Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Writing Captions

Until this week, I never knew how hard it was to write captions. I honestly thought photographers had one of the easiest jobs in the world. All they have to do is take a picture and then describe it. Until you have actually written caption, you have no idea how hard that is.

How about writing lead-in captions? The photographers have to not only describe the picture in three words or less, but also have to grab the reader’s attention. It’s not like a headline where you can explain more in the lead. You have to do everything in three words or less. That is not easy. I almost feel lucky that I want to be a reporter and not a photographer.

I know no one except people in our class will be reading this, but this post is meant for people not in journalism. It is a call out to all those people who think being a photographer is so easy. Go to newspaper Web site and try to write a caption or two for stories you know nothing about. Try to write a caption in less than three words and then ask yourself; would people read this story? I am willing to bet you can’t do this as fast as you think. Good luck.

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