What is a Photo Caption?

Our team has been sharing some of the most oft-used tactics in our media relations toolbox in recent months. Thus far, we’ve decoded the news release, story pitch, press conference, deskside media meeting and informal media meeting.

Today, we tackle another of our favorite tools – the photo caption.

Now, in the journalism world, the term “photo caption” is used for the little cutline under a published photo explaining what and who is in said photo.
In our world, while accompanied by an image as in the above, a photo caption is a vignette of sorts sharing the who, what, why, where and when of a business, brand or organization’s event, charitable act, “ribbon” cutting or other newsworthy happening. A journalistic cutline is often just names or one sentence accompanying an image, while our photo caption submissions to the media are often a few paragraphs meant to share the story without getting too wordy.
The idea is to make it easy for the media to grab the pertinent info and photo (by the way, make sure it is a photo worth publishing!) to use in said media’s “about town,” or “new brief” or even “community happenings” columns. Oh, and a helpful hint – don’t send a photo caption to an outlet that doesn’t use them! Do your research in advance.

For those who missed our other “toolbox” posts, you can access them below.

What is a story pitch?
What is a news release?
What is a deskside media tour?
What is a press conference?
What is an informal media meeting?