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How To Find The Right Caption For Your Photos

Lesson 17 from: Street Photography: The Art of Photographing Strangers

Ashley Gilbertson

How To Find The Right Caption For Your Photos

Lesson 17 from: Street Photography: The Art of Photographing Strangers

Ashley Gilbertson

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Lesson Info

17. How To Find The Right Caption For Your Photos

Documentary style photography isn't complete without a caption. Build a caption for your work in this lesson, from a generic caption for large batches of images, to captioning individual images.

Lesson Info

How To Find The Right Caption For Your Photos

So in here we've got eleven hundred pictures which I shot of ah of two different to different chutes inside the folders the normal way that I would caption is I would select everything first uh different captioning programs work in different ways I would select everything first and I'll put in here um photographs from around seattle including and then some of the locations that I went to this is just my basic overall caption and for each for each grouping of pictures this will change again so you know, photographs around seattle including, um city whole plaza um kings county court um I don't know on da in an outdoor market um on november sixteen, two thousand fifteen um all right, so you copy that and put it on to all of your photographs and they would have that basic that basic caption there so even photographs that you miss when you're actually going through these by grouping they'll have it least that basic things on twenty years from now when you say I'm looking for that picture of...

the guy that I photographed outside the king's county court when you search king's county called in your computer it'll find this picture um so in a case like this like this on this situation with the with the red background I would find the beginning of that okay, so this is real I always messed us up so some editing programs do this automatically and you can set a preference but your photographs if you've done if you've set the date on the back of your camera correct thing the capture time should make older the photographs actually run after each other the file name like I've got two different cameras that eh he's right? So one cod will ingest first the second card will ingest second so in this situation I might have a whole bunch of red pictures in the top and then a whole bunch of red pictures in the middle because they're from two different cards when I saw it by capture time there on top of each other it's all the same time that I'm shooting so that's how it's easiest to captioning group so I find the end of this grouping and then I select all of those so there's one hundred eighty from that okay, so again I would go in and do a batch caption uh what if we got photographs around seattle including city hall plaza? So people will past a past red windows in at city hall plaza um in seattle, washington on november sixteen, two thousand fifteen um at this point I would stop putting in my name you should always put your name in your pictures always always always if that's the only thing you're gonna do and you don't want to do this what I'm talking about here definitely put your name in because as soon as you upload your pictures onto the web somewhere whether it's you know whether it's flicker with return your facebook page the t I p t c or the metadata that information stays inside the photograph so some dude in an advertising agency or if some editor at the magazine finds your picture is like this is great then he or she confined your name and then find a way to contact you through this information it also protects your copyright a cz much as you possibly can in a pretty difficult time protecting copyrights um okay, I would apply that to all of these photographs on dh then move on to the move on to the next one. So the next grouping is brian and michelle outside of the courthouse I stopped from the beginning of that one and then write a new caption for that so brian tannehill forty eight mystery michelle on duel I felt that wrongs this is there's no b they're um when you're writing this from your note pad transcribing information so outside of seattle court building in washington on november sixteen, two thousand fifteen, mr hat tannehill is the famous subject of a mary ellen mark image of two young boys holding a forty five calibre pistol he said he was attending a court hearing in an attempt to file a suit for defamation so you're looking it's a basic rule of journalism it's who, what? Why, when and where? The only thing that we can pull back on a little bit of photographers all of those aki accept why I always have why, but my captions is sometimes three or four hundred words long, which I think you know in some cases a too long except it's all pertinent information like to me, I'm telling stories so along caption actually adds a lot to the photograph. The photograph should be strong by itself without the long caption, but the long caption should add context on dh information so if you want to add why I've absolutely strongly you know, I think that you should, but a lot of people just don't want to do is take it's time consuming, so you go through this process for every single picture that you have, like here's a picture of some dude carrying a window uh, so I would say right welcome carries a window and a frame into a building in seattle, washington on november sixteen each pick each different grouping of pictures that you have in here like this lady carrying you started the beginning look all the way through to the siri's end of the series and you caption, huh? We didn't have her name, so a woman carries a child back in chinatown um so as far as your archive goes this is key you know this information is searchable you keep it in a manageable practice usually by by month on dh by country is what I do uh and then all of the file names unique which makes it a lot easier to search for. So once you've written basic captions for all of those things it takes a couple of hours if you've been shooting all day like you're gonna be in front of a computer for a couple of hours and it sucks I'm not gonna lie but you will absolutely be so grateful in time that you've done this um once I've gone through all of the pictures I will close photo mechanic goingto latte room um and this is where we actually start editing yeah and this was actually from jane leela so when you're going through doing that captioning how do you make sure that you're applying the right name to the right person? I know you've been taking notes but do you right down like markers for that actually I always write you know brian tannehill brown brown workmen jacket I will write down you know, all this identifying information about the person that I'm photographing lady in red dress with glasses off you know a man in brown jacket outside courthouse locations anything identifiable that the person but again that's one of the reasons that it's important to do it on the day because if you look at that information two months from now, like who? What? Well, I'm confused and that's when you start making mistakes. So it's, really in the past, this was a lot harder than what it is. Now. I think that in the past, we were more prone to mistakes, because we just have the note pads in the film, and eventually they sort of come together. And, you know, normally it was pretty good, except sometimes you'd mess it up. Now, being over do this on the night of is a pretty great thing.

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Street Photography Pitch Kit

Ratings and Reviews

user-4e23bb
 

I have taken more than a few of the Creative Live courses. I have, in general, found all of them to be very good and I have learned something important from them all. Not always enough of exactly what I was looking for, but something useful and important. This course was absolutely amazing. The best I have taken. I would like to download it and see it again and again. Ashley's style was authentic, humble, yet confidence inspiring. The information he gave was focused and totally useful. He shared both philosophy and thinking as well as real tools to learn - whether they be soft stuff (like how to approach someone) or hard stuff (like gear and settings and such). I cannot recommend this class highly enough. If you want to learn to do "humanistic photography" (his term which resonated with me), this is best I have ever taken!

user-082aad
 

This was a terrific and wonderful class. Ash was superb. His stories were awe inspiring, his passion was evident and his ability to teach was flawless. I would take any other class by him and actually can't wait for more of the VII agency programs eminating from Ron's class during photo week 2015. A great great addition to Creative Live's orbit.

cranecreekphotography
 

Wow, I loved this course - I watched the whole thing, and most of it twice, during the first run. Ash is is intriguing, a good teacher, honest. I found this class to be so inspirational. I especially loved his encouragement about talking to strangers, asking to take their picture- "what's the worst thing that could happen?" And the videos watching him in action were motivating- you saw him make connections but also saw him get rejected too, but he keeps such a positive outlook. Love this class, please more photojournalism!

Student Work

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