How do you employ the use of Photos on WikiTree?

Question

I want to start uploading a lot of photo's to WikiTree.   I feel like WikiTree's current approach to adding and using photo's is a bit cumbersome but for a limited number of photos it works just fine.

I am courious about the approach, techniques and tools those of you who add lots of photos use when adding photo's to WikiTree.

Things I want to be able to do are:

Add photo's to the profiles.

Have a unique URL for each photo so I can easliy share them with family members and others who may have knowlege of the photo.

Post a link to the photo on other research sites in hopes of gathering more information

Add meta data, names, dates, provenance, etc.

Tags and the ablity to search for the photos by a variety of means, perhaps through the meta data.

I know WikiTree and do most of this but some of it is a bit more cumbersome.

I would like to hear more about your approach to collecting, adding and sharing photos on WikiTree.

What tools do you use, etc?

Thank you very much!

Answer 1

I tend to use Photos on WikiTree to add to the story of a person/family.

I don't think WikiTree is meant to be used as a Photo Repository to share with other sites, and I would also tend to use other sites for that.  (i.e. deadfred.com is a great site to share photos and information about them).

I would like to see more Meta Data fields added for Photos though, and I agree, it is a bit cumbersome if you are adding many photos.

Comments

Thanks Daniel.  Yes, using photos to add to the story is a great way to enrich the profile.  It is one of the primary reasons I want to start adding photos.

Also, I intend to reach out to other family members who are not into genealogy and photos are a great way to connect and get them to share what they know.  Interestingly, WikiTree's origin inspired in part by Chris's desire to connect family members and share info.  So I think photos sharing is great way to gain that participation.

Answer 2

Michael, I have uploaded a lot of images - some photos and many source documents.  Not everyone shares my personal preference, which is *NOT* to have them displayed down the right side of a profile.  I avoid that by only uploading an image to a profile when I want to use it as the primary image (appearing as a thumbnail at the top).  Instead, I created a few free space pages, where I upload them.  Then, in the biography section, I use the image template to display them at the location where they illustrate the text that they are relevant to, and at the size and left/right/center orientation with text wrapping around them or not (as I wish for each instance).  

Every image on WikiTree has a unique URL.  To find it, go to the image page and then click on the image there.  That will display the image at full size all by itself on another page.  Copy the URL from the address window of that page to post wherever you want and/or send to anyone you want to be able to go directly to the image.

I'm not sure what you have in mind about adding metadata.  When you upload the image, WikiTree has fields for you to enter a lot of information about the image, which I believe is the metadata you're asking about, but I suspect you already know all this.  If you mean embedding metadata in the image file itself, you would need to use image editing software that can do that (i.e., the professional version of photoshop).  If you have access to create/maintain a website, you can use a server based tool to comprehensively edit images, controlling size, rotation, and several items of metadata through server side programming that you can do, but not a lot of people have access to this or ability to use these tools.

I fully agree that WikiTree's methods of handling images is (way more than "a bit") cumbersome, but it is what it is so we just have to live with it as best we can.

Comments

I agree with you, Gaile, about not liking the images displayed on the right hand side of a profile. I also use the image template when I have a lot of images for a profile. Hopefully one day WT will stop displaying them on the right margins.

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Gaile, this is great info, can you share a few profiles that you think show off your approach?

Imbeded metadata is the holy grail of genealogical photo sharing. I think Maureen Taylor, the Photo Detective was working on this but I have not been following her of late. But yeah, just the basics is great.  It would be awesome to have enough info to create a proper source citation for the photo.

Yeah, we need a simpler tool for general use.

WikiTree plays well with Family Search.  I understand the limitations we have but I am wondering if there is a photo sharing / organizing site that plays well as well.   Can we get creative here?

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Michael, for examples you requested - probably the most elaborate use of photos I did is in Cesia Honig's profile, which I made for the Holocaust project.  All the photos are used with permission of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which is noted in a comment on each image page.  The profile of Art Frank also has several photos, as does one of the earliest profiles I made (the biography isn't as robust as more recent ones I've done) for Matilda Eichert, my husband's grandmother.

EDITED TO ADD:  I don't know of any particular photo sharing sites, but suspect that in the social media realm there are probably at least a few.  It is something that I could set up very easily on my server, if you want to tell me what functionality you would like to have in such a site.

ONE MORE ADDITION:  I hate to disagree with you, but embedded metadata isn't the holy grail of anything unless people who see the image (a) know that it exists and (b) are technologically capable of accessing it.  A whole lot of user friendliness would need to be built into image displaying software to enable that to happen.

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Thanks Gaile,  I have not followed the recent ongoings regarding embeded metadata with respect to genealogy.  I do not necessarily disagree with you either.

This is from a couple of years ago when Maureen Taylor was pushing the idea.

https://maureentaylor.com/metadata-and-family-photos/

Answer 3

The main reasons that I post photos  to Wikitree are: (1).  A legacy photo of an Ancestral family member adds more life to a profile.

(2). Many of my legacy photos are from the estate collections of previous generations of our family historians.  Posting these photos ensures they will not be lost after my passing.

(3). A photo that may have been discovered online, such as a FindAGrave Memorial, or an Ancestry.com hint, is fair share data that provides some evidence that this person, whose profile is being updated,   actually existed at the certain time and place.   For example, I have taken hundreds of headstone photographs, myself, in person, in researching and documenting historic  cemeteries;  then, I check FindAGrave,  to see if a memorial has been created, as another level of verification.  

(4).  Scanned documents from our family historians' research provides further evidence for the Wikitree community to examine.

Comments

Thanks William,

I agree about using WikiTree for establishing a Legacy of our family history.  WikiTree is free and free for everyone forever. Forever in the world of tech is an interesting concept but I have bought into using WikiTree as the home for sharing my family history legacy.

I have been negligent in keeping up with my own personal software based tree.  Mind you, I advise everyone to keep a personal record of their family tree, and while rare, I have experienced those times when some well-intentioned but uninformed genealogist has degraged the work on one of my family profiles.  Knowning the WikiTree community is commited to well-documented and well-sourced profiles emboldens my trust that my efforts will be protected after I am gone.   

Photos are frequent subjects to hijacking and then reused inappropriately with incorrect information attached to them.  I would like to share photos on WikiTree knowning that the photos will have the same kind of effort for accuracy and protection.

Answer 4

You can add images to profiles via the Add new image link on the profile.

Each photo will get a unique name which becomes part of it's URL, e.g.  https://www.wikitree.com/photo/jpg/Dijkgraaf-39 for a view with the meta data or https://www.wikitree.com/photo.php/6/6b/Dijkgraaf-39.jpg for the full image size without meta data.

You actually link the image to the profiles of the people in the photo, but I also tend to put the names in the title of the photo as well.

You can also add a date and place, and as much other information as you want in the title.   The provenance you would add in the source section (which ends up a comment below, which you can edit further if desired).

There doesn't seem to be a photo search.

You can put images inline using the Image template.   See How do you display a photo in the text of any page?  I tend to do that with source documents, for example https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Dijkgraaf-38

Yes, it is slow to add photos, but like with creating profiles, it is accuracy over speed.