I’m thinking of getting a slide scanner to scan old photographic slides. I’ve found a few references to making observations from old photos in other topics on the forum, but none of the threads have provided all the info I’d like. One question I have is, how to deal with the date? I know the month …

One example: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/39065898

I’ve come across observations by other users where the date is just a month, and there is no time - how is that even possible to do? If you mean technically how that’s possible, you just enter the date without including the time.

You don’t have to put a time. Only date is required. The ones that have only the month are because they are obscured. The user put in a date (and probably time), but we aren’t allowed to see it.

[image] danly: Has anyone done this? Advice (and links to your observations) welcome. I have a set of old photos I got in Tanzania in 2012. They’re digital, but ungeotagged and undated. I do, however, have a journal I kept when I was doing study abroad, which does have dates and locations for…

I’ve seen a variety of takes on this but I think if you have a fairly narrow band of dates its fine to pick something in the middle as long as you make a note on the observation that it is an estimation, e.g. I think most people would think its fine if you put “November 25” for an observation that y…

may you can use some fields like https://www.inaturalist.org/observation_fields/4636 https://www.inaturalist.org/observation_fields/4637 :man_shrugging:

It’s great you’re adding these photos to iNaturalist! The historical dimension is valuable. In your note, state that the date is approximate, giving whatever range seems appropriate (“August,” “late August,” “summer”). (I think it would be valuable for iNaturalist to add a date equivalent of the …

Thanks for all the replies and useful advice. Now I have an excuse to buy a scanner. First priority, scan all my wildflower photos from Alaska, June 1983! It’s a big state, but I know which ones were in Denali National Park, and which ones were on Kodiak Island, etc. If I get some of them done in …

I had a pile of old photos from my time in Papua New Guinea with no metadata. I posted them with the note on each, “Dates may be off by up to one month. Older photos with metadata lost. All photos taken south of Herowana village, across Wara Pio (Fio River).” No one has yet objected to this procedu…

The best way is a solution with existing or new custom fields, because they are also easy to filter in the search. There exist some hidden filters, documented in the search-wiki on the forum here, such as searching for specific fields or with specific content of a specific field or also negation fi…

Making observations from old photos

General

Topic		Replies	Views
Observations from old cameras marked 'casual' because exact date not available General question	6	736	December 4, 2023
Uploading photos with uncertain times General	8	953	June 12, 2019
Observations from years ago General	4	594	July 4, 2020
Select a date range when creating observations Feature Requests very-challenging	18	1619	December 1, 2023
Use only year as date for observations General	8	240	January 11, 2026

Making observations from old photos

Related topics