Odds of Finding Pictures of Ancestors?

[Sockelf]

Hi guys!

I was curious and had more of a general question. I was curious to know if there were any chances, aside from physical copies, of finding any pictures of an ancestor from the 20th century if there's enough articles and information about them and if the odds of finding a potential picture of them increases? 

Reason I'm asking is I was trying to find out more about my inventor great great grandfather and found some patents and a few newspaper articles on him. I wasn't sure if there was any correlation between the two. I know we don't have any pictures of him per say, but wasn't sure if there was a tool or website that can cross reference pictures (with names underneath, like in newspaper articles).

I know the odds are all but zill but figured I'd ask anyways since people on here pull out some amazing links and sources to follow on and maybe their in depth research experience maybe would yield some results.

Thank you!

[Erato]

I've actually found quite a few pictures online.  As a starter, if you know where the ancestor went to high school or college, look for yearbook pictures.  Do a Google book search, too.

[Redroger]

As facial recognition software becomes more sophisticated the odds against finding further pictures if you already have one. However, having said that I sent a WW1 picture of my father to his old unit. They scanned and compared it to their records, but had nothing on file. There were 10000 men in the unit, so it seems the odds against are over 1:10000!

[Sockelf]

As facial recognition software becomes more sophisticated the odds against finding further pictures if you already have one. However, having said that I sent a WW1 picture of my father to his old unit. They scanned and compared it to their records, but had nothing on file. There were 10000 men in the unit, so it seems the odds against are over 1:10000!

Wasn't expecting facial recognition to be that close, but maybe in our lifetime!

[Treetotal]

If you have access to Ancestry, you could try this, type in a surname only and area of interest, go to "Pictures" in the left hand menu and see what comes up.
I found a couple that way and the tree owner of them was more than happy to email me scans.
Carol

[Mart 'n' Al]

Try the wonderfully-named http://deadfred.com

I've also previously mentioned elsewhere, the now obsolete Google product Picasa is excellent for sorting out vast quantities of family photographs. It groups them into sections, and then asks for names, and the more you teach it the better it is at recognising people whether in their teens or old age.

Martin

[jaybelnz]

Ancient faces can be good to!  I've found a couple of mine in there,

[lisalisa]

Hi,

the website 'Graces Guide' might be of interest if you were looking in the UK.
https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Main_Page
I collect photos and found I had a photo of a person mentioned in their pages, so sent them a scan to add to the article.
So perhaps there would be something similar where you live or maybe a local library/archive/museum may have a photo.

good luck in your search,
Lisa

[jaybelnz]

Try doing a google images search, using a family members name.

  i.e  I just did a google images search with the words "Whitefield Watson" -

After scrolling down through the images that came up, there was my Greatgrandfather Whitefield Watson, in a photo with his family!  Strangely enough, the photo was found by Google here on Rootschat, one that I had submitted for a restoration!  😜

So I often use Google images, and have found all sorts of photos that I (or others) had posted online, even came up with some marriage certificates from my tree.