Photographers sometimes underestimate the value of a caption, a short story about the image. A photograph of a puffin with the title "puffin" really doesn't add anything besides the image itself. However, if you tell something about their behavior, their appearance, or a "behind the scene" story, the caption triggers curiosity.
Why is this so miraculously important? For a starter, with interesting captions you "bind" your viewer, in other words, they might be interested to look into your image (or images) more closely. Like when you tell that puffins are together for their whole life as partners for their offspring: when they meet again after being apart for months alone at sea, they start ticking their beaks, cuddling each other and making courting sounds. Your image of two puffins meeting each other becomes much more intruiging.
What's more? If you have professional ambitions, publicists will always look for a story. If they have a chance to choose from two photographs, one with an interesting caption or one without, they will most likely pick the image WITH a story (this was a sound advice from a Nat Geo editor! Not something that I made up!). So you increase your chances to make it to the spotlights.
And what else? You enrich your viewer AND reader with the experience itself. Did you need to crawl through the mud slowly to get close to your subject? Or have you been working for years to get that one special iconic photograph? Was it such a lucky day with the weather, the shadows and the beam of light on the decisive moment? Indulge your public and fans! It will be totally worth the effort to weave a story. Trust yourself. Believe in yourself. Believe IN THE STORY. Caption this!
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| Puffins bonding on Skomer Island UK - June 2019 |
