A New Era in Photo Sleuthing Begins
By Kurt Luther On Aug. 1, 2018, we celebrated the public launch of Civil War Photo Sleuth, a free website that we hope will forever change the face of Civil
Tag: photo sleuth
Reverse Engineering an Image Macro
By Kurt Luther Most of the time, Civil War photo sleuthing feels like searching for a needle in vast haystacks of books, photo collections and websites. And, we’d be thrilled
What Are The Odds? Photo Sleuthing by the Numbers
By Kurt Luther One of the great strengths of the Civil War Photo Sleuth software we’re developing is that it makes it easy to find soldiers who look very much
Officer Identified Using Classic Research and CWPS
By Kurt Luther Last issue, we announced our Civil War Photo Sleuth (CWPS) software, combining technology and community to create a powerful new way to identify unknown soldiers in portraits.
New Digital Tool Redefines Photo Sleuthing
By Kurt Luther Exactly two years ago, in the Summer 2015 issue of Military Images, this column asserted, “A Civil War photo sleuth is only as good as his or
Ushering in a New Era of Soldier Identification
Back in February at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, I glimpsed the future of soldier photo identification. In the conference room of a building on campus, professor Kurt Luther brought our
Merrill Carbine Leads to a Soldier’s Identification
By Kurt Luther In this edition of Photo Sleuth, we present another of our most compelling reader-submitted stories. This submission comes from Frederick Gaede. An author of countless articles for
Unknown No More: A Georgia Corporal and His Wife Are Identified
By Kurt Luther Since this column first appeared two years ago, we have often emphasized the collaborative, participatory and community-oriented character of photo sleuthing. At the end of each column,
How a “Concurrent Service Timeline” Helped Solve the Mystery of a Group Portrait Identification
By Kurt Luther Identifying a Civil War soldier in an individual portrait can be tricky enough. But for advanced photo sleuths, sorting out multiple soldiers in a group portrait poses
The Value of Photo Inscriptions as an Identification Tool
By Kurt Luther The majority of subjects in Civil War photos are anonymous, because, naturally, as most were known to contemporaries, there was little need to record their identities. As