Digital photos have the date and time taken embedded. Scanned prints, negatives and slides do not. This is a problem in Photography when the original non-digital image is scanned and there is no record alongside it of the date the photo was made. We fix it my modifying Digital asset metadata
Digital asset management software such as IMatch or Lightroom requires a date. You can’t have just a year, or know it was December but not which day. The software requires a year, month and date. And if you’re thinking ahead, it requires a time as well (and a timezone).
I have many thousands of scanned photos in my system and have settled on the following system. I will always try to get the most accurate date I can and depending on the information in the image and surrounding images, I can usually get pretty close - if not to the month, they certainly
the year.
Part of me hates that I can't get accurate dates for all my photos. I have to live with that daily.
Handling Certainty and Uncertainty
Whenever I have a certainty or a high confidence in the date I will use the Date Created field and nothing else. For other dates, I use a combination of Date Created,[^XMP::photoshop\DateCreated] Circa Date Created[^{XMP::iptcExt\CircaDateCreated] and Coverage.[^XMP::dc\coverage]
When dates are uncertain, I set the year, month and day to the earliest possible. For example, if I know an event happened in September 2018 I would set the date to 2018-09-01 and complete additional metadata fields to show how certain I am.
All uncertain dates will have an entry in the Circa Date Created field and if required because I’m really uncertain, a comment in the Coverage field. I have had many systems to do this over the years. The one I am currently using meets my needs and is simple.
| Time Period | Certain? | Approximate? | Uncertain? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Y | ~ | _ |
| Month | M | ~ | _ |
| Day | D | ~ | _ |
Using the table above we have quite a few options but they are easy to read. Normally I would use - between date fields, but to be consistent with IMatch I use the same date separate it uses which is :.
Y:M:_means I am certain of the year and month, and uncertain about the day.Y:M:~means I am certain of the year and month, and reasonably certain about the day~:_:_means I know the approximate year.~:M:Dmeans I know the month and day for certain, but the year is reasonably estimated. I have one ANZAC Day photo where I don’t know the year._:_:_means I have no idea. See the Coverage field for details.
One value, Y:M:D is never used. The Date Created field is correct.
Examples of Application
Christmas Day is obvious. People are sitting around a tree opening presents. I can be sure of the day and month, and can work out the year by looking forward and back. If I have photos from Christmas 2004 and 2006, and I know the current photo set lies between those dates via the proximity of other images and events, then I can be certain the Date Created is 2005-12-25^[ISO format is the standard. YYYY-MM-DD.
For one of my daughter’s birthday parties I’ll know the year and month but maybe not the day. Early on parties were the weekend after a mid-week birthday so I tend to choose the Saturday and leave it as certain. Later on, we’d celebrate on the day.
Holidays become tricky. I might know they are the “September holidays” but can’t be sure of the date. In this case I will set the year and month correctly, and the day to the first of the month e.g. Date Created is 2018-09-01 and Circa Date Created is Y:M:_.
I can tell by the fashions it was taken in the 1980’s. I may choose 1985 as the year and set Date Created to 1985-01-01 and then Circa Date Created to ~:_:_ and Coverage to Sometime in the mid-1980's.
Time
Time is always set to 00:00:00 (midnight). There are zero photos taken at this time so I can be sure I’m not falsely setting a time that can be misinterpreted.
There is one example where a timestamp of 00:00:00 may be legitimate and that’s the exact second New Year’s Eve turns into New Year’s Day. If that happened, confusion can be avoided by checking the date.