Captions tell the truth but not what they already know to be true

"Awaiting President Obama's arrival in me," a questionable caption written in the article "Top 20 News Caption Fails of All Time."

What most readers usually look at when reading any news article are the photos first. Then they look at the captions and then the actual articles.

Captions, also called cutlines, are the only descriptors we have when it comes to photographs in the news. Yes we can look at the picture and guess what is occurring but to really know what is happening we must look at the cutlines.

For cutlines to really be helpful they have to tell you at least five things: who, what, when, where, why and sometimes how.  It is like writing a mini article for a photo.  Cutlines are also short and get right to the point.

To really understand what a caption is you have to first look at what it does. Cutlines give you more information; therefor, it makes no sense to write a caption that says what we can already see in the photo. Cutlines tell the story of the photo and without it there is just a picture left with no further description as to its importance.
         Cutlines are an important part of any photo in a news article. With out the cutline people will make assumptions about what is occurring in the photos and those assumptions may not be relevant to the story that is actually written.

I learned a hundred different ways on how not to take a photo

Shallow depth of field of a plant. 
(ISO: 800, f/: 5, Shutter:1/60)
(Photos by Angelique Harrison/ WSUPJ)

          My first thought was that this is going to be one interesting experiment.

Silhouette of a student using window lighting. 
(ISO: 100, f/: 5, Shutter:1/30)

          Camera phones make taking photos easy because all you have to do is pull out the camera, focus and take the picture. Using a digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) camera, on the manual setting is like going from driving an automatic transmission to a manual one.  The latter is a lot more complex.

          I didn't think this assignment would be too hard, considering I have been using my camera for years now, so I thought I knew how to use the controls. I was wrong. 

Shallow depth of field of window condensation. 
(ISO: 800, f/: 4, Shutter:1/400)

          I quickly realized that it was going to take a lot of trial an error for me to get the photos that I wanted. I knew what the shutter, aperture and ISO did but it was getting the right combination to make the perfect photo that was hard.
         I ended up taking a hundred photos of anything and everything to see what would happen with the different combinations of shutter speeds and apertures.
          The end results were a lot of mistakes that led to quite a few properly-exposed photos with a wide variety of techniques: different lighting, shallow and wide depths of field, extreme perspectives, and panning.
          Here are just a few of the pictures that I took for the assignment. For more pictures check out the photo gallery called Camera Operations Assignment.

         

Cell phone photography in the media takes more than point and shoot

        My first question was about going to take pictures. I walked out of my photojournalism class with no idea and just the thought that I had a few weeks find some news worthy photos. My gut instinct was to panic. I mean I have taken photos before and after reading the tips on how to take better photos I was confident that I could get good compositions. 

Students lounging in the Student Center. (Photos by Angelique Harrison/ WSUPJ)

Tips that I already follow, being a photography major, breaking all the rules of composition and taking lots of shots. I knew that taking shots of things I thought might be interesting would let me have a variety of photos and allow me to have options. In taking multiple photos I could look back and really think about the compositions of each photo and which photos really told the best story without the captions. As far as composition I just naturally like to break all the rules.

Looking down from the photography lab office in from Old Main.

My second issue with the assignment was finding a newsworthy event. Most of the times when I take photos I just happen upon something I find pleasing to the eye and capture that moment. With this assignment I really had to think about some event that would offer more information about something and that was difficult. I really had to think, but I happened upon both photos in the same way, when I wasn't searching for a picture. The first photo I took was in the Student Center Building and was of students enjoying the new perks of the updates that have been done. The second photo below was a happy experiment. I saw the snow and thought I will get these snowflakes. With a bit of adjustment to the exposure value I was able to capture the movement of the snow falling.

With this assignment I was able to gain a better understanding of the problems that I would face taking newsworthy photos and how I could overcome those issues. I now have more confidence in my ability to capture news worthy photos that tell a story on their own.