Welcome to Photos in Time, a unique, established and confidential service which uses fashion details and other clues to unlock the secrets of your family portraits.

Many of us are fortunate in possessing old photographs - or even paintings - of ancestors, which may be treasured family heirlooms passed down through the generations, or more recent finds. These historical images are a pleasure to view, and provide a superb visual record of faces from the past, an essential tool when compiling the family tree.

Frustratingly, old portraits are often undocumented, offering no indication of who the subject may be, or when the picture was created. However, genealogy enthusiasts and family history researchers will need to establish an accurate date for their old photographs and paintings, to help discover the identity of the subject, perhaps, and to place them in a useful historical context.

Surviving 18th century, Regency and 19th century paintings and Victorian, Edwardian and WW1 photographs depict ancestors as enigmatic figures gazing solemnly at the artist or camera, encased in strange, unfamiliar garments. Indeed, usually the most striking aspect of an old portrait is the clothing worn. Costume is a fascinating and important source of historical evidence: it can be dated and analysed and may hold the key to the whole image, while further clues are also found in the background and setting of portraits, if we know how to recognise and interpret these features.

I am pleased to offer my professional skills as a trained dress historian and portrait specialist with 25 years' experience of 'reading' historical pictures, to date, analyse and explain your family photographs and paintings.

Jayne Shrimpton obtained a BA degree in History at the University of North London, a Masters degree in the History of Art (Dress) at the Courtauld Institute of Art (London University) and worked for seven years as a Curator in the Archive of the National Portrait Gallery, London. She is the author of Family Photographs and how to Date Them (Countryside Books, 2008), writes a monthly feature for Practical Family History magazine, and contributes to other family history magazines including Family Tree Magazine and Ancestors. She also holds an annual photo-dating workshop at the Who Do You Think You Are? Live family history show at Olympia and is a regular lecturer at the Society of Genealogists and regional Family History societies.