A street merchant bags a few grams of naswar — Afghan snuff — in Herat. The fine, moist, green powder — typically taken sublingually — is derived from tobacco treated with lime for its alkaline capabilities. It produces a dizzying high that quickly gives way to nausea and oral-esophageal burning. You’ll grow to love it, especially in the dry, cold Afghan Decembers, or waiting around for a tuk-tuk, slaughtering a sheep, any of those. It’s pain that amplifies the senses. It’s also one of the few vices I’ve seen Afghan women enjoy — embarassing because it took me two trips and several months to figure out a functional dosage. Try a pinch placed between your cheek and gum tissue grasping your left-side molars. Photo by Daniel C. Britt

How to Write Compelling Captions for Your Photos

Notice the detailed caption above and how it not only adds context to the scene but adds an additional narrative element — a sense of the author having spent significant time in the culture.

This is what we at Matador call a “Narrative Caption.”

All too often however, captions are often either overlooked or not given significant thought by photographers and writers. This leads to obvious captions that read almost like afterthoughts, essentially repackaging or restating what the viewer sees in the shot for him or herself. An example would be the following shot / caption:

Heading towards the mountain!

Giving context: what the viewer can’t see

Instead of simply reducing / restating what’s already obvious in the photo, strong captions give the viewer context, backstory, information that the viewer CAN’T see for him or herself. This includes things like:

• Place names
• Subject names
• Backstory on the scene (example: at what point of the trip the shot occurred)
• Backstory or technical info on the shot itself
• Challenges or special circumstances not identifiable in the shot itself
• Information on future events the shot puts into perspective

With that in mind, let’s look at this same shot again with the actual caption that we published:

This is an image taken from Chopo Diaz’s GoPro which our pilot, Drake Olsen, attached to the tail of his Cessna 180. Drake, a former Le Mans Porche race car driver, is an amazing pilot capable of doing amazing things with his plane. In this image he is flying straight towards the wall of spines on the high peak above our camp which we eventually skied.

If done correctly, captions create narrative layers. They add a sense of a moment not simply as frozen in time but part of a story. They create windows into the photographer’s / journalist’s experience that helps us as readers to enter the story.

Here’s another example from the same photo essay from Drew:

A street merchant bags a few grams of naswar — Afghan snuff — in Herat. The fine, moist, green powder — typically taken sublingually — is derived from tobacco treated with lime for its alkaline capabilities. It produces a dizzying high that quickly gives way to nausea and oral-esophageal burning. You’ll grow to love it, especially in the dry, cold Afghan Decembers, or waiting around for a tuk-tuk, slaughtering a sheep, any of those. It’s pain that amplifies the senses. It’s also one of the few vices I’ve seen Afghan women enjoy — embarassing because it took me two trips and several months to figure out a functional dosage. Try a pinch placed between your cheek and gum tissue grasping your left-side molars. Photo by Daniel C. Britt

A question to ask yourself before signing off on your captions: How does my caption support or undercut my experience with / knowledge of the place and culture that I’m photographing?

Originally published: http://matadornetwork.com/notebook/how-to-write-compelling-captions-for-your-photos/