There are a number of ways of looking at the relationship between images and captions. One way of thinking about this relationship is through the following three categories:
Directional
Orientation
Complementary
Directional Titles
Directional picture titles explain the image to the viewer. They are often obvious descriptions and can seem more useful for archiving purposes than in helping to think about what the images themselves might want to say. They often dominate and provide a destination for the meaning and close down alternative attempts at creating meaning, leaving the viewer feeling ‘informed’
Orientation titles
Orientation titles locate the image in a particular genre, location or other general piece of information. Their intent is to give a non-interfering reference to the image but not to pin it down.
Complementary titles
This style of captioning creates a space between the image and the text where meaning is created. We’ll talk about this in Project 2 but, to summarise, this approach doesn’t give precedence to one over the other; both elements bring new aspects of understanding to the work as a whole.
Below is a selection of images from bbc news website, demonstrating how their images are captioned. Interestingly all of images are bought from photographic agencies, so the bbc will have added the captions to fit their news items. that majority of these captions would be classed as directional, as they describe what is in the photo.
Week in pictures: 3 – 9 April 2021
A selection of powerful news photographs taken around the world this week.