I love what the Internet has done for the sharing of photography. Social websites such as Flickr make it so easy to get our work in front of the faces of people on the other side of the Earth so easily that it boggles my mind sometimes. This incredible ability of technology has one horrible side effect however. I’m talking about title fields.
Back in 1972 if you wanted to share a stack of fifty photos with someone, did you have to provide a title for every single image? I don’t believe so, but if any old timers want to chime in, please do.
These days the method I use to title a photo is fairly straight forward. If I can think of something clever within ten seconds up looking at a photo, I use that. If not, I just give a very literal and unbiased description of what is being depicted in the image. A Man With A Brace Watches A Tall Ship or A Swimmer Swims for example. Or the following photo which I’ve titled An Empty Bus Stop.
As a fun experiment, I thought I’d see how many additional methods I could utilize to title the same photo. Lets have some fun with how to name a photograph shall we?
The Stephen Shore
This titling strategy is a simply the location and date of the photograph. Named in honor of Stephen Shore’s Uncommon Places.
Gearhead’s Delight
Why bother making the title have any relevance to what is actually depicted in the photograph when you can use it to squeeze out every last technical spec about the equipment used to create the photo?
Fauxtojournalism
For when you want to come off looking like a photojournalist, but in reality you’re not. Make up a story to go along with what is happening in the image, and eschew things that a professional journalist might take into consideration. Such things as fact checking or not including personal bias.
The Second Year Artist
Perfect for people who are newer to photography. They may have just scored their first show at a local coffee house, but are yet to build up a decent body of work around a single concept. The artist will then attempt to compensate for this by titling the photographs with excessively deep or poetic titles in an attempt to inject a higher level of grandeur.
Data Dumper
A method used by those who go straight from their camera to a photo sharing website. Why bother even try to name the photographs when the website will figure one out based on the EXIF data? Photographs titled with this method also tend to travel in packs.
The Pop Culture Reference
This one is always a favorite with the teenagers. Take any object shown in the photograph and find some sort of pop culture reference that is vaguely illustrated by the photograph. Movie titles or famous quotes are good, but this method is truly dominated by song titles or lyrics. If a song title is used, bonus points are given for including all of the lyrics as the photograph’s caption.
Title taken from the band Placebo. Here is a fan video for the song which coincidently enough is a slide show of vaguely related photographs.
Blank and Blank
When all else fails, just pick two objects depicted in the photograph and mash them together with the word ‘and’.
I leave you with two questions.
- What kind of naming strategy do you use with your own photography?
- If the photo I used in this post was your own, what would you have titled it?
43 Archived Comments
Really like this piece - even though years old, still very relevant. I struggle with titles [much more than I should] and have probably tried everything on this list!
Once spent long time working out great title for a photo [eventually drawing on a song lyric!] only for the gallery that exhibited it to refer to it as 'the one with the shopping trolley'...
Thanks for posting this and best wishes.
Evening sunset.
I would name it, "Ben at the corner".
(though im not sure if it's the Big Ben 😀)
Very beautiful work piece
I will be having some photos for sale in the local art shop and I am trying to figure out the best way to name my photos to let everyone know where they were taken. My question is what do you use to label them? I have the photos mounted and framed and thought about doing labels and writing the name and place of the photo, but my writing isnt he neatest. I thought about calligraphy, but that takes time. So, I am trying to get different ideas on how I could label them without them looking stupid.
Any ideas would be great.
Filtered Emotion
Desolate. That’s the first thing that came to mind when I saw this photo. Everyone else is all “warm and fuzzy”. I guess I see the dark side of things.
I come back to this post time and time again … I guess it reassures me that there’s no good way to title an image and I’m not horrifically inadequate.
I use one random character from my keyboard as a title 😛
I have to read all comments to this old post but before continuing with this interesting subject I have to say that probably this could be the subject of my next ebook based on my photographs, the first is here: https://sites.google.com/site/phototrincone/e-book-pun-other
if you want to take a look.
I have also to answer to your question about the possible title for your photo if it was mine:
Title: |\\\\\| ||||| ||
🙂 difficult? the code could be more clear here: https://picasaweb.google.com/108470239770597604472/120312#5719080685161099250
//VVV/
“Warm lens”
I like to title my photographs. To me it’s the finishing touch to a piece of art…a hint to the viewer of what the piece means to me (but, of course, the viewer is entitled to have their own interpretation). I don’t like stating the bleeding obvious in my titles and I try to avoid sounding pretentious! (Not always successfully!)
I try to use one word only, two when I fail (which category is it ? ^^) and if I had to name this one, it would be “Rayures” (Stripes)
WOW!!!!
beautiful ideas for titling captured memories.
i’ve had a bit of a headache with titles i had to turn to something as ridiculous as ‘blackberry 8900’.
great piece.
@onepunchgh
I would name that photo ;
“Church is in session”
The bus stop reminds me of light coming through stained glass
As far as naming my own, I use whatever inspires me. I usually don’t have trouble with naming. I may get lazy sometimes, but it’s fun, it adds a whole new dimension to your work. I also read titles when I see art, that is helpful.
A good photograph stands on its own. It doesn’t require a written narrative, inspirational quote, or string of hashtags to prop it up.
That’s nice, troy, now how do you SEO-ize that?
If you need to “SEO-ize” your photography, you’re doing it wrong.
@Jon Davis I don’t worry much about SEO. Why do I need to SEO anything?
.. let me guess .. Flickr’s “interestingness”!!
A man can also stand on its own but he definitely needs a name. Just sayin'. 😀
Before the common make wakes… Simply because more ‘lower’ class people use public transport. Interesting article, makes a lot of sense.
Hmm, actually I use 2 different naming; first one is trying to describe a photo using a single word or a short sentence.. like “Lace” or “android’s update”. second one is by naming photo type like “a portrait”, or “a landscape” and describing specs afterward like “2 umbrella front = 1 backdrop light, ISO100 1/250 using 50mm, retouched”. This gives an insight of how the photo was created.
Cool post, I have used the pop culture, second year artist, literal and blank and blank. I think I’ve cleaned up most of the data dumper issues. 🙂
My thought is Sunrise stop.
Cheers.
“old hidden memories” i would give this title….the overall scene creates so much of lonliness, and reminds u of something which is missing in ur life…so in blunt words….old hidden memories……
“A Swimmers Swims” is just as atrocious a title as any of your made up ones.
@Rabi: I never claimed to actually be good at titling photos. I’d rather just hand you a stack of paper prints and pretend they don’t exist. I’ve given up putting any effort into naming mine years ago.
I like literal titles – but I agree with you it can get tough – sometimes I get antsy with the task and make things up – how about – “found the bus stop, now where’s that God damn bus?”
This is a must read post. Titling a photo is really a backbreaking task especially for a newbie like me. I’m afraid that I would also fall on “The Second Year Artist” and “Blank and Blank.”
“missed the bus”
If you found a way to name a photo “Guns & Roses” would it count as BOTH “Blank and Blank” AND “Pop Culture Reference”?
Title crossover – Epic.
I was happy that when I bought Sternfeld’s Stranger Passing that he used the literal, unbiased titling method. A Woman Goes Shopping With Her Pet Rabbit. for example.
Interesting post!
thx for the ideas..
btw, i might name it “cold and lonely”.. =]
Definitely a blank-and-blank(er) when it comes to make some sort of a presentation (website, book). What I find cool with B&B is that it is sort of stupidly redundant (so, WTF ?) but at the same time I believe a photograph something else than the object described, so that finally it is contradictory to the intent. In other words there is some tension involved with B&B and it challenges the viewer in a subtle way.
Otherwise (i.e. most of the time) I’m a data dumper(er).
I’ve always loved how even untitled is still really a title. I guess “Untitled X” is just a more surefire ( and more classy) way of naming your photos DSC_0001.jpg, DSC_0002.jpg, DSC_0003.jpg etc.
Great (and funny) post!
Gary has a good point. I would might have gone with “Bus Stop”, but in hindsight I would prefer to look at it without thinking “Bus Stop” first.
At the time I mostly do single words. Your photo would likely have been “Shelter”. Sometimes it is just stating the obvious and some times the reference to the image may be a bit twisted. Other times it is the longer but concise description like you mention. If I really can not think of anything, but might want to give it a title later, I give it a “*”.
There is also a category that could be said is the artzy version of “pop culture reference”: Quoting a whole poem full of weltschmertz, leaving it to the viewer to figure out who the author is. Goes well with artzy self-portraits.
Up until the start of this year I would probably have called it “Bus Stop”. I’m starting to dislike titling pictures though. I find when I look at pictures, I look at the title first, so if I see a picture titled “Bus stop” I’ll read that and then when I look at it it’s like I’m saying “picture of a bus stop” in my head. I don’t actually *look* at the picture. So recently I’m trying to not title mine. It’s hard to give up though!
Nice picture BTW 🙂
Like you I try, not too hard, to come up with a cleaver name. Then I go for the obvious, Bridge, Rock… Locations always seem to work. Or the always popular “Untitled” That might be on to add to your list. I have seen several people with Untitled 1, Untitled 4 ect. If its “untitled” wouldn’t adding a number give it a title?
Matt
Great post, Kip. But I must say, of all the ‘methods’ you listed the only one that’s really terrible is the EXIF dump. The others are all good ways of describing a photo. This process for me is almost solely so I can search for it later and therefore (along with heavy use of tags) I typically title photos using the “Stephen Shore” or the “Blank and Blank” methods.
While I’ve done many of these, you’re missing one: the ASCII art title. In this case, the title represents some graphic element of the image. So for your phot, the title could be: [|||]
Looking through my flickr feed, it looks like my pattern defies all of yours! I use “Single Arbitrary Object Or Location In Photo”. Sort of a pre-teen version of “Blank and Blank”. Of course, I haven’t titled anything in almost two years. Or uploaded virtually anything to flickr in a year.
You’re a slippery one there J-Sauce.
Oh dear, I must confess I am guilty of a combination of “Second Year Artist”, “Pop Culture Reference”, and “Blank and Blank”.
However I am becoming more literal with my titles as time goes by. I look at some of my old photos on dA and think “that title’s a little wanky”.
Totally agree Ian. I do admit that at least six of these are ways I’m guilty of in the past. I’ve totally face-palmed after looked at the titles I’ve given work I’ve uploaded to various websites years ago.