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I see this is a revived thread, but I've found a lot of photos on Ancestry's yearbooks (of many of my great grandparents!) and newspaper archives. Both you eventually have to pay for, but I saved them during *my free trials.
The yearbooks are wonderful if they have the ones you need. I have gotten a lot of family that stayed in the midwest that way. Either everyone stayed in school and these are the yearbooks that Ancestry has decided to put on. It is a wonderful resource.
Genealogy bank is a mixed bag. The quality is terrible compared to Newspapers.com; the search mechanism is slow and tedious; I much prefer Newspapers.com and found far more there than I did on GenealogyBank or whatever it was called.
Newspapers.com is not ideal . I wish there was a service that was. But I have found some interesting stories; a lot of pictures; a lot of "sense of place" articles as well as a backward look at future events. That's worth it alone. I would love to be teaching history today with the tools that are out there. What a way to get kids into researching.
I realize this is an old thead, but to anyone searching old photos, I would first say press all living family members as to what they have.
In just the past year, my mom, who is in her early eighties all of a sudden came up with a portrait photo of my maternal 2nd great grandfather as well as a family studio portrait of my paternal great grandparents including my paternal grandmother as a child. Who knew she had these lol?
She "found" them when she was downsizing to move into a MIL suite attached to my sisters house. If we had found them after she died, we might be able to guess who these people were, but we never would have been totally sure.
Also, google history and historical societies of any towns your ancestors lived in. Just this weekend, I did that again, for one of the towns/small villages my relatives lived in and found pics of my maternal great grandfather, as well as great aunts/uncles as children.
I agree with the above in regards to connecting with older relatives. I received most of the older photos I have due to getting them from older relatives. Today, due to technolgoy and smart phones, we can even just take pictures of those pictures and not have to take them anywhere to be copied. I know a lot of older people don't like you taking their pictures, but they won't mind you snapping a pic of it with your phone.
I'll also note that I've found a lot of good pics in yearbooks. I'm lucky in that in my area the high schools started year books in the late 1800s so we have quite a few excellent yearbook examples.
Organizations that are longstanding are also a great way to get pics of relatives who may be members. I've been recently researching masonic orders/temples and they have a LOT of pictures of members from the 1800s forward and some portrait paintings. I was sent some photos of some of our early Prince Hall (black American) masons from my local area recently. I'm going to see about connecting with masonic orders in MI and maybe visiting t heir history center in Iowa to get more information on the masons in my family. I discovered they have been involved in that organization since the 1860s.
One of my distant great grandfathers was involved in a military drill organization as well and I got a picture of him due to it being in a book about the history of the organization.
Other pictures I've gotten were due to my ancestors being Civil War veterans and being involved in the GAR after the war. I haven't yet, but I also know other researchers who have gotten photos of relatives via their military files held by the NARA.
It varies. I've had some success finding pictures of ancestors online, as well as obtaining pictures through relatives.
Since all of my ancestral lines immigrated to the US between 1890 and 1930, I don't have pictures before great-grandparents (and, even then, I don't have all of my great grandparents).
Also, some sides of my family have been, shall we say, less helpful than others. So that will hinder things.
I've found that friends of mine with long family lineages in the US have been far more successful with obtaining photos and that their distant family in general seems to be far more willing to communicate than my immigrant ancestor family. I'm not sure if this applies across the board or if my distant relatives are just sh*tty people.
Look in the old orginal hometown of the family you are researchimg. In earlier times people who had moved far away often sent portraits back home to the remaining family. There may be some distant relatives still living in the town with a stack of old stuff. I've lucked into several great photos that way. Besides cousins as a source, the local historical museum or society might have a photo archive.
Wanted to also note that I have also found pictures on ancestry.com of some of my distant relatives and connected with distant cousins because of that website.
Some of my newly found distant cousins are pretty elderly but they actively research using ancestry.com and they've uploaded all of their pictures into the website. I was able to save pictures of my 3rd and 4th great grandparents due to this. I also have pictures of letters and transcriptions of letters my 4th great grandmother wrote after the murder of her first husband from the 1870s due to ancestry.com.
I'd honestly build a tree and look there first.
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