Chronophoto

January 27, 2023 4:31 PM

Chronophoto is a game in which you guess the dates of some photos — the closer the guess, the higher your score. That's it!
posted by swift (76 comments total)

2762. They threw me with the coal miners.
posted by Marky at 4:40 PM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

Oh man I love this. This is something almost entirely useless that I'm weirdly good at, and I feel so validated.
posted by phunniemee at 4:50 PM on January 27, 2023 [23 favorites]

2889. Fun!
posted by ashbury at 4:57 PM on January 27, 2023

This is fun! Feels like I can finally put to some use a lot of different useless trivia of different eras that I have sloshing around in my head.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 4:59 PM on January 27, 2023

WOW I am terrible at this
posted by rouftop at 5:04 PM on January 27, 2023 [7 favorites]

3267!

Finally something I'm good at
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 5:05 PM on January 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

After 4 rounds, my high score is 3246. I’ve gotten a couple pictures dead on, but I seem to usually bomb one by a few decades.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 5:07 PM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

I expected to be reasonably good at this, but 1415 was not a great first score. But even being wrong is really interesting!
posted by duien at 5:08 PM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

I love this! My second round was much better than the first, largely due to several of the pictures in the latter set being fairly recent: the gas crisis, a famous tsunami, ninja turtles.

My first round was a disaster. Everything prior to 1960 or so was a wild guess at best.
posted by mochapickle at 5:14 PM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

4039!

I print screened that one
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 5:18 PM on January 27, 2023 [7 favorites]

4340. Interesting to see which clues give away the era — film grain, haircuts, cars, hat vs. no hat.
posted by swift at 5:20 PM on January 27, 2023 [8 favorites]

Broke 4000

Soundtrack for the thread - Kodachrome
posted by bartleby at 5:26 PM on January 27, 2023 [6 favorites]

4405 so far, but some of these photos are very difficult, and some eras are more difficult than others. I have no idea how to tell train cars from the 1900s apart from train cars from the 1920s, in a grainy black and white photo from a distance. And for some reason I'm worse at telling 1970s and 1980s cars apart than I thought I would be, and once it gets past 2005 or so, it's all a blur.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 5:29 PM on January 27, 2023 [4 favorites]

Oh wow, this is a game for me. I got 3048; the one that really threw me was a picture of some army officers from 1936 that looked like WWI to me. The rest I got within five years or less, and my best was guessing '96 for '97. I look at my old pictures a lot.
posted by Countess Elena at 5:32 PM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

Things that make this hard(er): People in uniform. Kids. People playing dress up. Las Vegas. Anyone wearing anything "ironically". Countries where cars and fashion may lag behind what you think for an indeterminate number of years.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 5:33 PM on January 27, 2023 [4 favorites]

Alternative thread soundtrack
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 5:34 PM on January 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

Oh, another thing that makes it harder: Old people. Old ladies in the 50s honestly wore the same clothes as my grandmother did in the 80s.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 5:40 PM on January 27, 2023 [6 favorites]

update: scored 1000 by putting a picture right in 1935 (vague auto chassis knowledge from osmosis), but also scored 0 on a monochrome photo of two people canoeing in silhouette from a wooden dock. It was 1902, but the scene would look the same today. Harder to date photos from the countryside in general, since the ads and fashion stayed the same for a while. This effect is lessening today somewhat, although for reasons unknown to me the white teen boys in my hometown wear the same mushroom/bowl cuts they did in the '90s.
posted by Countess Elena at 5:44 PM on January 27, 2023

I literally got a big gray grainy square of what I think might have been sky? Apparently it was the sky in 1935? Boooooooo!

4125 and holding…
posted by mochapickle at 5:48 PM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

I got thrown by an especially clear picture of what I thought was a recent event, but it turned out to be from the mid-1960s.
Also anything from WWII or earlier, I seem to do really terribly. Once it’s black-and-white, I can’t get it.

I’m also not trying as hard as I could. I got a repeat wrong by two years.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 5:50 PM on January 27, 2023

The "big grainy square" is what you get when the images don't load properly, which annoyingly happens once in a while.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 5:51 PM on January 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

The presence of the "Who's That Girl" soundtrack on the record store shelves was a significant clue.
posted by credulous at 5:54 PM on January 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

After man tries: 4207! And I owe it all to Reddit’s shittymorph trolling, because I got a picture of the Undertaker standing on top of Hell in a Cell, and I knew it must be 1998. And then a lucky guess that a bunch of squares sitting at a table were 1955, followed by a picture of the Clintons in a parade.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 5:56 PM on January 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

4266 on my first attempt. Really pleased that I was able to exactly date an image of some US sailors in Japan.
posted by Hogshead at 5:58 PM on January 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

3670 on my first go. Easy game, I thought.
This was followed by 2 consecutive 1923 American Football photos, and a very large drop in score.
posted by Calvin and the Duplicators at 6:00 PM on January 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

I wish they provided some context for the images afterwards! There are definitely some that were referencing political/military events that I wasn’t familiar with.
posted by vanitas at 6:04 PM on January 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

I'm much better dating the early 1900s than the early 2000s.
posted by brachiopod at 6:05 PM on January 27, 2023 [6 favorites]

I’ve only noticed one cellphone, from 2017. Thought they’d be more of a help for recent photos. Gaming systems and laptops have been more of a giveaway for the last ten years or so.
posted by swift at 6:14 PM on January 27, 2023

3965 on my first try. 197 on the second. Hmm.
posted by ananci at 6:25 PM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

4341 due to two 1000s - public aerobics class and a WW2 one - and a lucky hunch in an otherwise indistinct railway scene. Clothing and hair are great, but cars completely mess me up.
posted by cobaltnine at 6:48 PM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

4077 on my first attempt, nothing close to that on my second or third. Three decades off on some furniture, I guess because there was a 50s revival in the 1980s?
posted by migurski at 6:50 PM on January 27, 2023

This is the most Kottke.org-esque link of all time. There is a near 100% chance this shows up on his site at some point soon.
posted by Ike_Arumba at 7:05 PM on January 27, 2023 [4 favorites]

WOW I am terrible at this

Me too. I would have thought I'd be good at this, but nope, not at all.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:15 PM on January 27, 2023

39thirtysomething and
4009.
posted by clavdivs at 7:23 PM on January 27, 2023

My highest so far is 3496 but I got pretty lucky (total cheat to get a photo of FDR in the mix). Weirdly having just recently gone to a car history museum helps a lot - just being able to roughly place cars within about a decade is super useful and not something I'd typically have a prayer of doing.
posted by potrzebie at 7:35 PM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

I can’t get above 2700 anymore! gaaaaaah
posted by mochapickle at 7:39 PM on January 27, 2023

4301 on my first go, haven’t been able to break 4K since.

Fun game, thanks for posting!
posted by HighTechUnderpants at 7:41 PM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

672 on my first game, 4183 on my second!

I’m quitting while I’m ahead!
posted by darkstar at 7:47 PM on January 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

4053 on one of my tries. Seems unfair when there's a picture of Bill Clinton in obviously presidential mode.
posted by mollweide at 7:59 PM on January 27, 2023

Topping out at 3683 for now. Fun!
posted by jquinby at 8:00 PM on January 27, 2023

3428 is my best so far. Got within a year on one.
posted by briank at 8:03 PM on January 27, 2023

Am I going to be training someone's shitty AI for free if I do this?
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 8:20 PM on January 27, 2023 [13 favorites]

3433. Got a picture with everyone wearing face masks - that was an easy one.
posted by Harald74 at 9:36 PM on January 27, 2023

4330, and I won't even try to top that. I got really lucky: a topical political photo from the Trump era, and some B&W street scenes that were easy to guess, including one that happened to be just the year I guessed.
posted by zompist at 9:37 PM on January 27, 2023

Oh I love this! I've got one thousand-pointer so far, a 2021 due to everyone wearing masks...

The "hmm, that collar looks pretty pointy" or "hmm that hairstyle" closely looking at photos is very enjoyable.
posted by freethefeet at 11:25 PM on January 27, 2023

Thanks for the 1000 points, trippy looking band playing in front of a handmade banner that said “Summer of Love!”
posted by chococat at 11:58 PM on January 27, 2023 [6 favorites]

Wow 1990 was still the early 80s in a lot of ways eh
posted by not_on_display at 12:06 AM on January 28, 2023 [2 favorites]

4549 is my new personal best. A few photos have started repeating now, but surprisingly, all the ones on my record run were completely new to me, although I did get one of them exactly right because of a billboard in it that actually stated the year.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 2:45 AM on January 28, 2023

3492. So simple and so fun.
posted by zardoz at 3:20 AM on January 28, 2023

3292 at first, and then when I realized you could zoom into the photo with mouse wheel (or trackpad), I improved.
posted by jeremias at 5:21 AM on January 28, 2023

Everything after 1950 is really easy for me to get within a few years but man are older photos harder to nail down. They all look the damn same!
posted by dis_integration at 5:41 AM on January 28, 2023

Lessons learned:

Add five years if you're guessing based on fashion, hairstyles, or cars.
Fedoras had a long run.
Boaters did not.
Film quality helps at the beginning of each century... Early 20th have weird eyes because the film isn't responsive to the full spectrum of light. From the 2000s to the 2020s, digital becomes dominant.
If it's a bunch of military guys with mustaches on horses, you may as well just pick randomly between 1900 and 1940.
posted by condour75 at 6:17 AM on January 28, 2023 [3 favorites]

Wow 1990 was still the early 80s in a lot of ways eh

I think the '90s started when Bill Clinton was inaugurated, or possibly when Nevermind and/or The Chronic were released, and ended on September 11, 2001.
posted by box at 6:56 AM on January 28, 2023 [2 favorites]

This is the most Kottke.org-esque link of all time. There is a near 100% chance this shows up on his site at some point soon.

It already had when this comment was posted. And it would be the most Kottke link if it was the winners of the 2022 Most Datable Photos Contest.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 7:22 AM on January 28, 2023

I got confused by the UI and accidentally submitted a Diplomacy tournament taken on an early digital camera for 1960 and ragequit. 3327 when I refreshed and tried again!
posted by little onion at 8:27 AM on January 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

Fun! I’m not great at this but I still enjoyed it. Definitely improved my second time around when I actually took a minute to zoom in and look for context clues.
posted by obfuscation at 11:09 AM on January 28, 2023

My best is 4409 but that was with a certain motorcade in Dallas pictured, and one with Kurt Cobain. The first few I did were basically all war pictures, so identifying Spanish civil war environments or uniforms was key. Also, it's frustrating when you figure a certain year, drag the slider to approximately the right year, can't be bothered to fix it (on the phone now) and then lose points for missing the year that you'd predicted in the first place. But all in all a satisfying little entertainment.
posted by St. Oops at 11:23 AM on January 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

This is great! I love the mix of the mundane and the significant, all the bits of full-on history and pop cultural ephemera and quotidian life mixed up together. I finally got over 4000 with the help of a wonderfully odd pic of Boy George and Mr T, splendid.

In the second round I played I improbably got a photo from the city I went to university in, but annoyingly was several years off the mark - I could have pinpointed the location to the nearest millimetre in seconds had I been playing Geoguessr, oh well never mind...
posted by tomsk at 11:25 AM on January 28, 2023

Some of these I am so wrong on it’s amazing. Especially stuff I’d swear is 20-40 earlier (barring obvious clues). Is that an age thing?

One of mine had a calendar on the wall, but it was too blurry to read.
posted by gottabefunky at 11:31 AM on January 28, 2023

Hats, man. Hats are messing me up.
posted by HotToddy at 11:56 AM on January 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

Am I going to be training someone's shitty AI for free if I do this?
No. Don't be absurd. You get points!
posted by Acari at 11:59 AM on January 28, 2023 [6 favorites]

This could be greatly enhanced if the results screen included info about each photo. There must be a reference DB, also since the site accepts corrections from users. So, how are we these date-verified? Maybe all are from publications?
posted by TDIpod at 1:57 PM on January 28, 2023 [2 favorites]

10,0009!
I guessed the height of each person.
posted by clavdivs at 2:12 PM on January 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

anyone else find the more recent photos a bit hard, the only markers were no cell phones, t-shirts and hair-cuts.
posted by clavdivs at 2:14 PM on January 28, 2023 [2 favorites]

Some early advertising was interesting - a ride called "Tickler" had a sign saying "Remodeled - not as rough as last season", which, umm, tickled me.
posted by Calvin and the Duplicators at 4:26 PM on January 28, 2023 [2 favorites]

This is awesome, best out of three is 4039. My form is four within three years of the date and then boom, off by a decade somewhere in the mix. there’s the odd almost trick one.
posted by Iteki at 4:28 PM on January 28, 2023

My best is 4406. I'm okay with that
posted by blob at 4:44 PM on January 28, 2023

Holy crap, 4489! Ironically, way better than my first run, which started with a photo containing a prominently displayed headline about Elvis' death.
posted by BiggerJ at 4:50 PM on January 28, 2023

2265. Wow, tough! For a bunch I was within 3 years, and for others I was off by multiple decades.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 11:29 PM on January 28, 2023

Finally broke the 4000 barrier. I am very bad at anything within the last thirty years, apparently.
posted by LostInUbe at 11:34 PM on January 28, 2023

I have been informed from another person who has played this game that there is at least one photo depicting dead bodies. It is possible that the photos are not screened or vetted, so please use your best judgement.
posted by spheniscus at 11:47 PM on January 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

I did poorly the first few rounds, and then had a round with all high scores, except for one photo of vintage aircraft that was much more recent than it looked. Darn.
posted by ovvl at 5:09 AM on January 29, 2023

Would be a lot more interesting if they wordle-ized it to give everyone the same five photos, once per day. I got 3 thousand something but who cares! You don't know what photos I saw.
posted by Kwine at 5:11 AM on January 29, 2023 [4 favorites]

I just got an adorable photo of the Obamas in 1989, you just want to pinch their lil cheeks!!
posted by exceptinsects at 10:11 AM on January 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

Everything after 1950 is really easy for me to get within a few years but man are older photos harder to nail down. They all look the damn same!

I'm the opposite, and it's interesting to think how our age and interests affect each of us.

What's most vivid for me is the 1900s through early-mid 70s. This encompasses half a century before my birth through my childhood. (I'm in my 60s.) Meanwhile, to a degree, the late '80s through now all starts to blur together.

Perhaps it's from decades of seeing early 20th-cent. "period" plays/films and having looked at much early photography.

But it's also because the first half of the last century isn't ancient history to me, it's a time grandparents and parents were young. And I'm fascinated with their eras, their clothes, their vehicles.

Meanwhile -assuming these are all correctly ID'd - I completely flipped the last 20 years in two photos. (I still can't believe a couple people had such slim looking cell phones in 2001.) While I said a 2022 photo of a group of people was from 1999.
posted by NorthernLite at 10:15 AM on January 29, 2023

4697 - but c'mon, so much dumb luck: One pic is a bunch of kids standing around looking at some computers, the computers look roughly turn-of-the-century so I guess 1999, and I'm right! (??) Jockey on some horse - from the cameras It was early 2000's so I guess 2002 and I'm off by one year (!?) - war-raveaged street, black and white, looks German maybe? I'll go with 1917 given the dress of those two guys way in the background - and I'm right!

My other attempts were in the 3000 range. Within five years is, without specific clues (shoe styles, tech in use, photo quality etc) that's totally reasonable.
posted by From Bklyn at 3:43 AM on February 1, 2023