VISUALS AND VERB ALS

The press:

Paul Johnson's golden rule

of caption-writing

LAST month I was struck by a remarkable picture published on the back page of the Times. It was a photograph, taken from another aircraft, of Concorde flying faster than sound. Indeed it was actually the first such air-to-air photograph of the airliner flying supersonically. The aircraft was a thing of beauty, almost like a still life, suspended in space above the clouds, appearing to be motionless, though in fact travelling faster than a bullet. Arthur Gibson, of Image in Industry, responsible for the photo, travelled aboard an RAF Tornado to get the shot at 60,000 feet over the Irish Sea near Blackpool. At that speed the heat generated by the aircraft causes its fuselage to expand, so that it is actually nine inches longer than when it is on the ground. Concorde has to have a white hull, rather than the new BA livery of blue, to prevent burn-up. The great height made the curvature of the earth visible on the photo, though in a slightly exaggerated form because of the special lens used.

This item seemed to me an excellent example of how newspapers should use photography. The photograph was good in itself and its subject of considerable intrin- sic interest. It was reproduced at a decent size, about eight by ten inches, to bring out its merits. It was well worth this space, because it did things which no amount of wordage could have done. Yet the words in the accompanying news item, which was really an extended caption, added a lot to the photo because they told you what the photo itself could not convey: the exten- sion of the fuselage, the reason for the difference in livery, the distortion pro- duced by the lens and how the photo was actually taken, which in this case was relevant and interesting.

The first job I did in journalism was to write photo captions. It is a difficult art, and in my view an unduly neglected one.

The assumption is too often made that, once you get a really good photo, writing the caption is obvious and can be left to anyone hanging around the office. That was certainly not the view of great picture journalists like Arthur Christianson or

Hugh Cudlipp. When Henry Luce was creating Life magazine, he and his top editors often used to write caption-series themselves. Similarly, Edward Hutton and Tom Hopkinson used to write the captions for Picture Post, which for journa- listic impact, wit and sheer skills have seldom been equalled in journalism. The picture catches the eye, but it is a good caption which gives the reader full value for money and draws him or her into the main text. Advertising people understand this very well and practise it with skill. Even when there is no main text a well- written caption enhances the picture enor- mously. An example is the brilliant 'Head- liner' feature in You magazine, which takes the mickey out of the celebrity crowd. I can always tell when the regular caption-writer is away; the jokes are strained, fall flat or are missing; the slightly surrealistic ele- ment is absent. Again, a somewhat similar feature in Sunday doesn't work at all; no talent for it, I'm afraid.

The golden rule of caption-writing, which I formulated for myself, is this. Never tell the reader what he can see for himself. That is the mark of the amateur writing in his snap album: 'Myself and Signorina outside the Tower of Pisa.' Tell the reader what he can't see and doesn't know and needs to know. Tell him who (if it isn't obvious), where and when and how (if it's relevant). You may have to tell him what's going on outside the picture or behind the photographer, or what hap- pened immediately before or just after it was taken. One good test is to take away the photo and see how the caption reads standing by itself. If it enables you to imagine what the photo is like, it's no That'll do nicely.' good. Ideally, by itself it should intrigue you and make you anxious to see the picture. The Guardian was involuntarily subjected to this test a week or so ago when its process engravers went on strike and it showed blank spaces over the picture captions. It came out of the test rather badly. I didn't find myself missing the blocks much.

Indeed, I'm often mystified by the way photo editors make their choice, especially for the front page. On Monday, with the TWA skyjack dominating all else, the Sun had a ridiculous photo of a television star who had not been met at London airport by a limousine promised by Terry Wogan. A weird example of editorial misjudgment. The Star had a poor photo of McEnroe and Tatum O'Neal which could have been almost any young people and its little picture of the TWA airliner at Beirut was just an airliner on a runway — no interest. The Times and the Guardian both had photos of the released hostesses grinning Hollywood smiles , which struck the wrong note. The Guardian, however, also had the photo of the TWA craft in front of the burnt-out Jordanian airliner destroyed by terrorists last week. This was also the choice of the Daily Telegraph and was clearly a correct one. Another striking photo was the hijacker with machine-gun guarding the rear entrance to the aircraft, which the Daily Express gave the promin- ence it deserved. The International Herald Tribune, which must now be judged a distinct competitor in the London market, had a similar shot to the Express, but it also had good photos of the confusion in the Beirut control tower and weeping relatives greeting freed hostages — the best display of the lot. The Daily Mirror fell for the grinning hostesses and it compounded its misjudgment by giving most of the front page to yet another story about its prop- rietor: MAXWELL SAVES SINCLAIR.

Strong-minded editors who know what they want will, of course, correct the eccentricities of photo editors. I wish magazine editors were tougher with their display people. Far too often, art editors produce a display which looks pretty and brings out the professional virtue of the photographs but ignores the needs of the reader. Every photo should have a caption, which should be printed in prominent type and unmistakably attached to the picture, if possible immediately beneath it. Any picture-caption layout which does not con- form to these rules should be slung out and

the chap sent away to do it again. Some very irritating layouts now appear in the colour mags. Last Sunday You had a

full-page photo separated from its caption

by 16 pages of funnies. The Observer mag has a photo of a standard lamp and (I

think) a pouf with a tiny caption reading: 'Far Right: How Christopher Cormack squeezed Cyril Smith into a 34mm frame.'

1 puzzled over this for some time until I eventually found Big Cyril lurking on the other side of an eight-page advertising supplement.