A collection of links that provide many old photos for people who are interested in this kind of art.

1)      Doug’s Darkworld

http://unitedcats.wordpress.com/2007/06/12/worlds-oldest-photograph-of-a-human-being/

This link is a good beginning for this kind of topic. Since we are talking about old photos it is good idea to start with the oldest picture that the human known.

This website is not specifically about old photos. It is a personal website for an author called Doug Stych who is interested in history.

The website covers some aspects such as history, science, space exploration and a personal plug. 

The article that is related to old photos is titled “world’s oldest photograph of a human being …”.  It talks about the oldest picture which was taken by Louis Jacques-Mande Daguerre in 1838. The article dose not states that it is the oldest because the writer mentions at the first paragraph the following: “This is one of the, if not the, oldest known photograph of a human being in existence”

The picture which is 171 years old shows some houses and a street in a part of Paris. The photo is in a good condition it has all the details however, it has some dark spots at the edge.

The reader of the article left some cheerful comments about the photo and the post.

2- Historic American Paints

http://www.historicamericanprints.com/history.htm

This simple website is mainly about the American history. Although it does not contain much information, it has very interesting old photos. The website belongs to Greg V. Valentine and W. Cary Eberly who are interested in narrative art as well as anything related to the American history.

 There are 7 links in this site: About us, products, coming soon, soldier history, purchase, links and contact. The interesting link in this webpage is soldier history. It contains 11 amazing old pictures of American soldiers who lived between 1970 and 1980 such as Adam Link, Daniel Bakeman and Conrad Heyer. Most of these photos are in a fair condition with clear details.

 In addition, this link contains some interesting details about each soldier. It is obvious that the website is managed by nonprofessional collectors due to the amount of information and photos. For example, the coming soon link contains two old pictures for soldiers but with out any details or even names for these soldiers.

The website also offers some paintings and portrait for online sale.

Finally, this website could be a good source of American soldiers’ history if it contains more old pictures and more information.

3- Old photos & pictures of the United Kingdom

http://grumpystumpy.com/

This site is a collection of old photos and post cards of England, Scotland and Wales. Most of the photos are taken during holydays or family pictures as the website indicates. The photos in this site are not all black & white, some are colored.

 In addition, the site contains photos of four parts of England: The Isle of Man, Channel Island, Scotland and Wails. The quality of the pictures are very good comparing to the other websites. All the photos are dated which is one of the advantages of this website. In addition, the website contain an amazing collection of pictures, it also has many updates. They add some photos every month. For example, according to the site, in June they added more than 210 photos to their collection.   

However, the design of the website is not as good as it should be due to the ads which are located in the middle of the website which affected the layout of the website.

 One of the best links in this site is (collections) it contains post cards for different locations and events with a good layout.

4- Iraqi photos

http://ayamzaman.tripod.com/

This is one of the websites that have a good collection of old and rare photos. As it seems from the welcoming letter, the site is done with a personal effort. However, it is very simple and easy to browse. The links that the web contains are various. It covers some important eras in Iraqi history such as 20 revaluations.

 Furthermore, the website offers a good collection for old pictures of artists, poets and religious locations in Iraq which is considered as a very rich country in terms of history.

The website does not only provide photos, it also provides valuable information about the important events in Iraqi History. The collector organized the photos in a remarkable way by putting the photo in the same order as the event happened.

In his welcoming message, the collector asks all visitors to supply him with any old picture they have about Iraq.

This website is not only about Iraqi history and events; it also contains photos of ordinary people and some photos of landmarks in the country. “Iraqi photos” is truly a significant source for anyone who admires these kinds of photos. 

5- Saraqeb

http://www.saraqeb.com/pic_old.html

Saraqeb is a name of an old town in Syria and the website is meant to be about this specific town. Therefore, all the old photos that the website contains are about this town.

The site has some links about history, Geography, culture center and forum. The collection that the site has does not belong to one country; instead, it covers many regions.

The content of this website makes it a good source of old pictures for the researchers as well as those who enjoy watching old pictures to analyze the details.  This website as the previous one asked the visitors to provide the site with any old photos they have in order to put it in a section called (visitors’ collections).

The quality of the photos is fairly good although some of them seem to be fixed by Photoshop. Old pictures in this website are enjoyable because the collector provides also some new photos of the town which makes the comparison more fun.

6- Historic photographs

http://www.historicphotographs.com.au/

Unlike the previous websites, this site is established for commercial purposes. It is very well organized and it allows the visitors to buy their favorite pictures. The links in this website cover different kinds of life aspects such as sports, culture and history, famous places, architecture & engineering and some pictures for outdoors. Most of these pictures were taken in Australia and some in New Zealand. The photos from Australia cover different areas which makes it a very interesting website for those who admire old photos. There is a link in this site that shows the new photos that the owners prepared for selling. The variety that the website offers makes it a good source for old photos. However, the website does not offer big pictures for visitors it shows only small ones which makes it hard to see all the details of the picture and I think this is due to a copyrights issue.

When visitors browse these photos, they can see the following caption for the picture: the name of the country (there are only Australia and New Zealand) and the name of the province where the picture was taken and the date. In addition, it offers few details about the photo.

Finally, the prices of these pictures are very cheap (34$ per picture) which makes it doubtable that the photo is not original.

7- Family old photos

http://www3.familyoldphotos.com

This website is not only offering old photos, it also aims to link people with their ancestors. The new thing about this website is that it’s interactive. It allows the visitor to become a member and upload some old photos. Most of the pictures in this website were taking in the United Stats and Canada besides a link for pictures from other countries.

Visitors of this site can find different categories such as: unknown photos, civil war photos, railroad photos, fire department and school photos. One more advantage of this website that it provides engine search by the surname of the people and that is due to the huge data base it has. There are more than 36,500 surnames and more that 20,000 photos in this website which makes it a significant source for old pictures. The design of this site is very simple and easy to browse. Besides the search engine there is also alphabetic order for the pictures.

 Furthermore, the designer organized the photos of USA and Canada by the stats’ name. If you browse, for example, California, you would find some old photos with all the details such as : left to right ,, James Ralston, Irving Toomey, Al Rasmussen, Douglas Uridge – captain, J. W. Warner .

This is one of the best websites for old photos and very easy to browse.

8- Paris en images

http://www.parisenimages.fr/en/once-upon-a-time-in-my-neighbourhood.html

The design of this website is very creative and easy to browse at the same time. This site is specifically about old Paris. In the English homepage visitors can see a simple map of Paris divided to 20 territories. By clicking on any territory it shows one of the pictures of that territory and the amount of images that the section contains. Besides the good quality of the photos, the site provides some display options such as slide show for each section. In addition, the site offers a good caption for the photos and a voice comment that explain details about each picture but in French language.  Furthermore, there are 3 options for each photo; select, zoom and email the photo. However, there are some pictures that do not seem to be photograph but painting such as “End of the commune: massacre of the Dominicans of Arcueil 1871”.  Visitors of this website can also find some other links such as: news, collection gallery, stories behind the pictures, in the streets and the education observatory. In addition, visitors have the chance to comment about each photo which makes the website interactive. The site also provides a search engine which makes it easier to browse it.

9- Old Pictures

http://www.old-picture.com/

This is an amazing website. It does not only show a great collection of old photos from 1850 until 1940, it also contains a very well written commentary about each photo which allows the browser to share some of the writer’s ideas. Furthermore, the quality of the photos is very good comparing to the other websites. The site also provides a very interesting section called (map collection) the maps in this collection are very old, some of which are dated in the year of 1300.

The site provides also a section called (old picture of the day) it contains a picture with funny caption every day which makes the visitors to visit very often in order to see the daily picture.

This site also contains some old pictures for Red Indians which is not a common thing in the other websites.

 The site provides some specific details about the photos. For example in one of the Red Indian photos you can read this description: “Here for your perusal is an original photograph of Acoma Man. It was created in 1904 by Edward S. Curtis. The photograph illustrates Head-and-shoulders portrait of an Acoma man, facing front.”

In addition, some of these photos are for sale in two ways, to buy it as a print or to buy it as a card.

10- Qadeem

http://www.qadeem.net/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=216

In Arabic language, “Qadeem” means old and that’s why this website called “Qadeem”. The design of this website is more like forum which means that all the members in that forum can post the photos they have.

 It also means that there are no copyrights for this website. The photos in this website are very old and mainly about Middle East. The name of the link is (old heritage, culture and arts library) it contains some links about history, towns, old currencies and old photos.

In the old photos link you can find some old pictures of the royal families in Arab countries, old photos of the holy mosque, wars , kings and queens and even photos of old documents. There are also some photos of people from around the world such as the Russian sniper Vasily Zaitsev   who was the reason behind achieving some victories for Russia in World War II.

 Although this website is demanding on the members posts which makes it unreliable source of information, it contains many interesting picture. Some of which are really rare. Another advantage of this website is the interactivity of its members which reflect on the quantity of the content.

11- Old UK photos

http://www.oldukphotos.com/london.htm

Although the pictures in this website are not that old comparing to other websites, this site has a high quality coloured photos of London.

 The purpose behind this collection, as the welcoming message stats, is to save human’s heritages and to share those old memories with the coming generations. Furthermore, the introduction indicates that “This website, since it’s’ launch in 2005, has probably become the largest old photographic website in the United Kingdom, and enjoys almost 2 million hits a year.” And this message is written in the home page by many languages such as French, German and Spanish.

 In this site, there are photographs of the royal family and the royal residences, and also famous landmarks like the Tower of London, London Bridge, Westminster and Whitehall.

The design of the website is too simple and confusing because of the advertisements in the middle of the first page.

However, the content of the website makes it a remarkable source for those who are interested in British history. There are two disadvantages in this website.

 First of all, the photo description disappears when you make the picture large in order to see the details.

The other thing is that some photos are not pictures but pantings which may confuse the browser.

Despite these disadvantages, the website is a real data base for London’s old pictures.

12- Old picture of the day

http://old-photos.blogspot.com/

This site is design as a personal blog. The author of this blog is an engineer from Texas, USA who is interested in history and old photos. The most important thing about this blog is the interactivity.

 The main idea about this site is to share every day an old picture with the site’s visitors and interact with them through the comment space.

The design of the site is very simple with suitable background colours. The author chose very light brown for the background which makes the site looks like an old page. However the ads by Google in the left side affected the beauty of the layout.

 In addition, there is a section for the photos of the members or the followers as the author call them. There are more than 332 followers and there is a link that allows any visitor to become a follower.

The author divided the website by two categories. The firs one is labels which contains some interesting links such as communication, Alaska, convicts and other interesting topics. The second one is blog archive which contains the previous photos and articles that he posted last months. This blog is worth visiting due to the rich comments that the members discus every day. 

13- Old Sydney Harbour Bridge Pictures

http://www.sydneyharbourbridge.info/brdg-img/

This is website is one of the worst websites that present old photo. The homepage does not offer much information. It only shows how many recent gusts comments the webpage has.

The colours that the author chose for the homepage are very dark and not suitable for the topic.

The site does not have many pictures (42 pictures only) not to mention the bad quality of the photos. In addition, the author does not provide any information or details about the photos such as the date of the picture and the description of the people who are in the picture.

 Sometimes the visitors get confused about some picture. For example, one of the pictures in the website is in a very bad condition and there are two comments on that photo the first one stats: Nice, but what exactly are they doing?

And the other comment stats: What are they doing??!!

That indicates the confusion that the website makes for the visitors.

Furthermore, if you browse some photos and want to go back to the firs page, there is no link to take you back, so the visitor has to change the address from the browser to go to the homepage. However, it is important to mention that there are some unique photos which the author got from the grand parents of some donators.

14- Old photographs

http://www.old-photographs.com/index.php?id=0000140&curr=EUR

This is a commercial website which is specialized in selling old pictures about South Africa. The layout of this web is not as attractive as it supposes to be as a commercial website.

Although the photos are very interesting, it is not possible to see all the details of the picture because the creator of the website posted the word (sample) in all the pictures’ corners in order to keep the copyrights.

This website does not sell the original photo, instead, it allows you to download a copy of the picture from the website after paying 7.95€.

In general, the website provides a good amount of old photos which are in a good condition. However, the site does not proof if the creator has the copyrights of all the pictures in order to avoid any law complications.

15- 5 Steps for Identifying People in Old Family Photographs

http://genealogy.about.com/od/photo_dating/ss/identification.htm

This link is not exactly about old photos because it does not display any photo. However, it might be helpful for the people who have undated family photos or some picture with out details.

This link explains in 5 steps how to identify people in old family pictures.

First step according to this website is to identify the Type of Photograph by showing it to a local photographer who is able to define what type of picture which will help to identify the time of the photo.

The other step is to know who the photographer was. It is also helpful to focus on Clothing & Hairstyle. Another tip that the author suggested is to check out the scene & setting. Finally the author suggested is matching the clues up with your knowledge of family history.

The author Kimberly Powell is a professional genealogist, Web developer, and a mother of three children.

The only things that are missing in this article are to gather the steps in one page instead of putting them in 5 pages. The other thing is to show some examples which will make the idea of the author clearer.

16- Rome – Roma

http://www.rome-in-italy.com/index.html

This website is about Roma the capital city of Italy. Although the site contains some interesting photos about this historical and beautiful city, it is so confusing to browse. There is no clear identity for this site due to the links it has.

It could be educational, historical, tourists’ guide or even commercial.

 Link such as photos, paints of Roma, information about Roma makes visitors think that it is about Italian arts.

On the other hand, links such as hotels of Roma with booking section makes it more commercial.

 However, the photos that the site contains under the (old Roma) link, are very interesting. There some photos of famous landmarks in Roma. However, there is no description under these photos there is only the name of the place in some photos but no dates or the name of the photographer for example.

In general, the layout of the website is not as good as it should be.

17- Europe

http://www.old-picture.com/europe/Venice-Canal-Marina-Italy.htm

This is a link from a huge database called Old Photos. This section is about Europe.

 The beauty about this link is the combination between the old photographs and the old paintings which capture some famous places in Europe.

 As indicated in the homepage, the photos were taking between 18^th and 19^th century the design of this site is very simple and easy to browse. In the homepage, visitors can see some pictures in thumbnails and when you click on one picture it takes you to another link to see the picture in a high resolution with another group of pictures.

 In addition, there are another group of pictures titled (you might also like this) and it takes you to other links in other websites related to this site but for different countries such as United Stats and Africa.

The website contains also very interesting old pictures of some European scientists such as Guglielmo Marconi, who was an Italian inventor, best known for his development of a practical radiotelegraph system. 

This website also offers some pictures for sale but again, it is not clear if the owners have the copyrights for these pictures or not.

18- WWII in color

http://www.ww2incolor.com/brazil/

One of the sadist things that one can experience is to see pictures of war because it is always full of undesirable scenes. This website presents the pictures of World War II. And it is a very good source for the war pictures. However, there are some scary photos of dead people or skeleton which is not suitable for sensitive viewers.

 The good thing about this website however, is that it puts the horror pictures in one category which gives the visitors the option to view it or not.

Most of the pictures are from German and United Stats force and that explains why there are 7 links for German force and 7 links for USA army, while there is only one link for each country which was involved in the war.

 In addition, the website offers the amount of views for each group of pictures which makes it easy to choose the most popular group of photos.

In general, the website is a well organized database for WW II photos and it has also forum with more than 7100 members. Furthermore, the website has a special section for selling photos online.

19- Photos of the Great War

http://www.gwpda.org/photos/

This amazing website is very well organized with a remarkable layout. The links presents very old and rare photos of World War I. it starts its elegant homepage with a photo that represent the war. Under the photo there is a quote about the WW I says “It was supposed to be the war to end all war”

The homepage contains also 6 links in order to help visitors to enjoy each section of the site. The links are: how to use the gallery, enter the photo gallery, image use policy, about the site, WWI documents archive and great war links. These links attract the visitor to have a complete tour in the website. In the (how to use the gallery) link, the creator of this site shows you exactly how to browse the site and how to use all the banners. 

The photos gallery is very well organized with interesting categories such as animals at war, war in the sky and in the sea.

This is an ideal website for old photo.

20- Old photographs of India and Pakistan

http://www.harappa.com/photo2/index.html

In his introduction, the creator of this website mentions some interesting facts about the journey of photography in India and Pakistan. He states that the website contains photos from 1860’s through 1947.

To browse this website you have two options.

The first one is to click on any city you want to browse in a map then it takes you to that city and show you all the pictures that belong to that section.

The other option is follow a link in the left side of the page to browse the pictures in each city. The website in general is well organized. However it does not show the pictures in a big clear size which is considered as a disadvantage of this site.      

21- Amazing old pictures in colours.

http://www.oddee.com/item_66082.aspx

This website was published in 2006 and gained more than 150,000 views. The design of this website is simple and attractive. In addition, the quality of the photos is very high. The uniqueness about this site is the information it provides about each photo.

Furthermore, it provides some educational information such as the first coloured photo, which was according to this site, introduced to the world by the Lumière brothers in France.

The website also presents some coloured photos from World War I which is very rare to find. However, it is not cretin if these photos are originally coloured or being coloured by some computer programmes.

The website contains also an interesting link which presents 10 most impressive photos of out universe.

22-     Dating Old Photographs

http://www.familychronicle.com/phototip.htm

This is an interesting website. It shows with details how to identify the date of a photo by the cloths of the people who are in the picture and their hair style.

According to this site each period of time has its unique fashion and this fashion could be used as a clue to know the date of the photo.

By showing different kinds of examples to identify the date the creator helps anyone who has undated photo to have some information about their photos. The examples that he uses are the hair style, the tie knot, children cloths and other interesting clues.

This website is fun to browse.

23-        Creating old-looking images in Photoshop

http://www.idigitalemotion.com/tutorials/guest/old_looking_images/oldlookingimages.html

Through 11 steps this website shows how to make a new photo looks like an old picture. It gives a detailed tutorial in how to make the picture looks like old with all the scratches and the colours required.

 However, the creator shows the effect on the picture with out showing that in the Photoshop. He writes next to the image what to do in Photoshop in order to get this look but the steps are not clear for the people who are not familiar with the programme.

Although in the last step the original photo looked like black & white photo with some scratches, it did not look like an old picture.

24-     Vintage photo gallery

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/aboutus/vintagephotos/index.htm

This website belongs to Consumers Union (CU) which is an expert, independent, non-profit organization whose mission is to work for a fair, just, and safe marketplace for all consumers.

It is obvious from the design of the website that it belongs to a professional organization. The website contains some information about CU such as: out mission and overview. It also contains a wonderful collection of old photos with description of each photo.

The way the photos are organized is easy to browse. It shows a thumbnail of one of the picture of each group. Each group is organized by the year the picture was taken. For example pictures from 1936 until 1949 are in one group.

In this website I found some funny rare pictures such as a man checking the tires of his car in 1949 and a child getting a permanent wave in his hair by a special machine in 1938.

25-     Vintage & Old cars photos

http://www.oldclassiccar.co.uk/photographs.htm

This link is detected to the fans of old cars, vans, trucks and Lorries. It shows collection of old photos of cars from 1920s, 1930s, 1940s.

The way the website designed is different from the previous websites. It shows all the collection with a brief introduction in the homepage.

There is no order followed in presenting these photos. However, every picture is identified by details about the car model, in witch year it was made and the date that the picture was taken.

Furthermore, the website offers a link at the end of the homepage for another website which contains some pictures of unidentified cars.

Although the design of the website makes it easy to be browsed, it does not have the right layout for an old cars pictures website not to mention the unnecessary details on the top of the website.