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Caption writing

Just because photojournalism is a visual medium, it doesn’t mean you get to be any less thorough when it comes to names, facts, dates, etc. You need to always make sure you get the names, locations, professions, ages (if relevant) to include in your captions. The Who/What/Where/When/Why.

Washington Post guidelines:

“A caption should briefly and clearly describe in a complete sentence what is happening in the picture, including an active verb (‘someone does something’). This will allow our internal systems to take sections of the sentence and automatically create keywords. In many cases, a single sentence will suffice. A second sentence is acceptable if it adds additional information, follows the required formula and does not editorialize.”

Caption example:

BEVERLY HILLS, CA – JANUARY 11: Actress Kate Winslet holds her award at the 66th Annual Golden Globe Awards on January 11, 2009 in Beverly Hills, California. Winslet won the Golden Globe for best supporting actress for her role in “The Reader,” as Hollywood set aside labor strife and a recession to honor the year’s best performances. (Photo by Rich Lipski for The Washington Post)

Notice how the first sentence is in present tense, describing what is literally happening in the photo, and the following sentence is in the past tense, giving background and context. 

In a photo essay, the captions play the additional role of shaping a narrative. So while wire photos and breaking news photos might all include similar captions because most likely they’ll only be used one at a time, your captions in a photo essay will need to follow a somewhat more narrative shape. Meaning, the first one will include a lot of that 5W’s stuff, while the additional captions might fill in the blanks some more.

Reminders and Upcoming Due Dates

Your photo essays will be due a week from today, Monday Oct. 4, by class time. Remember I’m looking for 12-20 photos and thoroughly reported captions and/or text.

This Wednesday’s class will be a production day so please make sure all the photos you have so far are available to you. I will be going around and checking in with everybody about your projects one-on-one.

As previously mentioned, I recommend self-publishing on Medium so that your photos display well and you aren’t limited by the compression/memory issues on our WordPress site.

Your radio pitches will be due on the class blog by class time next Wednesday, October 6. That will also be the day you sign out your audio recorders, so please don’t miss class; the following class will involve an asynchronous assignment that requires you to have one.

Intro to Radio Reporting

For your radio stories, you’ll be creating something called a wrap: a scripted feature with narration, natural sounds, and sound bites all woven together.

Sample wrap.

Sample radio script:  script_bhutanmentalhealth_1.

Here are some basics you’ll want to keep in mind as you set out to collect sound:

Choose your environment wisely. Be aware of your surroundings. If you interview someone under a subway track, your recording will be impossible to understand. Pick a relatively quiet space. A little background noise is fine and adds atmosphere – except for music. Music makes editing difficult, so avoid it if possible.

Cell phones off or on airplane mode. Yours and theirs. If you’re using your phone to record, make sure it’s set to silent.

Don’t forget your nats. Natural sound is a crucial element of any audio piece. Think about what sounds will most effectively place your listener in the scene. Footsteps, dishes clinking, phones ringing. Don’t be afraid to get in there and get close. Music is fine to use as a nat sound, but not as background to an interview. It will mess up your ability to edit.

Don’t forget your ambi. “Ambi” refers to ambient sound, also known as room tone. Basically, this is the background noise from wherever you happen to conduct your interviews. Even if you record in a very quiet place, nothing still usually sounds like something because of how the acoustics vary in different rooms. Before or after every interview, always record 90 seconds to two minutes of ambi. This will go under your narration to make the story feel seamless.

Ask open-ended questions. Yes or no questions won’t give you good long responses filled with usable quotes.

Get close, but not too close. Putting a mic right up against someone’s mouth can result in popping and crackling sounds on the recording. Make sure to test your equipment so you know roughly where to hold your recorder for optimal sound quality.

Ask your question, then shut up. Active listening is a fantastic skill for a journalist to have, but if you keep murmuring “Uh-huh,” “Yeah,” and “Sure,” while they’re answering your questions, you won’t be able to use the material. Stick with smiling and nodding.

Keep control of the mic. Always monitor your sound with headphones while recording, if possible. (This is not possible with the Voice Memos app, unfortunately.) Hold the mic 1-2 feet from the interviewee’s mouth. Never let the person you’re interviewing hold it. Try to keep handling noise to a minimum.

If recording an interview remotely, try to do a tape sync. A tape sync means recording both ends of a phone interview in person and then editing them together. This will allow the sound quality for both voices to be high-quality and clear. Typically, radio hosts hire freelancers who live in the same city as their interviewee to go out and record the tape syncs, but in the pandemic it’s become more common to ask the interviewee to do it themselves and then send it to you.

A couple more radio stories:

Example of a clever host intro:

Need to release stress? Scream into Iceland’s abyss.

Great example of a local NYC story:

At this Brooklyn restaurant, you can get Korean food with a side of Russian history

A radio wrap story reported by a Baruch multimedia student last year:

Guidelines for radio stories

Assignment #2 will be a 3- or 4-minute news radio feature (a “wrap”). A wrap is a scripted radio piece that weaves together natural sounds, interview clips (known as “actualities”), and reporter narration to tell a story.

These are the components you are required to submit for the final draft:

1. A good headline/title.
2. Your final 3-4  minute edited audio file, posted to Soundcloud and embedded on the blog.
3. At least one photo.
4. The final draft of your script.

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Once again, your radio pitches will be due on the class blog by class time next Wednesday, October 6. 

 

For my photo essay, I will be heading over to Jamaica where they are holding a dance festival on an outside stage. The theme of the festival is life and different dance groups will be performing. Taking pictures of dance seems interesting and it’ll be cool to catch movement and their way of expressing life through dancing within a photo.

Reminders and Upcoming Due Dates

A reminder that your photo essays are due on Monday, October 4. Remember that I’m looking for 12-20 photos along with thoroughly reported captions and/or text.

Class on Wednesday next week will be a production/editing day devoted to working on assembling your photo essays, writing the captions and/or text, or simply checking in about your project if you still have reporting and shooting to do. Please bring in all the photos you have so far (or make sure they’re available in the cloud). This is an opportunity to get feedback from me BEFORE you file your finished product, and mimics the real-world process of working with an editor. Please take full advantage of it!

I recommend self-publishing on Medium so that your photos display well and you aren’t limited by the compression/memory issues on our WordPress site.

Discussion: Photo editing in Lightroom

We’ll look at your “scavenger hunt” photos together, answer any questions you have about Lightroom, and talk a bit about best practices and the ethics of photo editing in photojournalism.

Assignment: Attend one of these online Photoville sessions OR visit one of these open-air Photoville exhibitions scattered around the five boroughs and write a short (200-300 words) blog post about the experience. Please include a photo or a screenshot to show me you were there. The last of the online sessions takes place on Thursday, October 21, so this assignment can be completed and submitted at any time before the following class on Monday, October 25.

For my photo essay, I will be focusing on showcasing the Bronx Night Market. It will be my first time attending and photographing the event. The Bronx Night Market takes place every Saturday, from 4 P.M. t0 10 P.M.

I plan to stay at the event for about 3 to 4 hours to be able to capture enough pictures of the activity that will be going there. Based on some of the photographs I have already seen of the event in the past, I would like to photograph the attendees, the booths, food services and talk to some of the people there about their experiences at the night market and life for the market during the pandemic and now, post-pandemic.

I have struggled with an idea for my photo essay. The fact of finding an event that can solely speak through photo is a bit intimidating. But I came to two final ideas.

 

Little Ferry: Family Fun Day

Little Ferry is a small town in New Jersey. They have an annual family fun day where there are carnival rides, loads of food, and many many fun times. Last year due to COVID the fair was canceled and although the town is so close knitted, they were all trapped indoors on a day that is made for memories. All the towns’ occupants were excited for this year’s Family fun day to come until Hurricane Ida came and hit the town harshly causing many families lots of damages. It is a flash flood zone despite having many alterations done to the sewers after Hurricane Sandy did more damage back in 2012. The Family Fun Day was almost cancelled once again due to damages, but the town rallied together to have it come to life again after being off last year. I’d like to capture these moments full of heart after the suffering this little town has endured.

 

Fright Fest: Six Flags Great Adventure

My other idea was visiting this year’s opening Fright Fest Night at Six Flags Great adventure in Jackson New Jersey. Capturing those spooky moments many have been waiting for. Id like to capture costumes, and different personalities as everyone enjoys the thrills of rides and scary surprises.

For my photo essay, I’d like to go around my neighborhood in Brooklyn and interview people who have started their own food stands. As well as people who have set up stands on the sidewalks and the local park selling various items such as facemasks to toys, candy, and food. I’d like to focus on learning whether covid left them to discover another form of income or if the restriction and fear of not getting a ticket anymore allowed them to freely start up their own small business. I think visually I’d like to capture the people, items being sold, and interactions they have with potential customers if possible.

With Texas making abortion over 6 week of pregnancy illegal, and the justice department issuing a law suit suing Texas. I plan to go to different planned parenthood clinics around the city to cover the protest and interview people from who are against and for the law.