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My wife's father was born in Queensland, Australia in 1930. He died in 1989. She has only 2 photos of him. One has no markings on the front or rear and nothing to identify the year taken. What avenues are available to estimate the year the photo was taken?
This needs more work, but adding to the fun:
P.S. If I only had two photographs of my dad, I'd want this to be one of them. Check out that smile--he's lovin' it.
Some questions to ask about photographs:
Dating photos relies on a combination of:
Jayne Shrimpton and Maureen Taylor's books are good references, but they concentrate on the 1850-1950 period.
The scanned image shows a black-and-white print. The informal outdoor setting suggests it was taken by an amatuer photographer. I think this print has been cut down from a larger original because prints usually had white borders on all sides.
Commercially processed prints tended to come in standard sizes, which is derived from the size of the negative. Typically commercial processesing produced contact prints (exactly the same size as the negative) and enlargements of the whole negative, which maintain the aspect ratio of the negative. Unfortunately in this case, we do not know the size of the original print, so we can't deduce the size of the negative.
As othe answers have suggested, the 1950s is strongly indicated. At that time, colour photography existed, but was not as widely popular and affordable as black-and-white.
I would try to track down the source of the photo. If your wife didn't take it, then she must have got it from someone. Who did your she get it from? Maybe it was her brother or uncle. Maybe they took the picture or got it from someone else.
Once you track the source steps of the photo as to how it got to your wife. See if the person at each step might have other photos taken from that day and place. Those other photos would provide more important clues and maybe even indicate the event (birthday, get-together, location) that the photo was taken and enable you to get a more accurate date.
In addition, I would also contact all my wife's first cousins, and send them a copy of the photo and ask them if they could help identify it. One of them may have at one time seen the photo and it or others from the same event or copies of those may have somehow come into their possession. While doing so, ask your wife's cousins what else they know or heard about your wife's father.
An additional avenue for investigation may be "who took the photograph?" Does it appear to be a posed studio portrait or a snapshot?
There were fashions in how amateur snapshots were printed that may help you to narrow down the time period. Compare these two for the width of the white border and the presence (or absence) of a deckle edge.
Other relevant features might include whether the surface is gloss or matte (or even textured in the 1970s); the presence of perforations on two edges only (machine-printed in strips); or even the size of the print (sometimes an indication of relative prosperity).
Although there may be nothing written ON the back of the photo, look closely IN the paper. Many manufacturers of photographic paper incorporated a watermark in their products. That may also help you to identify a probable time for the creation of the image.
Eyeballing the age of the man in the photo I'd say he's between 20-35 years old. If he was born in 1930 that puts the range of the photo between 1950-1965.
The composition of the photo is interesting. Given his relaxed posture, his smile, him looking down at the camera, and the tilted angle of the photo itself leads me to think his picture is being taken by a child or a girlfriend in a very lighthearted moment. I'm not sure if any of that helps close the gap of when the photo was taken, but if it was your wife's mother (his girlfriend at the time) who took the photo, the year they met to the year they got married would be a bounds to the photo's age (otherwise he'd be wearing a wedding band). The fact he has no wedding band would suggest to me he's on the earlier side of the above range, maybe mid-to-late 20s in age.
The fact that this is a black and white picture could narrow the date the photo was taken, assuming you can accurately figure out when consumer color photography was becoming more commonplace in Australia.
Assuming she is still living, what details does your wife's mother know about the photo?
Not being a fashion person, but looking at his face, I estimate he is in his twenties, so that would make the photo the fifties.
Judging by the hair style, jacket and cut of the shirt I would hazard a guess at mid to late 50's.
The fact that you say it is sepia in colour and that it looks like it would crack if bent would seem to back that up as by the early 60's photographic paper was becoming more robust.
In terms of archiving the photographs (which I know you didn't ask about) I would highly recommend getting a high resolution scan of the images and having them restored. Most of the time, you find that much more information is in the image that you previously thought and your wife could have a bigger version on show.
His hair looks like late 1950s/early 1960s, and his collar and sandals seem more late 1960s, at least by USA fashions. Was the photo taken in Australia?
