From Generic to Genre; "A Picture is (Not Necessarily) Worth a Thousand Words"

"A picture is (not necessarily) worth a thousand words," particularly not in competitive markets where buyers are often motivated to buy because of details related to that picture.

When I acquired roughly a thousand old glass slides, slides made between 1880-1930, I also acquired the copyrights to those slides. In order to market the images on the slides (as opposed to selling the slides themselves), there were first, several crucial steps I needed to take.

1) Create Digital Versions of the Images

2) Clean/restore to varying degrees, the digital versions

3) Embed in the digital image files, a Title, Caption and Key Words/Tags to maximize the possibilities of matching publisher-searches for particular subjects.

Compared to Step 3), in many instances, Steps 1) and 2) were "a piece of cake."

Some slides had CAPTIONS -- some in English, many in German (I don't know German).

Some slides had CAPTIONS and NUMBERS (These were the easiest to deal with since slides with no captions -- but with numbers -- might fit in a run of numbers where captions existed and I could thus identify the subject)

Worst of the lot, slides with no captions, no numbers and no clues as to who, what, where or when!

Below is one such slide, GENERIC in subject BUT, with enough information and appeal to be marketed as a GENRE SCENE, that is, (IN ART)

" a style depicting scenes from ordinary life, esp. domestic situations."

So, I made it a "digital engraving" and gave it a title.

All comments are welcomed.

Actually, the slide mount did have a caption "Farm, Minnesota, 1915" not likely enough for a publisher, but, for me and a prospective print buyer, I think enough.