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This article was co-written by Heather Gallagher. 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).
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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.
Steps
Basic understanding of annotations
- 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).
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.
- 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”.
- 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”.
- 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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
- 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.
- 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.
- If the picture accompanies the story, keep the tone of the article and the caption the same. [5] X Research Sources
- 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.
- 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.”
- 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.
- 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
- 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
- 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.
- This also applies to styles and templates. If you don’t know if the publisher has a template for comments, don’t write your own as you might have to correct it, because you didn’t ask the editor.
- This also happens when the writer tries to use another language in the comment, but fails to check that it is spelled correctly. Goodle Translate is not an effective way to check if the language is correct.
- Also keep in mind that once the information is released “out there”, it will be very difficult to correct it. Especially if it’s related to a traumatic, stressful or ongoing event.
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.
This article was co-written by Heather Gallagher. 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).
This article has been viewed 3,922 times.
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.
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