How to Add a Photo and Link It to People and Stories

A box of old photographs is only as valuable as the people who can still name the faces in it. Once they’re gone, a wedding becomes “some people outside a church,” and a first day of school becomes “a child with a satchel.” In MyBloodlines, a photo isn’t an attachment tucked into one profile. It’s a record of its own, carrying its date, place, and description, and linked to every person in it and every story it belongs to — so the context travels with the picture for generations.

Step 1: Choose the photo and name it

On the Photos page, choose New photo and pick the image. Then give it a name someone could find later — “Wedding at St Mary’s, 1962” says far more than “IMG_0412.”

Adding photos is a contributor action, so you’ll need a Contributor license to upload.

Step 2: Record when and where

Every photo has a year. If you know the exact date, add that too. Then add the location and a description. The description is where a photo’s story lives. Even a line or two helps, and anything more is a gift to whoever finds it later:

  • Who is in it — left to right, if you can. Names fade faster than faces.
  • The occasion — a wedding, a harvest, a farewell at a station.
  • What isn’t visible — who took it, what happened just after, why it was kept.

If you’re unsure of the year, record your best estimate and say so in the description. An honest “around 1950” is worth more than a blank.

Link every person who appears in the photo. Each of them will then see it on their own profile, in the photo column beside their details. Link one photo to five relatives and all five see it, without anyone uploading a copy. As with everything you record, you can link people who fall within your own reach in the bloodline — the rule is explained in permission boundaries in MyBloodlines.

Stories in MyBloodlines don’t have images pasted into their text. Instead, photos are linked to stories. A linked photo appears in the column beside the story, and because it remains a single record, the same photo can illustrate several stories and still show up on everyone’s profile.

If the story a photo belongs to hasn’t been written yet, that’s often the best prompt there is. How to write a story and link everyone in it walks through it.

Step 5: Check it from both sides

Once it’s saved, follow the links around. Open the profile of someone in the photo and find it in their photo column. Open the photo and follow it to a story, then from the story to another person in it. That loop — person to photo to story and back to person — is what makes the archive more than a folder of images. There’s more on why it’s built that way in people, stories, photos: one interlinked archive.

A few habits that pay off

  • One occasion per photo record. If two pictures show different events, give each its own record so each can link to the right people and stories.
  • Scan at a good resolution. You only have to digitise an old print once; make that copy worth keeping.
  • Note where the original lives. A line in the description — “original in the blue album” — saves someone a search years from now.

For newspaper clippings, certificates, and other photographed documents, see how to cite old photos and newspaper clippings.

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