Get EXIF date from photo

It’s not straightforward to retrieve the EXIF date from an image. Here’s a method to retrieve it using the MetadataExtractor package. It looks for the appropriate date, and if not found, falls back to the file properties.

// <package id="MetadataExtractor" version="2.0.0" targetFramework="net40" />
 
static DateTime GetImageDate(string file) {
    var directories = ImageMetadataReader.ReadMetadata(file);
    ExifSubIfdDirectory subIfdDirectory = null;
    try { 
        subIfdDirectory = directories.OfType<ExifSubIfdDirectory>().FirstOrDefault();
    } catch (Exception ex) {
    }
    DateTime? dateTime;
    try {
        dateTime = subIfdDirectory?.GetDateTime(ExifDirectoryBase.TagDateTime);
        return dateTime.Value;
    } catch (Exception ex) {
        try {
            dateTime = subIfdDirectory?.GetDateTime(ExifDirectoryBase.TagDateTimeOriginal);
            return dateTime.Value;
        } catch (Exception ex1) {
            try {
                dateTime = subIfdDirectory?.GetDateTime(ExifDirectoryBase.TagDateTimeDigitized);
                return dateTime.Value;
            } catch (Exception ex2) {
                dateTime = new[] {
                    System.IO.File.GetCreationTime(file),
                    System.IO.File.GetLastWriteTime(file)
                }.Min();
                return dateTime.Value;
            }
        }
    }
}