How to Write Photo Gallery Captions

A photo caption writer can have a challenging job.

Whenever there are photographs that are included with a piece of writing or that are used to demonstrate a point or event, they will include a photo caption. Photo galleries include lots of photos that can be pulled and added to written works to help illustrate the writing more clearly. It's important that what is happening in the photo is clearly demonstrated in the photo caption to ensure accuracy when using the photos for various purposes.

Instructions

1. Find out what is happening in the photo as best you can. This will likely involve talking with the photographer who submitted the photo. It's important not to falsify information by writing a caption that does not accurately reflect what is happening in the photo.

2. Figure out which type of photo caption you need for the photos in the gallery. You might need to supply a sentence that will be displayed along with the photo, or it could be a searchable gallery, meaning you need to include keywords as the caption that allow users to search for the type of photo they need.

3. Write out the sentence using as many details as possible to let viewers know what is happening in the picture. For example, a picture of a woman sorting CDs around a pile of boxes might say "A woman at home sorts her CD collection alphabetically to prepare for her move to a new home."

4. Write the keywords for the photo if you're writing a searchable caption. In the example above, your keywords might include, "sorting CDs," "packing to move," "woman at home," "woman with CDs," "sort alphabetically" and "woman packing boxes."

5. Go back over your photo caption and make sure it answers all the questions that need to be addressed. As in journalism, this includes the who, what, where, when and why. In the example above, the who is the woman. The what is the woman moving and sorting CDs. The where is her home. The when is before her move, and the why is to prepare for her move.

References

• Pixiq: How to Write a Professional Photo Caption