Citing a photograph you personally took

By Anonymous on Wed, 06/03/2015 - 19:14

Forums

Hello,

I am working on citing photographs that I have personal taken. The first bunch is primarily from cemeteries. My plan is to add the citation to the description of the photograph in my Ancestry tree. By adding the citation to the photograph anyone who links the photograph to their tree the citation goes with the photograph.

The following are two options I have come up with. The first is based EE 5.11. The second is based on Chicago Style.

Dewsbury Minster Church of All Saints Churchyard Cemetery, (Dewsbury, England), Robinson Gravestone; photographed by Ann C Gilchrest, 5 May 2007. Tablet marker laid down as part of the walkway through the churchyard.

Ann C Gilchrest, "Robinson Gravestone," Dewsbury Minster Church of All Saints Churchyard Cemetery, (Dewsbury, England), 5 May 2007, JPEG file. Tablet marker laid down as part of the walkway through the churchyard.

I am wondering if one format over the other would be a better choice and if I am missing something.

Thanks,

Ann Gilchrest

Submitted byEEon Fri, 06/05/2015 - 17:59

Ann, EE would definitely opt for the first (after removing the stray comma before the open parenthesis). Among our considerations:

  • The second, we suspect, would prompt most readers to think you are citing a written and formally titled work called "Robinson Gravestone." If you title a photograph, your citation needs some cue that it is a photograph.
  • If you have multiple photographs, do you really want to cite yourself multiple times in your source list, each time with a differently titled photograph? 
  • A more streamlined approach would be to cite the collection of photographs in the source list, with the lead element being the name of the church (as you did in the first example) or yourself as the photographer who created the collection.
  • Typically, in our experience, if a church's resources included both registers and a churchyard, we would likely cite both. In that case, using the church as the lead element (as you did in the first examples) would ensure that all records relating to that church are grouped together in the source list.

Thank you! Once again it is a case of not enough sleep and over thinking. In my files on the computer I have used the first example minus the floating comma. I am starting to post a few photographs to my tree on Ancestry in preparation for making it public. This is when I started to over think the citation because I was putting it in the description field for the photograph.

Ann