[Leica] IMG: Tracks - titles

[tedgrant at shaw.ca (Ted Grant)]

Jayanand Govindaraj offered:

>> I agree with you - titles, in Shakespeare's words,  "give to airy nothing
a local habitation and a name"<<<

Jayanand that maybe good for Shakespeare. 

However putting an "assumed everyone will know what my title means" can
create just what we saw a day a go.

A title that only meant something to the photographer because he knew the
subjects were mother and daughter, but no viewer could see they were. Let
alone see the bodies separated from the background. And basically here we
are still discussing titles when in many cases they create a wrong meaning
to a viewer with absolutely no knowledge of who these real people are.

Of course there are times when a photograph requires some kind of caption or
identification of location. 

The unfortunate part of this is often the photographer tags the picture with
what he or she has in their mind but the photograph viewed by another the
words are meaningless.

I understand what you mean about titles, but we quite often see a photograph
with a title that's completely meaningless only creating confusion.

Me? We are photographers and it's the photograph that counts not how good
the title or tagline is. 

When I've been one of he judges for the Canadian Press Photographer Assn. as
have other judges, we don't want any words because we are looking at a
photograph and making a call on what we see. Not what the photographer tries
to influence what he thought the photograph  should be.

However we are always open to "What's the caption say about this situation
and did the photographer capture exactly what the wording says?"

And yes sometimes the words do make a difference in a final decision, not
always. Because it's the quality of the photograph that is most important!

I suppose it's different strokes for different situations!

ted