a semi-automatic way to create a slideshow that includes both pictures and videos, using a PC. We just came back from Alaska, where we captured our trip with two iPhones (using internal camera, Hipstamatic [I know, I know] and a panorama app) as well as my digital SLR. I had visions of creating a carefully crafted slideshow using iMovie or something similar, but post-vacation Real Life has settled back in and due to the overall volume I'd rather be realistic with my free time but also create something to show friends and family who are interested. A slideshow is easy enough, but I'd really like to play videos in it as well.

Ideally, I'd like a way to play a simple slideshow of my pictures & videos, but it doesn't look like any internal programs like Windows Media Center play videos in their slideshows. I tried using the internal Movie Maker program, but my digital SLR photos - even at a reasonable size - crashes it every time.

So what I'm looking for is either software that will play BOTH pictures and videos in a slideshow - be it a way to get a program I already have (I use a PC) to do it, or available software I may not know about that could help.

Thanks so much!

Do I tell an old coworker that her "private" pictures are online?

Anonymous — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 08:42:59 -0800

Do I tell an old coworker that her "private" pictures are online? I worked with this coworker about 2 years ago for a few months, and while never super close, we did go out for happy hours and I also went to a party one time at her ex's house. I came across a picture that bears a very close resemblance to her (face and body pic), and also the way her ex's house looked. I have no idea if this is actually her, however her abusive ex has already threatened her with this. They broke up right before I left the job, so that was about 2 years ago as well. The timestamp has it being submitted about 3 months ago, and TinEye didn't reveal anything else about the original source. It was on Reddit, but not on a self submit subreddit, so no idea if she is aware of it or when it originally came to the internet.

Should I give her a heads up or just forget I saw anything? I didn't know her well enough to judge if she would have released the pics openly.

Instagram/Facebook?

jitterbug perfume — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 22:57:18 -0800

Instagram/Facebook issues - How do I get pictures not just on the little instagram portion of the timeline and get it to post them to my Facebook page? In the past it has always done this automatically... Did they change it? Is it malfunctioning? What do I do to keep it from failing and now that they're posted, how can I get my Instagram pictures onto my timeline without deleting them (they already have a ton of feedback on Instagram)?

I don't want to hit you, Visio, but I will if I have to.

Sternmeyer — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 11:12:42 -0800

How do I add a whole lot of pictures to Visio 2010? I've just taken over some new duties at work, and it involves using Visio 2010 a lot more than I have in the past. My former Visio use was limited to shop drawings and wiring diagrams, but now I am creating some more presentable stuff that goes out to customers. Some of this stuff needs me to add dozens of premade pictures to a page, and this is rapidly becoming a pain in my ass.

I am probably using the wrong terminology here, so please be kind. I don't know the difference between a stencil, a shape or whatever else Visio has up its sleeve. Accordingly, any answers should probably be targeted at a near-complete ignoramus.

What I have: a lot of pictures of equipment sorted into directories by type. So, I have a directory labeled Boilers full of pictures of boilers, a directory labeled Gas Piping full of pictures of gas piping, a directory labeled Precison Coolers full of pictures of precision coolers, and so on.

What I have been doing: Whenever I need a picture or pictures from these directories, I have been going to the Insert tab then clicking Picture then browsing to the picture and inserting it. Alternatively, I open a previous Visio document that I know has the picture I want, copy it from that Visio document and paste it into my own. This latter approach is used by other employees in other branches and as a result we have a comical directory full of Visio documents with names like CONTAINS CONDENSING BOILERS AND HYDRO LOOPS or AIR HANDLERS WITH AND WITHOUT RETURN FAN AND MIXED AIR that we all open and copy out of like idiots.

What I want: To have all these pictures appear in the Visio shapes sidebar under their own categories, named in the same fashion as the directories the pictures currently occupy. So, when I need to insert a picture of a condensing boiler, I would click the Boilers thingy in the Shapes sidebar, and then drag my boiler of choice onto my drawing.

This cannot possibly be as difficult as it seems, can it? I have asked other employees what they do and they do the same things I do. Nobody knows how to add these pictures to the Shapes sidebar. Our IT department tells us that all you need to do is drag the pictures from the directories into the sidebar and they will automatically be added by folder, but that has not worked.

Your assistance is greatly appreciated, Visio gurus.

Looking for examples of strong, athletic women that inspire you.

MaryDellamorte — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 19:11:01 -0800

Looking for examples of strong, athletic women that inspire you. It helps motivate me to get off my ass and kill it during my workouts when I have a little inspiration. I recently came across Venus With Biceps and it blew my mind. I also like the story of Kathrine Switzer. Examples can be super fit women, or not...just as long as they're strong and kickin' some ass. Contemporary is fine but women who paved the way for us today is even better. Thanks!

What software should I use to turn pictures into movie clips?

BlooPen — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 19:10:23 -0800

What software should I use to turn pictures into movie clips? I have a GoPro camera set to take pictures at a set interval and would like recommendations on free/cheap software to use to make them into a time lapse video using a Windows netbook. I'm a novice at this and am having a hard time differentiating between the programs I'm seeing online, so if you've done something like this, I'd appreciate your recommendations. Thanks!

The Perfect Photo

Funmonkey1 — Thu, 31 May 2012 12:31:38 -0800

North Americana Filter: Find the 10 best pictures taken from each decade onwards from 1910 to 2010? I have always been fascinated by the rapid development of the USA and Canada. Is there a website or tools that do this?

I Feel Pretty Oh So Pretty...or is it something else?

daydreamer — Thu, 17 May 2012 10:22:31 -0800

How concerned should I be about my teenage daughter's obsession with taking pictures of herself? My 15 year old daughter is constantly taking pictures of herself. Any chance she gets, she grabs my cell phone (because hers doesn't take pictures) and takes dozens of shots. For instance, if she's in the car waiting for me while I run in to pick up my son from daycare and I've left my phone in the car, I can be assured that when I get home and look at my phone, there will be at least 10 pics of herself that she just took. And she does this all the time. She also will take them with her digital camera and then sit at the computer and edit them and stuff for what seems like forever. She doesn't make any stupid duck faces or stupid poses or anything like that...they're always just nice headshots with a nice smile. She's a very pretty girl, but of course like most girls her age, she nitpicks about herself and complains that she doesn't like her nose and this and that. When I look at all these pics she takes I seriously start to wonder if she has some sort of problem and if I should be getting her help. I've joked with her that I'm going to submit her to that show "my strange addiction" for being addicted to taking pics of herself. She tells me she just wants to have plenty of backups for her Facebook profile. I tell her that's ridiculous and to stop, but she does this just about every single day! Anyway, I'm just wondering how concerned I should be if at all. Is this just normal teenage girl behavior? And how can I get her to stop??!!

What about...? What about...? (2) What about...? (3)

DoubleLune — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 20:25:22 -0800

Mac OS... I want a file I rename, that has the same name as another file, to automatically label it as 2nd, 3rd, etc. Windows does this automatically, but in the Finder it says I need to give the file another name. I am doing a work project that involves renaming a few thousand photos and they are by category -- so I'll have "photoX" "photoX (2)" "photoX (3)".

I've been using my old HP, and on Windows this is very simple because it automatically adds the (2) (3) etc. when I try to give the files the same name. On my new MacBook (also my first Mac so I'm still figuring things out) it basically says "sorry, no, try again." I can type the numbers manually, but it's so much faster to get the program to do it for me.

I don't want to install a third party application (at least not right now -- I might consider it for future similar projects). I'm in the middle of this project and don't have the time to go figure out a new app. Is there a way I can do what I want in the Finder? Or am I stuck with typing everything in individually?