Can someone help me recover the date on this photo?

[francis_dantuono]

<p>As you can see, this photo taken in 1995 has a digital date stamp on the lower right corner. However, due to the glare present (even in the original photo), the rest of the date outside of the 7 is incredibly, pretty much impossible, to see. I've tried myself messing with it on Picmonkey to see if I could see it better; can someone help me?<br>

<img src="http://s18.postimg.org/qix3dl1p4/Untitled_34.jpg" alt="" width="1279" height="870" /></p>

[Matt Laur]

<p>I'm not really sure what we're looking at, here. It looks a picture (scan?) of a printed photo. The date you're trying to recover appears to be part of that print, and the physical piece of paper containing the rest of that date looks like it's missing. Like, cut off. There's no recovering it because it doesn't appear to be there to recover.</p>

[parv]

Can anybody else see the image from OP as I cannot? The HTML looks to be normal enough (though only the "height" attribute was specified, no "width" for "img" tag); also, the posted image link is redirected to elsewhere.

 

The redirected image link goes to http://s18.postimg.org/qix3dl1p4/Untitled_34.jpg which is not just an image but a web page. Currently the image by itself is http://s18.postimg.org/nc2jtyh94/Untitled_34.jpg FWIW.

[francis_dantuono]

<p>The "cut off" part you're seeing is simply the wall of my home. The white part of the photo isn't a missing part of the photo. It's part of it; just a wall--it was taken from one room looking in another.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>I can't see it either. I'm getting a very big empty space with a little blue question mark in the middle as if the link is broken or the photo is no longer there in Safari (Mac) and no photo or space at all in Firefox (Mac).</p>

[James G. Dainis]

That photo has been cropped so only the "7." is there. Unless I am looking at a different photo than you are? You can see the shadow from the edge of the photo against the white background.<div></div>

[aplumpton]

<p>Matt's reply seems to answer the question of date recovery. The person who photographed the image (in 1995?) would likely know the subjects and it might be easier together with that person to try to discern the age of the boy in the photo in order to arrive at an approximate date.</p>

[ljwest]

<p>If the white part to the right of the "7." is a wall, it appears to be overexposed, or "blown out", possibly by a flash firing for the photo. If that is the case, there's probably very little chance to recover the rest of the date information.</p>

<p>The date printers work by exposing the corner of the image with the numeric LEDs as the light source. All they can do is add exposure to the image. Since the wall is white, and very overexposed, the negative is saturated (all black in that region), and the rest of the date is simply lost in the blown out wall.</p>

<p>I suppose there's still a very small chance of recovering the date if you have the negative, but you probably wouldn't be asking here if you had the negative!</p>

[thomas_k.]

<p>There in nothing there to recover. Only original negative could help. I'm assuming it was taken in US, you mentioned it's 1995 - and hairstyle the man in this photo is sporting falls well in that time. Visible "7" can be month of July - hot summer month hence no shirt. It seems to be dark outside, in July in means late evening and the boy is still up, so perhaps next day is not a school day, which would make it Friday or Saturday. Man's jeans bear marks of paint, perhaps it is Friday evening after work. There were only 3 Fridays in July 1995: 14, 21 and 28 - pick your date.</p>

[noreen]

<p>In the US, virtually every school year ends before July, which is typically a month of summer vacation.</p>

<p>I presume that the date stamp follows the US convention of month-day-year, but I suppose day-month-year isn't beyond the realm of possibility, either.</p>

[Matt Laur]

<p>I'm still not clear on whether the original photo had the date/time stamp on it (in which case it was cut off when the print was torn/cut on the right edge), or if the OP is saying that the camera used to take a photo OF the original printed photo was the source of the date/time, and it is indeed lost in the over-exposed white area. I think it's the former, not the latter. <br /><br />But: the original photo can't have been made before 1992. The child is holding a toy that based on a character in the 1992 Disney movie "Aladdin."</p>

[francis_dantuono]

<p>The original photo looks exactly the same as what I showed you. The original photo has the same white wall; it's not torn off. On the original print, you can make out, if you strain your eyes a very faint 95...but the number between the 7. and 95 isn't visible. It might be if I had a magnifying glass. The version here is a 'restored' scan done by a photo restoration guy. At the time, from our photos of roughly the same period, my parents were using a Day-Month-Year format for our photos. So, the missing portion of the date holds the month. I am curious what date it was. I can sometimes faintly make it out...It looks either like a 5, or 6, or an 8. But I can't be sure, and would like to be.</p>

[James G. Dainis]

That image has been cropped top, bottom and left side as one can tell by how perfectly straight those edges are. Do you still have the photo? Can you lay it on a dark surface and take a digital photo of the picture showing all four sides and post it here? Something is not making sense to me.

[noreen]

<p>Ryan, can you post a version of that part of the image that shows us the "very faint 95," even if you have to manipulate the contrast (or whatever) in Photoshop to make it appear?</p>

<p>I believe you when you say that the white area is visible in the photograph, but I <em>think</em> (or <em>suspect</em>)* that what you have is a print of a physically cropped photograph: the white is not a wall but the lid of a scanner that produced the copy from which your print was made.</p>

<p>*Edited to add: My conclusion based on the evidence is rather stronger than "think" or "suspect," but without having the photograph in my hand I leave open a <em>tiny</em> window for doubt.</p>

[bobatkins]

<p>The original image is here - http://s18.postimg.org/qix3dl1p4/Untitled_34.jpg</p>

<p>It's a scan of a physically cropped print with most of the date cropped off. There is nothing (i.e. zero, i.e. RGB 255,255,255) in the white area to the right of the "7". That white area is the white surface the original photo was placed on when the secondary scan/image was made, not part of the print. If you think there's any text there, your eyes are deceiving you.</p>

[James G. Dainis]

In the small crop I posted above, one can see the drop shadow at the edge of the photo and where the corner of the photo was cut off at an angle. Certainly no "white wall" is going to have a drop shadow on it and veer off at a 45 degree angle at the bottom. That is what kept me thinking I was looking at a different image than the one the OP was talking about.