How to Write Good Captions for Reportage Photos

Photo captions are an important part of journalism. Captions should be accurate and informative. In fact, most readers often see the full picture first, then read the captions, and then decide if they want to read the full story. Use the following guidelines to write curious captions that will make viewers read the entire article.

Table of Contents

Basic understanding of annotations

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Check information. One of the most important aspects of any kind of journalism is accuracy. If you use the wrong information, a good story or photo will lose credibility. Before posting or printing any photo captions, make sure you’ve checked everything in the caption is correct.

Do not print if the photo has incorrect captions if you have difficulty verifying, the reason may be that there is no reliable source, or because the deadline is close. It is best to discard such information if it is not certain that it is correct.

Heather Gallagher

Photographers & Photojournalists

Heather Gallagher is a photographer & photojournalist based in Austin, Texas. She runs a photography studio called “Heather Gallagher Photography” which was voted the best family photographer in Austin and was in the top 3 for newborn photography in 2017, 2018 and 2019 Heather specializes in home photography and has over 15 years of experience photographing individuals, families and businesses worldwide. Her clients include Delta Airlines, Oracle, Texas Monthly and her work has been featured in The Washington Post and The Austin American Statesman. She is a member of the International Association of Newborn Photographers (IAPBP).

Heather Gallagher
Photographers & Photojournalists

Experts agree that: In photojournalism, it’s important that captions be objective and vivid. Try not to put emotions into it – just tell the real story that happened.

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Description is not clear. If the image caption simply describes what is in the image, it would be quite redundant. If you have a photo of a sunset with the caption “sunset,” it means that it has no additional information for the reader. Instead, add details that are not clear in the image, like the location, time of day or year, or specific events taking place.

For example with a sunset photo, you should caption: “Pacific coast sunset, March 2016, from Long Beach, Vancouver Island”.
Also avoid phrases like “shown in picture”, “taken”, “see” or “as above”.

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Comments should not be started with specific words. A good footnote won’t start with ‘one’ or ‘this is’. Those words are too basic and take up space that isn’t really necessary. For example, instead of writing “A blue jay in the northern woods,” write: “The blue jay flies over the northern woods.”

Also don’t start the caption with someone’s name, start the caption with a resume description first and then mention the name. For example, don’t write: “Stan Theman appeared near Sunshine Meadow Park”, but write: “Runner Stan Theman appeared near Sunshine Meadow Park”.
When locating a character in an image, you can say “from left to right”, but it doesn’t have to be “from left to right”.

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Identify the main character in the image. If the photo includes an important person, identify them if you know their name (unless they wish to remain anonymous). If your name is unknown, you can describe your background (for example, “protesters on the streets of Washington, DC”).

The most important basic thing is to make sure to spell the character’s name and their title correctly.
If the photo includes a group of people, or a few people unrelated to the story (names are not required to fully understand the story), you do not need to list each name in the caption. ^{[1] X Research Source}

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The more specific the better. Specificity in the footnote should go hand in hand with accuracy. If you’re not sure where the photo was taken, or who’s in the photo, find out. Inserting a photo without specific information can be difficult for the reader, especially if you can’t tell them the context in which the photo was taken.

If you work with another journalist on a story, contact them for more information if needed.
If you need to identify a person in a photo, describing them is the way to go. For example, if Bob Smith is the only person wearing a hat in the photo, describe: “Bob Smith, back row wearing a hat.”
While being specific is good, you can also express it by opening the comment in a general way and then getting more specific, or starting specifically but ending in general. Both methods guarantee specificity but are also easy to implement.

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Accurate historical photo captions. If you are using historical photos in your article, make sure the photo is properly captioned and includes the date (at least the year) the photo was taken. Depending on who owns the photo, you may need to include the source of the photographer and/or organization (such as a museum, archive) that holds the right to use the photo.

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Use present tense in comments. Since photos are used as part of a news report of an event that is happening “now”, you should use the present tense for captions. Except for historical pictures, it is clear that the past tense must be used. ^{[2] X Research Source}

The beauty of using the present tense is to create a new sense of update for the reader and increase the impact of the image on the reader.

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Avoid misplaced humor. If the photo you’re captioning is about a serious or bleak event, don’t write it as a joke. Humorous captions should only be used for amusing photos of a happy event, intended to make readers laugh.

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Always include photo sources and citations. All photographs should be accompanied by the name of the photographer and/or organization that owns the photograph. Photography magazines and publications also include technical details and how the photo was taken (such as aperture, film speed, f-stop, lens, etc.). ^{[3] X Research Sources}

When citing, you do not need to write “photo belongs”, “owned by” if the source image has a consistent presentation format and is easily understood by the viewer as a citation. For example, the image source is always italicized or printed at a smaller size.

Highlight the story with photo captions

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Use captions to tell your readers something new. When readers look at pictures, they often generate emotions and absorb information (based on what they see in the picture). Captions should provide information that the reader would not be aware of just by looking at the image. In short, captions should help readers understand more about the image. ^{[4] X Research Sources}

Captions should make readers curious to investigate the story and find out more information.
Comments should also not repeat certain parts of the article. Captions and stories should complement each other and not be repeated.

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Avoid judgment. Footnotes should be informative only, not judgmental or critical. Unless you’ve actually talked to the people in the picture and asked about their feelings or thoughts, avoid making assumptions based on how they look in the picture. For example, avoid writing “buyers standing in line unhappy,” unless you really know they’re unhappy.

Journalism is an industry that needs to be objective and informative for its readers. Journalists are those who reflect reality without bias and let readers make their own opinions.

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Don’t worry about caption length. The picture itself can say a thousand words, but sometimes it takes a few more words to put the picture in the right context. If you need a long caption to understand the picture, that’s okay. While you want your captions to be clear and concise, you shouldn’t limit information if it’s essential.

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Use spoken word. Newspapers generally don’t use overly complicated language. But at the same time don’t use slang or clichés. Comments should follow basic language requirements. Write captions in your voice, similar to how you would talk to your family when showing them the picture. Avoid clichés and slang (and abbreviations). Don’t use complicated words if you don’t have to.

If the picture accompanies the story, keep the tone of the article and the caption the same. ^{[5] X Research Sources}

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Include information that is not necessary for the story in the caption. Photojournalism often tells a specific, clear story. If there’s a piece of information that’s helpful for understanding the photo, but not essential to the whole story, include it in the caption.

This does not mean that the caption contains only information that is not important in the story, rather information that is not too necessary to include in the main report. A footnote can be viewed as a separate sub-story that may include information not used for the main article.
Again, remember that captions and stories should complement each other, not repeat.

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Determine the punctuation to use. If the photo is simply about a person (e.g. a portrait) or a specific object (like an umbrella), you can caption the name of the person or object without punctuation. . In other cases you can still write incomplete sentence captions, this is subject to publication requirements. ^{[6] X Research Source}

Example for a caption without punctuation: “Toyota 345X transmission”
Examples of complete and incomplete captions: Complete — “Actress Ann Levy drove an Acura 325 once during a driving test in London.” Incomplete sentence — “Driving the Acura 325 once.”

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Simplify the description in the following footnotes. If consecutive photos in an article show the same place or person, you don’t need to repeat the details in each caption. For example, if you already introduced the character with the full name in the first picture, in the next pictures you just need to use the character’s first or last name. ^{[7] X Research Sources}

You assume the reader has all seen and read the caption of the first image and then left because the story is told in a particular order anyway.
You can also skip going into detail in the caption if the story itself already has a lot of detail. For example, the story already tells the details of the event, you don’t need to repeat it in the caption.

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Let readers know the photo has been edited. Images are sometimes enlarged, reduced, or cropped to fit the situation, story, page, space, etc. These changes do not need to be announced because it does not change what is contained. in the picture. However, if you edit the photo in another way (for example, change the color, remove or add something, inflate something unnaturally…etc) then you must notify the change. in footnote ^{[8] X Research source}

The caption doesn’t need to state what you’ve changed, but should state “photo for illustrative purposes”.
This rule also applies to special photography methods such as time-laspe, etc

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Create a template for caption writing. Once you’re familiar with caption writing, you can create a specific template for captions. Your captions will probably follow this formula or some similar pattern naturally without you having to rack your brains over the rules. But sometimes you’ll also need the formula to review, to make sure you’ve written all the necessary parts of the footnote. ^{[9] X Research Source}

We have a typical pattern: [noun] [verb] [direct object] during [event name] at [place] in [city] on [day of the week], [day] [month] ], [year]. [Why and how].
An example caption using the above formula: “Dallas firefighters (noun) fight against (act in present tense) fire (direct object) in the nearby Fitzhugh neighborhood (place) the intersection of Fitzhugh Avenue and Monarch Street in Dallas (city) on Thursday (weekday), July 1 (day), July (month), 2004 (year).” ^{[10] X Research Source Mark Hancock, Freelance Photojournalist, Dallas, Texas. Written on July 10th, 2004.}

Common errors in comments

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Avoid being conceited. The pretentiousness in the annotation is reflected in the fact that the writer only knows how to write for himself, but does not care about the reader. This can be seen as selfish because the writer cares more about himself than the reader trying to analyze what the image and the story is about.

This also happens when writers try to be ‘classy’ and try to write something new or wise. It really doesn’t have to be that complicated. Keep things simple, clear, and precise.

Advice

In the newspaper industry, photo captions are called “cutlines”.
National Geographic’s photo captions are good examples of a little bit of photojournalism. National Geographic is well known for their photographs, but most magazine prints come with a story. However, readers tend to see the image first, read the captions, look at the image again and then decide to read the whole article. A good caption will do the job of helping the reader jump from viewing the picture to reading the article.
Images and captions must complement each other. Together they tell the story. Photos and captions must avoid repetition. The caption should help the picture explain what, when, where it is, But a picture is supposed to evoke emotion.
As a photographer, you must bring notebooks, pens/pencils to the events that you photograph. Take advantage of the time between shots or when waiting for your subject, take note of the name of the character in the pictures and make sure it’s correct. ^{[11] X Research Source}

Warning

When you write comments, remember the lines of comments you have read and found difficult to understand. For example, some news sites may use stock photos because they don’t have actual photos of the event. This is fine, but stock photos are not real photos, so they should be mentioned in the caption.

Steps

Basic understanding of annotations

Highlight the story with photo captions

Common errors in comments

Advice

Warning

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