Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2009/12/28

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Subject: [Leica] Captions
From: mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner)
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 2009 22:41:36 -0500

> "Strongly disagree. A caption can add to a picture as well as giving the
> 
> who, what, where.... How the blazes can one "Untitled" picture be
> 
> remembered against the visual sea of other "Untitled" pictures."
> 
> 
> - - - -
> 
> 
> I don't know about photo books but in evaluating art works the caption
> establishes the mind set of the juror. I have seen mediocre paintings 
> juried
> into art shows because of a clever caption while objectively better works
> were rejected because of poor or missing captions. Probably the worst are
> generic descriptive captions such as "Flowers" or "Portrait." No matter how
> good the painting, the juror mentally classifies it as old ladies art. The
> best captions make an art show visitor seek out the painting from the show
> program. We are so inundated by images that even the strongest needs a
> little verbal help. For newspapers or magazines the issue is moot. The
> pictures are adjuncts to the story. The author's byline is usually set in
> larger type than the photographers.
> 
> Larry Z
> 


We can look at Ted's website
And we can look at other photographers who's work we like and see how THEY
do it..
And I'll tell you its rather consistent.
The titles are short, dry and to the point.
They do not have "punch".
There is no "writing".
If there is a title at all.

I think with the way the auto gallery's work with auto titles my pictures
have gotten titles which are numbers and that number reflects the time in
the space time contusion in which they were taken. The file names become the
title.

http://rabinergroup.com/EastWest/images/EW060523_113916.jpg

The title of this pic I took is
EW060523_113916.jpg
EW is a code I made up which indicates to me that I was traveling from coast
to coast. Though west to east. I've pretty much stopped putting such codes
on my file names.
06 the year 05 the month 23 the day of the month  11:39 the time and 16
seconds narrows it down even more so. That's what the number part means.
To me that describes it perfectly.
And in this gallery:
http://rabinergroup.com/EastWest/index.htm
The file name is automatically the title of the picture.
I never had any problem with that.
Its innocuous. Totally non distracting.
And if someone emails me and says "I'll give you a hundred bucks if you send
me a print of EW060523_113916.jpg I can think about maybe doing that.

Beats calling it "Marvy the Monster".

Mark William Rabiner





Replies: Reply from richard.lists at gmail.com (Richard Man) ([Leica] Captions)
In reply to: Message from lrzeitlin at gmail.com (Lawrence Zeitlin) ([Leica] Captions)