English captions are required on all images submitted to the PhotoShelter Collection. Captions help our editors contextualize the subject matter of your image during their review. But more importantly, captions provide a description for image buyers who often rely on the caption while browsing through thousands of images. A caption can actually affect the sale of an image, because explanatory detail is needed in certain cases (e.g. a textbook). Uniformity of captioning style is important to maintaining professionalism throughout the buying experience.

This is a brief primer on caption style that will help you avoid the dreaded soft-rejection from incomplete or poorly captioned images.

Captions & Soft Rejection
All images submitted to the PhotoShelter Collection require captions, but editors can "soft reject" images if they feel that the caption is not sufficient. Soft rejection reasons include, but are not limited to:

- Insufficient location information (e.g. "Pretty church")

Basilica di Santa Croce, Florence, Italy. Photo by David Baker

- Landmark name required ("A statue near a rainbow" vs. "Rainbow over Statue of Father Damien at St Joseph Church Molokai")

Rainbow over Statue of Father Damien at St Joseph Church Molokai. Photo by Reimar Gaertner.

- Keywords, not caption ("skyscraper, calatrava, malmo")

Turning Torso skyscraper by Santiago Calatrava, Malmo, Sweden, Europe, Scandinavia. Photo by Pawel Toczynski

- Caption not in English ("Una chica y un hombre en la playa")

Woman giving man a piggyback ride. Photo by Rob Howard

- Insufficient identification of people ("Radiohead in concert")

Radiohead play at Meadowbank stadium in Edinburgh. Radiohead are an English rock band formed in Oxfordshire in 1986. The band comprises Thom Yorke (lead vocals, rhythm guitar, piano, electronics), Jonny Greenwood (lead guitar, other instruments), Ed O'Brien (guitar, backing vocals), Colin Greenwood (bass guitar, synthesisers) and Phil Selway (drums, percussion).Photo by Ross Gilmore

- All caps ("BARACK OBAMA CAMPAIGNS IN NEW HAMPSHIRE" vs. "Barack Obama campaigns during the New Hampshire Primaries")

United States Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) campaigns in the University of Nevada, Reno gymnasium on Friday, January 18, 2008, approximately 24 hours before the Nevada caucus. Photo by Geoffrey King

Sometimes people take the extreme opposite and provide multiple paragraphs of background information for an image. Although we won't soft reject these images, it is overkill for both our editors and the image buyer.

Image Sequences and Captions
We've reviewed and subsequently soft rejected many images where the photographer cut and pasted the same caption for many different images. If the images are so similar, they should be stacked. If they aren't that similar, then the captions should reflect the different subject matter, angles, lighting conditions, etc, that make the photo unique.

I had the pleasure of being a presenter at the first New York Photo Festival awards on Friday night amongst some luminaries like Magnum photographer Martin Parr and New York Times Magazine's Kathy Ryan.

I didn't know which category I would be presenting until I arrived 30 minutes before the ceremony, but I was pleasantly surprised to be awarding the prize for Best Student Book with one of the nominees being Tiana Markova-Gold, who was a winner in our PhotoShelter Student Contest. And gosh darn it, she won at the NY Photo Festival as well.

As I've said before, I have huge respect for photographers who tackle a subject in the long-term, and Tiana certainly has done that in documenting the plight of sex workers in New York. All the best to her in her budding career.

See her personal website.
See her PhotoShelter Collection Portfolio.

And a huge congratulations to Frank Evers and Daniel Power for organizing the Festival. As Kathy Ryan pointed out, it's one thing to have the idea for a festival, but another level of insanity and perseverance to actually make it come to life. DUMBO was humming this weekend with the future of contemporary photography....

My birthplace of Hawai'i is situated 5000 miles away from my current home in New York, so I don't get to go home very often. Two years ago, I traveled back to celebrate my Grandpa's 100th birthday. This time, it was a combo visit to see my parents' newly rebuilt home, celebrate mother's day, and celebrate my Grandma's 93rd birthday (they live long in Hawai'i).



The original house was built right after WWII, so it was in need of some repair after nearly 60 years. The new house maintains much of the same footprint, but the folks added a partial 2nd floor with a few more guest bedrooms. My grandma had been living alone since my grandpa passed away in December 2007, but she has now moved in with my folks.

Did you see our ad running in PDN?

I met Kristen Ashburn in 2002 when she guest lectured at a class I was taking at the International Center for Photography with Andre Lambertson. She had been self-financing trips to Africa to photograph the effects of poverty and HIV/AIDS in Zimbabwe in black-and-white with her Rollei, and the images were stunning.


photo by Kristen Ashburn

Since that time, she went on to win the Canon Female Photojournalist of the Year (the year after Ami Vitale won), a Getty Foundation grant, PDN 30 under 30, and multiple NPPA and World Press prizes. She produced a traveling exhibit called Bloodlines which premiered at the prestigious 401 Projects gallery in Chelsea along with a beautiful multimedia piece.

But more importantly, she kept going back to Africa -- still self-financed -- to continue to photograph the on-going epidemic. Somewhere along the way, Madonna found Kristen's work, and pulled Kristen over to Malawi, and that work and her previous work are now feature prominently in Madonna's new documentary "I am Because We Are," which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival last weekend.

Besides her humility, I've always found Kristen inspiring because all her long-term projects have been self-financed, and it seems like the assigned editorial work she takes for clients like Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, and Business Week are merely ways to finance the humanitarian photography that drives her. Many aspiring photojournalists that I've spoken to always wonder how they can get their start, and for Kristen, it was a stubborn perseverance to shoot what was important to her, irrespective of geography or political climate.


photo by Kristen Ashburn

After some gentle prodding (read: being annoying to her), Kristen has finally decided to offer some prints in a limited edition through her PhotoShelter Personal Archive account. I've got one sitting in my apartment and it's haunting and gorgeous. Definitely worth a look.