CAPTIONS, PICTURES CAPTIONS, IMPORTANCE

 CAPTIONS

Why use pictures anyway?

Words can seldom explain or describe an event as eloquently as can a photograph. There is a Chinese saying: “A picture is worth a thousand words.”

The readers are educated, frightened, thrilled and amused by visual images. These images tell us about the lifestyle of people living in remote villages of Pakistan, a devastating flood in Bangladesh and the weeping family in the background, the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat in a cricket match and the list goes on.

Some photographs cause our eyes to mist, while others cause them to crinkle in amusement. Photographs can document everyday life in the alleys of the old city or a boring social event of the wealthy in a posh hotel.

What is a caption?

A caption is a brief summary or explanation of a photograph’s content. While each publication will have its own caption style, ideally a caption should answer the usual who, what, where, when, why and how.

Associated Press (AP), which provides a good caption model to follow, says the first sentence will be in the present tense and tells what’s happening, who’s in the picture, when it’s happening and where. The second sentence, in the past tense, sums up the action and provides the how and why. Occasionally a third sentence will be required to provide elaboration.

The photograph-caption package

A photograph and its caption, contrary to what some editors and photographers think, are viewed by most readers as a unit. Newspaper readers look at the caption for explanation and clarification of the visual information contained in the photograph.

Tips for caption writing

1. Don’t tell the obvious

If the person in the photographs is pretty or attractive, that fact will be obvious from the photograph. The picture will tell whether a person is smiling. It may be necessary, however, to tell why he or she is smiling.

2. Use specifics rather than generalities

‘A ten-pound cake’ is better than ‘a huge cake.’ ‘A man, aged 70,’ is more descriptive than ‘an old man.’

3. Use ‘from left’ rather than ‘from left to right’

The first means as much as the second and is shorter. Neither ‘left’ or ‘right’ should be overworked. If one of the two boys in a picture is wearing a baseball cap, use that fact to identify him. If the president is in a golf cart with a professional golfer, readers shouldn’t have to be told which one is the president.

4. Write captions in the present tense

This enhances the ‘immediacy’ of the photographs they accompany. The past tense is used if it gives additional facts not described in the action in the photograph. The caption may use both present and past tenses, but the past-tense element should not be used in the same sentence with a present-tense verb describing the action.

Indian tennis player Sania Mirza gestures as she addresses a press conference in Hyderabad on Thursday after returning home from the US Open. Sania, a native of the southern Indian city, was defeated in the fourth round of the tournament held at Flushing Meadows in New York by current number one Maria Sharapova. -- AFP

5. Make sure the caption is accurate

Double-check the spelling of names. The newspaper, not the photographer, gets the blame for inaccuracies. Caption errors occur because the photographer fail to give the editor enough, or accurate, information for caption writing.

6. Credit the photographer or wire service

Credit must be given to the photographer or the wire service, as the case may be, in the caption. (‘Photo by Naveed Akram’ or -- ‘AP wire photo’)

When photographs lie

“Photographs never lie” is one of the oldest newspaper axioms. It’s doubtful whether that was ever true, and it certainly isn’t today. Computerised processing of photos makes it easier than ever to manipulate pictures in ways that are totally unethical.

‘National Geographic’ magazine moved a pyramid closer to the Sphinx to improve the composition of a photo, then listened to cries of outrage from photographers and others who objected to the practice. ‘TV Guide’ put Oprah Winfrey’s head on another person’s body and suffered a similar fate.

One can’t help but wonder, though, how many similar things have occurred without someone noticing. The fact is that tampering with the content of a photograph is tantamount to printing a ‘manufactured’ quotation and attributing it to a senator, the mayor or a police officer at the scene of a crime. ‘Manufacturing’ untrue photographs is just as wrong as ‘manufacturing’ a quotation.

Quality publications now limit computerised alteration of photographs to the equivalent of ‘minor retouching,’ a process developed in the era of conventional photography. Editors and photographers are allowed to make a photograph lighter or darker. They are also allowed to do ‘electronic edge sharpening,’ the equivalent of improving the focus.

Most other forms of alterations are prohibited, although some publications allow the removal of distracting background elements. That might include removal of an electric wire dangling behind a subject in such a way as to appear the wire is emerging from the person’s head. The best photographers eliminate such distractions the right way by making sure they aren’t there in the original photograph.