Sorry Mike, @platypus put it better:
I meant use the headline and description fields in PL, along with your ratings and colour labels (if you use them) 
Aha! I donāt use any of those, yet, but leaving a note there for the future sounds like very useful advice. I might be able to do it directly in PhotoMechanic, as I ingest the photos. I should start doing this as of now.
Iām planning to go through my old negatives and digitize the lot. While I was able to exactly locate the places 40 years ago, itās not the case any more. Adding notes can help a lot, even if itās just a pencil note on the back of a paper copy. Happy to find these on a few family photos dating back 100 years and more.
Lovely! Your photo is artistic, both the bicycle and flowers, but the whole scene. My photo just has a bicycle with flowers glued all over. The stone wall, and the wood slats, and the brick ground - scenes like this donāt exist in Miami in 2022. Everything here is plastic. When I visit Colorado, I find scenes sort of like what youāve got, from a hundred years or whatever in the past. My bicycle could be 10 years old. Yours could be 100. I glance at the windows, and wonder what those things are that I see.
Thereās also something about the way you captured it. Nothing is perfectly āsquareā. Everything is āroughā. The tires are coming off the rims. The chain is painted red. I would have been more āmechanicalā in how I positioned the camera, but the way you did it is perfect for this scene. It would also be nice in B&W, but I wouldnāt want to miss all the shades of color. 
Two years ago, that was my goal. I even bought a new scanner, to do it properly. But I lost interest, and started only scanning the images I preferred the most. Thatās when lots of people here taught me about scanning.
Maybe youāll be lucky the way I was - I didnāt know where some photos were from, but the adjacent negatives helped me figure it out. It also slowed me WAY down, as I started thinking too much about life back then. I seem to have lost a lot of my old negatives - moving from New York to Michigan to Seattle back to Michigan and then to Miami. I canāt do anything about it now, but I should have been more careful. Iāve also got boxes and boxes of color slides - need to do something with them too.
Good luck!!!
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Hello,
Itās also one of my winter activitiesā¦Usually the slides are stored in transparent plastic sheets, grouped by sailing events.
For the others who have not had as much attention from me, very often on the plastic frame of the slide, the development laboratory has entered a date. and even if this date is that of the day of treatment by the laboratory, it is not very far from the day of the shooting. 
For negatives most of the laboratories also wrote down the date of treatment. of the paper print.
And today, on the scale of our past time, this gap is hardly important. 
Unfortunately, since I live in Florida, we donāt really have āwinterā. I clearly remember when I lived up in Michigan that my outdoor activities slowed down greatly, and āwinterā was when I could get around to doing things that I used to put off. You apparently are much more organized than I am.
I find it very difficult to remember where one specific photo was taken, and when, and just as importantly, why. I downloaded a free iPhone tool from Kodak āKodak Mobile Film Scannerā, which allows me to view my negatives as positives (b&w and color) and helps me greatly. Iām more concerned with my b&w negatives, as thatās what I took while āgrowing upā.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/kodak-mobile-film-scanner/id1446701931
Hindsight is 20:20, but I wish I had paid more attention to this while growing up, and Iād now have a more organized negative collection. What Iāve got is reasonable, but could have been much better - and the photos I took as a kid are mostly lost forever (I think). Iāve run out of places to search for more of them.
My Plustek scanner makes it very easy to go through my old negatives. There are several software programs to scan them, and Iām still using VueScan. When all that is done, PhotoLab makes it so easy to make the images look good - what I used to struggle with in my old darkroom.
I love the last thing you wrote: ātoday, on the scale of our past time, this gap is hardly important.ā Iām satisfied if I can simply figure out where I was when I took them.
Not sure why, but when I think of these things, I want to get out my old film cameras and start to shoot film again. I have no means to process the negatives or make prints, but my goal is to get them into my scanner.
It has nothing to do with anything, but during part of my time growing up, the Vietnam War was going on, and I was amazed at the fantastic results the photographers got from their Nikon SLR and Leica rangefinder cameras.
https://gmpphoto.blogspot.com/2020/10/horst-faas-dean-of-vietnam-war.html
What they accomplished, in the conditions they had to work in, with the tools they had to work with, is/was amazing. Mud, rain, explosions, they put up with all of it, and got such amazing, fantastic records of what was going on. Fast forward to today, where if Iām leaving home and thereās a light rain outside, my camera stays home. I keep telling myself that digital and water donāt mix. Maybe thatās just an excuse.
I knew I was terrible for this. If Iām lucky the photo packet has the matching negatives and prints inside and maybe the processor wrote a date on there. My Dad was much better. He had a log book in which he recorded every film, one to a page, with numbered entries each stating a brief subject and a dateā¦
Exceptā¦
Having gone through his negatives and his book, there are quite a few dates missing, and after some point in time there are entirely blank pages that correlate to the numbered films. The one thing he stayed consistent with was numbering the films. So at least we have a rough order. He had multiple camera bodies, so even the numbering is not a guarantee of chronology.
For my own, however, I find I can both use the technique you described of other frames in the same film, but I am also writing my memoirs and using the photos for that. As such, I have been researching stuff online. While itās not possible to ascertain āthe day I went to the local lakeā there are many I have pinpointed in time and space by means of historical facts. Like an air show I went to in the UK in 1999 is easily looked up to ascertain the date. That turned out to be a Sunday and so, knowing the dates of my trip, I was able to eliminate another location I visited on a Sunday to one of the others I was there. It can be a bit like a jigsaw puzzle.
In one case I ādrove aroundā a part of Melbourne, Australia on Google Street View until I spotted the office building I had in the photo. I had ārememberedā where the office and the hotel were, but it turned out I had remembered them the wrong way around!
While trying to prove my memory of another trip to the UK in 1986, I located a forum with an appropriate community (aviation enthusiasts) and asked there about a particular location. At first, it seemed my memory was faulty, but in the end I was proven right and I learned a lot more about where we had been than I had ever known before ā including the fact that the āabandoned airfieldā we had driven onto was, in fact, operational! 
I have surprised myself by how much I have been able to piece together from memories, occasional data like dates on film packets, saved mementos, key events I attended, modern map research, and even historic record research. Oh, and also consulting other people who were there is a great resource.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading your post. Some things reminded me of things Iāve done, and others gave me ideas as to what I can still do next time I get around to this. I think itās very much a part of everyoneās āphotographyā, but itās almost like a secret history, not to be revealed.
You are a better detective than I ever was or ever will be, but your ideas, along with what I have already learned to do, will be a huge help.
Something that should be added, is how enjoyable doing this is!!! So many memories, and then even more memories, as the huge ājig-saw-puzzleā starts to come together. I (sadly) see my family, and relatives, and friends, and wish I could share these memories with them now, but so many have died. What I do share with family generates huge smiles! ā¦and when I sometimes share with old friends, they had no idea I had ever taken the photos. Iām also lucky to have albums my mom put together with me growing up, but 95% of that was done before I started capturing my own memoriesā¦
Thank you for what you wrote! Iāve now got a nice smile on my face, and on my mind.
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Joanna, I missed this when you wrote it, but sure, I guess PhotoLab could open the image as best it can, and I would then make any and all corrections manually. PhotoLab knows how to open my images, both body and lens, but the issue is that it might be making incorrect corrections - to which I would reply, fine, Iāll do all the corrections manually (which in effect is what Iām already doing by changing the product name in the EXIF file.
Great - PL can open the file, and post a warning āno automatic corrections have been appliedā, and I would go about doing what Iāve already been doing, editing the images using the PhotoLab tools.
So, this means instead of PhotoLab saying Iām using an un-supported device, it can open the file anyway, and warn me that PhotoLab isnāt making the corrections it normally does. If this satisfied everyone else, maybe itās a good answer. For me, it doesnāt matter, as Iām already editing those image my way regardless of the camera or lens.
No need to reply. I have everything I need right now. Maybe this would be helpful for other people though?
Absolutely! If it wasnāt, I wouldnāt be doing it. I am writing my memoirs for myself, but in the hopes that my kids will find it interesting somewhere down the passage of time.
I forgot to add, that I have also been sitting down with my Mum and recording conversations about her past. Iāve also done a fair amount of research on that, tying up dates here, locations there, and in one case finding out that the place she got her first job is still there, even though it closed down for a number of years in recent history.
Most people I tell all this in person give me a blank look. Iām glad you see the value in this practice.
Sadly, I think by the time most people become aware of this, itās already too late. Way back when, I never realized the importance of keeping records and storing things for the future. I did my best, but it wasnāt nearly good enough. Oh well. ā¦and I thoroughly enjoy retrieving the history, the way I enjoy an old movie I havenāt seen in years. Good luck!
Just for the record, while Iām working very hard to not be wearing my āphotojournalist hatā, it still fits. Late at night the fire alarms went off, meaning walk down all the stairs and wait outside. I grabbed my M10, but it had the wrong lens on it, and the battery wasnāt full, but I figured it was good enough. I got downstairs and walked around trying to capture a news-worthy photo (had this been a newsworthy event), and I found so many things really difficult to do - like rangefinder focusing when there are flashing lights all over and I canāt clearly see what to focus on - so I did the best I could. I got one image I liked, then fixed it up in PhotoLab, and Iāll post it now. Then Iām going back to sleep.
L1004499 | 2022-11-02.dng (27.0 MB)
L1004499 | 2022-11-02.dng.dop (13.2 KB)
It was a false alarm, but weāre supposed to treat them like the real thing. Going back to sleep now.
Thank you for this link. A very interesting read about a talented and very brave man!
Out of curiosity, I straightened the building, set the white balance to the white stripes on the fire truck and adjusted the smart lighting and tone curve to give a āneutralā rendering, not so badly affected by the street lights, etcā¦
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Wondering out loudā¦ I put your version next to my version, side by side, similar sizes. I can clearly see how everthing has changed. The white stripes on the fire truck are now really white, the building color has similarly changed (itās supposed to be white, so your version is obviously more accurate), and while I made the vertical lines āstraighterā, you made them āstraightā. Thus, this dilemma:
a) Your version is now an accurate photograph of what āwasā, but itās not what I remember āseeingā.
b) My version is therefore not accurate, but it does a better job of conveying how I āfeltā as I walked around taking photos (quite a few of them, different angles, different distances, different everything, but this is the only photo with a fireman doing something in the photo, so this was my pick.
I donāt have an answer for my real question - which version is better, if it was perhaps going to be the cover story of Time Magazine ? Do the things I left un-done, deliberately or otherwise, make the photo stronger or weaker? (My photo reminds me literally of how I felt, but your photo is unquestionably more accurate.)
I hope lots of people answer this, not just the two of us. It has nothing to do with PhotoLab, but simultaneously it has everything to do with PhotoLab. PhotoLab (and your knowledge of tools) are the reason the two images are so different.
Ed, a lifetime ago I was so wrapped up in the politics, I hadnāt yet appreciated the lengths these photographers went through to capture them, and how dangerous it was, in SO many ways. Youāre right, this was a very talented and brave man, and he was one of the people leading the team of photographers, and teaching them how to do things. There was a huge number of photojournalists out there covering this war, and most other wars for that matter. I started reading this because I was interested in the cameras they used (and why). But the man behind the camera deserves the credit, as you noted, more so than the tool.
(To be very blunt, if I wanted to take a photo tomorrow of a certain location, and I woke up and it was pouring rain, I would cancel my plans so as to not get my camera wet. Thatās really a horrible thought, and a horrible reason, and it leaves me wanting to wait for the next rainy day and deliberately go around taking photos. I should feel ashamed of myself, feeling as I do. I need to think about this a lot moreā¦)
If youāre aware of similar links, please post them, and what you think about them. One of my photo heroes while growing up was āWeegeeā. If youāre not aware of who he was, and how he did things, youāll probably enjoy reading about him. I could never do what he did, either. 
Both pictures ask questions. Yours @Mike. The lights on the truck and the three windows of the building are of the colour temperature I would expect. The face of the building and the doorway colour seem to contradict the accuracy of the trucks lighting. @Joannaās. The trucks lighting and the lighting in the three windows are not of the colour temperature I would expect. The building face and lighting in the doorway are absolutely correct.
Sorry for my comments I do not normally like criticising other peopleās photographs, other then if I like them, but you did ask for comments from other people.