Dates, captions, people and places: what to write and where it is kept

What a photo file records by itself and what people add, where the caption you type is kept, how to fix a wrong date, how to write a date you are not sure of, and how to ask the relatives who might know.

Two layers: what the camera writes and what people add Understand

A photo file carries more than the picture. Metadata is information about the photo stored with it: when it was taken, on what, where, and anything a person has added. It comes in two layers, written by different hands, and the difference explains most of what goes wrong with dates and captions.

• What the camera writes. Exif is the standard for the technical information a camera or phone records as it takes the photo: the date and time, the camera, the exposure settings and, if location is on, GPS coordinates. It is published by the Camera and Imaging Products Association, currently as Exif 3.1, January 2026 (CIPA's standards list, cipa.jp). The Library of Congress describes it as camera make, date and time, and picture-taking conditions (LoC's entry for JPEG with Exif).
• What people add. IPTC photo metadata is the standard for descriptive fields people fill in: caption, creator, date created, keywords, the people shown, the place shown, the copyright notice. The current version is 2025.1, November 2025 (IPTC Photo Metadata Standard).
• The container. XMP is a way of storing metadata, now an ISO standard, that can hold both layers. It can sit inside the photo file, or in a separate small file beside it with the same name and the ending .xmp, called a sidecar file.

One caption can sit in three different fields in one file. The Metadata Working Group, an industry group, mapped where the same information overlaps: a description can be in an Exif field, an older IPTC field and an XMP field at once, and the date taken likewise (ExifTool's page on the MWG tags). An app that reads only one of them can show a different caption, or none, from an app that reads another. Product That is why this chapter tests instead of trusting. The full overlap map is under Go deeper.

What to write: who, what, where and when

A caption is a short description written for whoever looks at the photo next, who may not know anyone in it. The National Archives' digitizing page asks for basic metadata in four words: who, what, where and when (NARA's Digitizing Family Papers and Photographs). IPTC's help text for its caption field asks for who, what and why. This manual's default is the four Ws, plus why when it matters. Convention

The names in the example are from this manual's fictional cases (See it). A caption like that answers the questions a grandchild would ask, and the last line says how much to trust it. FamilySearch's guide to adding details to family photos asks for much the same set: a title, the people, a date or place, a description that says where the photo came from and why it matters, and stories. It is one genealogy service's form, given here as an example of the fields, not a recommendation of the service.

Which photos first

Captioning is slow, so start where it pays most: the photos that matter most and that nobody else could caption once you cannot. For a parent's box, that is often the oldest prints, where the people who knew are fewest. For your own phone, it is the people and events you want found later. Twenty is this manual's first batch, chosen so it fits one evening. Preference Favorites (Choosing what to keep) are a good list to start from.

Names of people go on the captions sheet's People list too, once each, with how they are related and who identified them. A caption names who is in one photo; the People list keeps the family straight across all of them. Captions that leave the house carry those names with them, so before a captioned photo is shared, check what it says; Sharing photos covers children's names and schools.

Where the caption you type is kept

Typing a caption in an app puts it somewhere, and it may not be in the photo file. Each place keeps it for a different reach.

Typing a caption

• iPhone, iOS 27 and iOS 26: open the photo and swipe up (or tap the Info button). Apple's guide lists a caption field in the details, to describe the photo and make it easier to find in Search (Apple's See photo and video information on iPhone). Product
• Mac, Photos on macOS 27: select the photos, then click the Info button or press Command-I, and click Add a Caption (or Add a Title) (Apple's Add titles, captions, and more on Mac).
• Google Photos: we did not find Google's own page for typing a description, so we give no steps; look in the photo's details in your own app.
• Folders with no library app: the caption goes in the folder name for the event, and the details for single photos on the captions sheet or in a short text file in the folder (Folders and file names).

Naming people with face recognition

Both big library apps group photos by face and let you name the group, which then finds every photo of that person. In iOS 27 and iOS 26 the steps are the same: open a photo and swipe up; people appear in the bottom-left corner, with a question mark beside anyone not yet named; tap one, tap Edit Name and Photos, then Name This Person, and enter the name. You can also name people from Collections, then People & Pets (Apple's Find and name people and pets on iPhone). If a face is wrong, This is Not [name] fixes it.

In Google Photos the groups are called face groups: Collections, then People & pets, tap a face, then Add a name. Google's help page says the feature is not available in every region or account type, that labels are visible only to you and are not shared when you share photos, and that turning Face Groups off deletes your groups and the labels you created (Google's Set up & manage your face groups). The same page notes that face models may count as biometric data in some jurisdictions; that is a legal question, which this manual does not answer. Product

Face names are useful for finding photos. They are not captions: in Google's case they stay in your account, and in Apple's case its page does not say they leave with an export. So the names that matter also go in the caption, and the family as a whole goes on the People list. This manual's rule

The export test

Because no maker's page we read says that an ordinary export keeps your captions, the rule here is to find out with one photo, and to keep the captions that matter in a second place whatever the result. Test it

1. Caption one photo with a word you will recognize, such as TESTCAPTION plus the date.
2. Export it the way you would hand photos on. On an iPhone in iOS 27, select it, tap Share, then Export Unmodified Original, and choose a connected drive under Locations. On a Mac, use File, then Export, and try both an ordinary export and Export Unmodified Original with Export IPTC as XMP (Apple's Export photos on Mac). For Google Photos, download the photo, or run a small Takeout.
3. Look at what arrived. Note whether one file came or two (a photo and an .xmp file). Then open the exported photo somewhere other than the app that made it: another computer, a relative's device, another photo app. Search for or look for TESTCAPTION.
4. Write the result on the plan sheet, in the export test line: the device, the app version, the export used, and what arrived. "Caption arrived in a separate .xmp file", "Caption shows in the exported photo" and "Not confirmed; only the photo file arrived" are all results.

On a phone with no computer, the look at what arrived may stop at the files themselves, if nothing else on hand shows a file's details. That is still a result; write "not confirmed" and rely on the second place.

Fixing wrong dates and places

A wrong date puts a photo in the wrong year of every timeline and search. Common causes: a camera whose clock was set wrong, a time zone left unchanged on a trip, and scans, which records when the file was made rather than when the photo was taken. IPTC's Date Created field is defined as the date the content was created, not the date of its digital copy, so for a scan the date that belongs in the photo is the day the picture was taken. Convention

• iPhone, iOS 27: open the photo, tap the Info button, tap Adjust Info, then Adjust Date & Time or Adjust Location. Enter the change and tap Adjust. To change a batch, tap Select, choose the thumbnails, then follow the same steps. Revert, in the same place, restores the original. Product
• iPhone, iOS 26: the same, except that Adjust Date & Time and Adjust Location are in the Info panel directly, with no Adjust Info step.
• Mac, Photos on macOS 27: select the photos and choose Image, then Adjust Date and Time; enter the date in the Adjusted field. For a place, open Info (Command-I) and type in the Location field. Image, then Location, then Revert to Original Location undoes a change.
• Google Photos: we did not fetch Google's page on editing dates, so check your own app's photo details.

Places: recorded and estimated

A camera that records location writes GPS coordinates into the Exif layer. An app can also estimate a place for photos that have none. Google separates the two: it says you can't update or remove a location your camera added automatically, while estimated or manually added locations can, and that a downloaded or emailed photo carries the location the device saved, whatever you edited in the app (Google's Understand, find & edit your photos' locations). So an estimated place is a guess shown by the app, not something written into the file. For a caption, write the place you know in words. What a recorded location reveals when you share a photo is in Sharing photos.

Dates you are not sure of

Many old prints carry no date. The temptation is to type a precise date that looks right. Archivists have a better habit: write the estimate as an estimate, in words, the same way each time. The Society of American Archivists' content standard says to estimate the nearest year, decade, century or other interval as precisely as possible, to record estimates consistently, and to use "undated" when an estimate would mislead (DACS 2.4, Date). It asks for the words spelled out, because abbreviations may not be understood. Convention

IPTC agrees from the file side: its Date Created field prefers a year alone, or a year and month, to invented precision. Library apps want a full date, though. This manual's convention is to set the app's date to January 1 of the estimated year (or of the decade's first year), so the photo sorts into about the right place, and to put the words ("approximately 1968") in the caption, where they say the date is an estimate. This manual's rule Scans whose date is an estimate are named that way too (Folders and file names).

Clues for a date

The National Library of Australia's talk on dating photographs lists the main clues: clothing, cars, historic events and even street fixtures in the picture; the photo's format and mount; and writing on the front or back (NLA's Finding and dating photographs). Its speaker says she is not an expert in dating photographs, and the context is Australian, so treat it as a method, not a reference table.

• People's ages. A child of known birth year is the best clock in a family photo. "Theo looks about one" dates a photo better than the car does.
• Things in the picture. A car, a house you moved out of, a hairstyle, a new kitchen. Write which clue you used.
• The print itself. Its size, shape, border and paper. Prints from one roll usually share these, so a dated print in a batch can help date its neighbors.
• The back. Writing, and any processing lab's stamp.
• Postmarks are later. A museum curator's post on photo postcards warns that a postmark date may not be the date the photo was taken (National Science and Media Museum, How to spot a postcard).

For the snapshots most families have, from the 1950s to the 1990s, we found no credible US source that dates them by border style, print shape or lab stamp. So this chapter gives the general clues and does not give date ranges for those features. Older formats (cartes de visite, cabinet cards, tintypes) have published ranges, under Go deeper.

Asking the people who might know

The people in old photos are often known only to a few relatives. Asking them is the step no app can do. The Smithsonian's family folklore interviewing tips say to use props whenever possible, photo albums among them, to stimulate memories, and to schedule at convenient times because older people tire easily (Smithsonian, Family Folklore interviewing tips). Its sample questionnaire includes a question about the family's albums, slides and home movies: who made them, whose pictures are in them, and when they are shown (Smithsonian, Family Folklore questionnaire). StoryCorps's list of general questions has none about photographs, but works for the conversation around them (StoryCorps's Great Questions).

1. Write the questions first, one row each on the questions sheet: the photo (its file or folder name), the question, and who might know.
2. Bring a few photos, not the box. Ten photos in a short session, at a time that suits them. Printed copies or a tablet both work; originals can stay home.
3. Ask open questions. "Who is this?", "Where was this?", "What was happening that day?", "Who else would know?"
4. Write the answer and who gave it, with the date, in the answer columns. A name supplied by a relative is that relative's memory, and the sheet keeps it that way.
5. Copy settled answers into the captions, with "names from [person], [year]" at the end.

Where two relatives disagree, write both answers and both names; the caption can say "1971 according to one cousin, 1970 according to another", with their names. Ask before recording a conversation, and ask again before you share what someone told you outside the family.

One laboratory study, from 1998, found that older and younger adults who later reviewed photographs, or brief descriptions, of filmed everyday events recalled them in more detail than those who did not (Koutstaal and colleagues, Psychology and Aging). It was a lab test with videotaped events, and descriptions helped as much as photos; it does not show that captioning photos improves anyone's memory.

See it: Ruth's beach photos and Nadia's first year See it

Free pages that show the methods:

• DACS 2.4, Date: the archivists' rule for estimated dates, with a list of examples.
• Smithsonian, Family Folklore questionnaire: questions for relatives, including one about the family's albums and slides.
• Apple, See photo and video information on iPhone: the caption field and Adjust Info, with the iOS 26 version a click away.

Practice: caption 20 photos and test one export Practice

Minimum: 20 photos captioned with who, what, where and when, and one export test written on the plan sheet. Time: about an hour and a quarter. Materials: your phone or computer with your photo library, the captions sheet, the plan sheet, and for the test a drive, a second device or a relative's phone.

1. Pick the 20. Favorites, one event, or the oldest prints you have scanned.
2. Caption each. Who (full names, left to right), what, where, when. Estimates in words.
3. Fix wrong dates and places with the Adjust options, and check one with Revert so you know it works.
4. Add each person once to the People list, and each unknown to the questions sheet with who might know.
5. Run the export test and write the result, the device and the app version on the plan sheet. Write where your second place for captions is in the plan's "where captions live" line.

Your photos Your photos

Check your work Check your work

Criteria

• Does each of the 20 captions say who, what, where and when, with full names and a year at least?
• Are estimated dates written in words, the same way each time, with the clue that gave them?
• Does every name a relative supplied say who supplied it?
• Does each unknown have a row on the questions sheet, with who might know?
• Does the plan sheet record the export test (device, app version, export used, what arrived) and where the second copy of the captions is?

Worked example

Ruth's beach captions name three people with "names from Miriam Katz, by phone, 2026", and say "unknown" for the other two, whose row is on the questions sheet. The square prints say "approximately 1968" with the clue. Her plan sheet has both export results with the date and her macOS version. It passes. It does not say who the two unknown people are, or that 1968 is right; both are still open, and the sheet says so.

Common mistakes

• Typing a precise date for a guess. "June 14, 1968" on an estimate misleads everyone after you. Write "approximately 1968".
• Trusting face names as captions. They help you search; they may not leave the app.
• Assuming the export kept the captions. Test one; keep a second place either way.
• Leaving the scan date on a scan. The date that belongs in the photo is when it was taken, or an estimate.
• Writing a relative's guess as fact. Name the source in the caption and on the sheet.

What is still unresolved

Whether your captions survive the next app update is settled only by testing again; the yearly routine in Routines and handing on is a good time. Which captioned photos to keep and favor is Choosing what to keep. The people nobody can name stay on the questions sheet, which goes with the photos when they are handed on.

Knowledge check and scenario

Checklist

• 20 photos are captioned, and the export test's result is on the plan sheet.
• Wrong dates and places in those photos are fixed, and estimates are written in words.
• Every unknown is on the questions sheet with who might know.
• I asked one relative about ten photos and recorded who said what. (Go deeper; optional)