Gade Photo Archive

Africa


Asia


Europe


Latin America


North America


Russia (former Soviet Union)

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Germany	Berlin
Plants	Animals
Retrospective: Tegel Airport in Berlin

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About Gade Photo Archive / medienarchiv.com

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© Thomas Gade

Collecting and cataloguing photos

Many images on this website come from the estates of various photographers from the 20th century. At that time, photography was analog. The negatives and slides were digitized during the cataloguing process.

Scanning film is a relatively simple process, but also a very time consuming one. For modern computers this task is no longer a challenge, but many images were scanned between 1999 and 2010. Back then, computers were much slower and more expensive. Storage media had only small capacities and cost far more than today. The effort was considerable.

Since around 2010, digital system cameras with good macro lenses can replace slow scanners, and since then data storage with sufficient capacity has also become more affordable. Some films are scratched or dirty. For color photos, there are scanners with automatic detection and retouching of defects. Unfortunately, no comparable method is available for most black and white films. Manually retouching all affected images exceeds available capacities—and motivation. It is possible that AI based software will be able to do this automatically in the future. Until then, such corrections are only made when specifically needed.

Dating and geographically locating many images from the analog era is difficult when no notes were made or preserved. Today, identifying landmarks—and even plants—has become easier thanks to Google image search. It finds similar photos whose descriptions can help. In addition, various smartphone apps can now identify birds and plants. Furthermore, developers of image‑management software are working on techniques for automatic subject recognition.

To make photos searchable in databases, image files must contain descriptions and keywords. This information is stored as so‑called metadata within the image files. They are called IPTC data. There are various programs that allow such entries. In addition to an accurate image description, one should embed the date, location, and author in each image file, provided the necessary information is available. An image description states when and where a photo was taken and what can be seen in it.

For dating analog photos, captured magazine stands, event posters, election posters, and movie announcements at cinemas are helpful, because such information is often easy to find online. But that was not the case when many of the images in this collection were digitized. Therefore, many older image descriptions should be treated with caution. Today, it is easy to verify via Google whether the correct landmark has been identified. If you discover errors or know more about the subjects, please send me an email with the details so corrections can be made. Email address: see imprint.

The images are sorted into albums. Accordingly, they are located in different directories for which web pages were created. In the past, we created overview pages for each album with many small images (so called thumbnails). Clicking on one opened a new page showing only the larger image along with a caption. This concept does not work well on smartphones. Users prefer to scroll down. Therefore, this old presentation is gradually being replaced by new page types with several larger images and longer texts. The overview pages are being phased out.

continue to Page 2: Photo Archive on the Internet.