Writing Photo Captions
Writing accurate photo captions is an essential part of a visual journalists role
Captions must be factual and accurate and inform the viewer of essential information needed to understand a photograph and its relevance to the news.
Captions should be written in a concise format that follows journalistic style so an audience can quickly grasp the information they need and so an editor can easily and accurately work with the images. A poorly written caption that is uninformative or worse, misleading, can compromise a good photo and undermine its credibility. Readers must be able to trust the accuracy of the information included in a caption.
Captions must be written in English only. Typically captions will be one to three sentences long.
Anatomy of a caption
The first part — essential information.
- Clearly identify the people that appear in the photo, (this doesn’t apply to street photography). SPELL NAMES CORRECTLY and learn how to format Chinese names in English. Professional titles should be included as well as the full name of the subject. For photographs of more than one person, identifications typically go from left to right.
- Clearly identify the locations that appear in the photo and the date the photo was taken. Name the location, city, or region, and country where the picture was made. The date typically goes at the very end of the caption. If you are showcasing a series of images that were taken at the same location, such as a photo essay or as part of a multimedia piece, it’s not always necessary to write the location and date in every single image caption so long as the location is made clear in the introduction or early in the story. If you are in doubt put the location information in the first image caption.
The second part — contextual information
- The second part of the caption gives context to the news event. A sentence or two is usually enough. Any information that is included — and is not common knowledge, such as contentious information, like death tolls in conflict, must be attributed. (e.g., the scene of a fire where four people died, according to local authorities).
The third part — directions
- Occasionally you must also add a third part — this must explain the circumstances in which a photograph was taken. If the photographer influenced the scene in any way or gave directions to a subject to pose in any way for a portrait, this must be disclosed.
Let’s analyse a few images from Reuters to see how captioning works in real situations:
Final notes
Captions are generally written in the present tense and should use concise, simple English.
In your own stories, you can be more creative with captions, making them more extended and supplement your storytelling in more creative ways. However, for now, please stick to the classic professional format that news organisations use.
Never put your opinions or assumption into a photo caption, such as “England captain David Beckham ponders his future after his team was knocked out of the World Cup soccer finals”. Stick to what the photo shows and what you know to be true.
