[Leica] Mary Ellen Mark /// CAPTIONS?

Fri May 29 12:34:13 PDT 2015

May I offer an effort in writing captions you may find interesting? Maybe? Your assignment documentary is Lobster fishing on the East coast of North America.

It's day after day for three weeks. In and out of port daily, pulling traps, return to port, unload and out the next day before sunrise. You shoot 80/100 rolls or more during this time of 36 exp. Tri-x. 

Just for a moment, think about writing captions for whatever number of frames and various situations there will be? That includes almost everything you can imagine from calm seas to rolling ones. Cooking on board and eating on deck nearly every day. "FRESH COOKED LOBSTER DRIPPING WITH BUTTER!" :-) Pity! :-)

Repairing traps, taking lobsters out of trap and into the pens. Names and positions of all members of crew including bits of historical value on each member and if there's a crew member change? The new person also.

Three photo editors go through the contact sheets, numbering every selected image. Obviously not every frame is kept. However, every selected image must have an absolute correct ID caption for the writer and historical aspect of the next 100 years. Selected images eventually were sent to the National Archives as history of Canada.

These numbered contact sheets were returned to the photographer. ME! Who then diligently sat at a ""typewriter"" in those olden days! :-(  And captioned every frame! That's who, what, why, how... etc pertaining to what's happening. Yep they were the days!

 So every documentary I shot wherever across Canada and about the world this was the basic routine.

cheers,
Dr. ted :-)
================================================================

-----Original Message-----
From: LUG [mailto:lug-bounces+tedgrant=shaw.ca at leica-users.org] On Behalf Of Gerry Walden
Sent: May-29-15 11:10 AM
To: Leica Users Group
Subject: Re: [Leica] Mary Ellen Mark On Vimeo for Leica

Jayanand

The situation to which i was referring, and the one often quoted, is that of a man obviously in a civil war situation holding a AK47 and firing it through a hole in the wall. Now, is he a terrorist or a freedom fighter? The caption immediately steers the viewers image one way or the other. Thinking of my own work, I am currently involved in a documentary piece about food banks, and have (for example) a volunteer checking the date code on some food. In the general context of the finished set it should be clear what she is doing but out of context as a single image it could, with the aid of a caption, be either ‘volunteer checking date code’ or ‘woman considering a purchase’. Captions can be misleading. It has nothing to do with the laziness of the photographer.

Gerry

Gerry Walden
023 8046 3076

> On 29 May 2015, at 17:42, Jayanand Govindaraj <jayanand at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Gerry,
> Doesn't that mean that the photographer was lazy with the wording of his
> caption?
> Cheers
> Jayanand
> 
> 
> On Fri, May 29, 2015 at 8:43 PM, Gerry Walden <gerry.walden at icloud.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> There is also the point that under certain circumstances the use of a
>> caption can influence the viewers interpretation of the image to the
>> detriment of the original intention of the photographer.
>> 
>> Gerry
>> 
>> Sent from my iPad
>> 
>>> On 29 May 2015, at 15:19, Robert Baron <robertbaron1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> An interesting point of view, Jayanand, and to be honest not one I had
>>> really considered before you raised it.  Maybe that is because her
>>> photographs ring true to me as depictions of the culture I am part of,
>> but
>>> I'll need to think about that some more.
>>> 
>>> Even the photographs she made of cultures I am not familiar with have the
>>> ring of truth to them, in my opinion, and I now think about the war zone
>>> photographs of shooters like James Nachtwey and wonder if they need
>>> captions and if not why not?  Would you think Salgado's famous
>> photographs
>>> of the gold mine or of the train station need text?  An argument can be
>>> made that some things should allow for use of the viewer's imagination -
>> or
>>> sense of investigation if the viewer wants to learn more about the
>> subject.
>>> 
>>> Educators trying to teach students (or trial lawyers like me trying to
>>> teach a jury) will say you should not spoon feed every bit of information
>>> to the audience but leave some for the audience to figure out; it is
>> better
>>> learned and retained that way.  Should that maxim also apply to
>>> documentary/documenting photography?
>>> 
>>> Again: you raise an interesting point and I'm going to think about it.
>>> 
>>> Regards,
>>> 
>>> --Bob
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> ===On Thu, May 28, 2015 at 10:41 PM, Jayanand Govindaraj <
>> jayanand at gmail.com
>>>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Bob,
>>>> Interesting. TFS.
>>>> 
>>>> What struck me is that most of the pictures have no emotional impact for
>>>> me, like the girls in the gang on the street, without her narration, as
>> I
>>>> am not steeped in the nitty gritties of US culture. Goes against what
>> Kyle
>>>> says that one of her tenets was, about not having a caption. I think
>> that
>>>> is valid when you have a mono cultural, homogenous viewership for your
>>>> work, but once you have a cross cultural audience, a little explanation,
>>>> like a caption, is invaluable to create the emotional impact! Of course,
>>>> this observation is for the sort of photographs that she took, and
>>>> obviously would apply to a much lesser extent for nature/wildlife and
>> that
>>>> sort of thing, but even there, giving the frame "a local habitation and
>> a
>>>> name" does help in pulling the viewer emotionally into the frame.
>>>> 
>>>> My two bits!
>>>> 
>>>> Cheers
>>>> Jayanand
>>>> 
>>>> On Fri, May 29, 2015 at 6:29 AM, Robert Baron <robertbaron1 at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> https://vimeo.com/80793010
>>>>> 
>>>>> View full screen.  It is worth seeing and listening to I think, not so
>>>> much
>>>>> because of Leica but because of Mary Ellen Mark.
>>>>> 
>>>>> --Bob
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Leica Users Group.
>>> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> Leica Users Group.
>> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information
>> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Leica Users Group.
> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information

_______________________________________________
Leica Users Group.
See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information

---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
http://www.avast.com