APME Update - Captioning the writer in all photographers

Aug. 10, 2004

The five W's apply equally in sports captions>>>

Captions are crucial to strong photojournalism

While great pictures are the primary goal of newspaper photo departments, captions can sometimes trip up the best photojournalist. Walt Stricklin, director of photography for the Birmingham (Ala.) News, offers some thoughts and ideas about this: "Photographers aren't responsible for writing stories, but our words often are the first ones read in a newspaper: Our captions. Too often, though, we treat captions like an afterthought, like a word editor treats a picture. Hand the City Editor a picture. He or she will glance at it and then read and possibly reread the caption before going back to the picture. Give the same picture to a picture editor, and they will study it, and then quickly read the caption. There is little specific data on how much time readers take to process pictures and cutlines, but in 'Eyes on the News,' the Poynter Institute's study of how readers use a newspaper, photographs are processed 75 percent of the time and the captions 29 percent. When readers stop to look at a photograph, they are more likely to read the accompanying text, the study says. And guess what that accompanying text is? The caption. Our captions."

***APPM and APME to again meet jointly in October>>>***

Newspapers and photographers need to take advantage of the value and potential of caption space to extend reporting, says Kenny Irby, visual journalism group leader with The Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla. "This is great storytelling space," Irby says. Photographers should contribute to writing, he says. "We are reporters now and must be held accountable. The marriage of words and pictures begins with the caption." That means one of most difficult but also most important jobs photojournalists perform has nothing to do with a camera - it is gathering information for and writing good captions. Get that information wrong and it does not matter how well the picture is composed or how emotional the subject is. It doesn't even matter how much impact the image has! If the caption is wrong, the journalism part of photojournalism is incomplete. "I don't know a paper that doesn't need work on their captions, and that includes us," says Pim Van Hemmen, assistant managing editor of The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J. "Staying on top of captions is hard work, but they are just as important as the pictures. Our credibility as journalists is at stake. If the captions are not good, we will be looked at as inferior journalists."

Ideas for great captions

Naomi Halperin, director of photography at The Morning Call in Allentown, Pa., offers this checklist for doing
great captions:

___Who, What, When, Where and Why: Photographers should know enough about the pictures to write a complete caption that answers the who, what, when, where and why.

___Expand the content: Good captions expand on the picture content, not restate it. It seems like an obvious waste of time to the reader when we write what is obviously in the photo. Always CHECK SPELLING!!!

___Identify Subjects: Identify subjects from left to right using CQ on all unusual names and or spellings. It is also a good idea to check with the assigned reporter to make sure the names in the captions match those in the story.

___Always Identify: Photographers should make every effort to ID a photo. It is easiest to get the names on the scene, but not the only way to do it. It may require library research, phone calls or a trip to someone's home.

___Vital Stats: Include hometown information along with titles and positions of subject in the photo. Remember ages when photographing children. Phone numbers are important and should be entered into captions.

___Quotes: It is an extra bonus when captions include a quote the reporter may not have gotten. This helps give pictures relevance, which is not always clear to the reader. Knowing the picture's "news hook" makes it valuable.

___DO NOT ASSUME ANYTHING: Do not try to guess what a subject in thinking, especially when photographing animals. Don't jump to conclusions to explain emotions if you are not sure how a subject is feeling.

___Avoid Errors by Omission: Leaving out certain information for editors could change the perceived news value of a photo.

Different papers tackle caption writing differently. Some just ask photographers for basic information: who, what, when, where - and oh, please spell all the names correctly, so a copy editor can write the caption. But increasingly, many photojournalism departments take the responsibility of captions much further. It is becoming a basic expectation. The quality of captions counts during evaluations. Monthly awards are given for the best captions. Some papers hold routine caption-writing seminars with their photographers and copy desks.

"We had the copy chief do a one-hour session for the photographers, telling them what the copy desk looks for in a good caption," says Naomi Halperin, director of photography for the The Morning Call, Allentown, Pa. Before those sessions, most captions didn't add to the stories. Halperin also made a caption checklist sticker that fits on the cover of a reporter's pad that reminds the photographers what kind of information they need to be able to write good captions. Everybody is happier with the results, she says.

A good caption expands a photograph beyond the dimensions given to it by a designer. A good caption adds context, perspective and relevance. When done correctly, a caption will add information that is not in the picture or in the story, making the entire package more compelling. "We strive to have photographers go beyond what's in the frame," says Rob Carr, director of photography for The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle. "Something that will give more oomph to the picture and the story."

At the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader, the photo department met with the copy desk to find out exactly what the desk needs for captions. "I want the photographers to have some understanding of the difficulty the desk has when there is not enough information," says Ron Garrison, photo director. "We encourage photographers to include quotes and phone numbers."

At the Chattanooga (Tenn.) Times Free Press, photographers are responsible for all the facts in captions. "Giving shooters that obligation pushes them and makes them work harder for it," says Billy Weeks, director of photography and graphics.

Photographers often are in the best position to write the cutlines, insists The Poynter Institute's Irby. We are "the most visible reporters of the newspaper because we must be authentic witnesses, we must be on the scene," he says. "It's just the nature of the job."

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