look-alike photos | Genealogy Gems

Celebrity Connection! Family Look-Alike Photos

by Lisa Cooke | Mar 5, 2016 | 01 What's New, Apps, Kids, Listeners & Readers, Photographs

Check out these celebrity cousin look-alike photos! A distant cousin of Katherine Hepburn compares photos with fun results.

Last fall, I blogged about a web app that uses facial recognition software to compare how closely two faces “match.” Since then, several people have sent in their own family look-alike photos. Here’s one with a new twist: a celebrity look-alike!

Celebrity Cousin Look-Alike Photos

Lydia wrote in with this: “I’ve had fun with the Twins or Not? app and here are some of my results. A bit over a year ago I broke down a brick wall and found Katherine Hepburn on the other side as a fifth cousin. Well, I do have strong cheekbones so I plugged in some of my photos and compared them to Hepburn’s. Here’s what I got!

In the first pic [shown right] you’ll find Leman Garlinghouse, Hepburn’s great grandfather, and my great-great grandfather, Tyler McWhorter. The two men were second cousins via the Garlinghouse family line. Leman Garlinghouse’s daughter married a Houghton man in the early 1850s and their daughter was Carrie Houghton, who grew up to be Katherine Hepburn’s mother. One doesn’t need photo comparison app to tell they were related!

The next one is one of my (old!) theatrical headshots and one of Hepburn:

Pretty cool, eh?”

I agree with Lydia! That’s pretty cool. You can find mobile apps that do this in the Google Play store and in iTunes. What a great way to spark interest in the look-alikes in YOUR family history at your next family gathering! Especially great for kids. (Just have some old family photos available on your mobile device to upload and compare with shots you can snap of living relatives.)

Remember that your mobile device can be your best go-to resource for genealogy-on-the-go. Use it to access your family tree, digitize a photo or document on the fly or share your latest find with a loved one. Learn how in my new book, Mobile Genealogy: How to Use Your Tablet and Smartphone for Family History Research.

More Apps for Family History

5 Free Family History Apps You Should Have

MyHeritage.com App Gets a Redesign

Record a Life Story: Free StoryCorps App

Look-Alike Family Photos: These Relatives are 80 Years Apart

by | Feb 16, 2016 | 01 What's New, Listeners & Readers, Memory Lane, Photographs

Do you have any look-alike family photos? Check out these uncanny resemblances–and more ideas for what to do with old family photos.

Recently I heard from Season. “Thought you might enjoy a photo of my 87-year old grandmother at age 18 and my daughter now age 7,” she wrote. They are 80 years apart–but they could be sisters (or even the same girl).

Season’s photo reminds me of a blog post I wrote last fall about a new app that uses facial recognition technology to see “how related” they think are people in two different photos. Check out that post and the look-alike photos there!

In recent months, lots of look-alike relative photos have appeared online. I like this article that shares several sets of photos submitted to Pinterest as part of a look-alike contest by MyHeritage.com. Here’s another link to some relative look-alikes among celebrity families, from daughters of Meryl Streep to brothers Luke and Owen Wilson.

What Else Can You Do with Family Photos? Gems to Consider