Future-proof Your Photos With A Caption

CAPTIONS COMPLETE THE PHOTO

The future of photo management is all about searching.

Think about it.

Way back in the day there was this breakthrough internet service called Alta Vista that indexed and cataloged sites across the emerging web. It was the bridge between the early days when you had curated category focussed directories like GeoCities that you browsed by subject area, and the full-blown search engines that Google, Bing, Yahoo, and others have become.

Photo libraries have travelled that same path, starting out as a basic timeline of images that were given context by their inclusion in specific folders and albums.

For decades, we’ve been the librarians in a sea of pixels, tasked with keeping it all straight. But now the Library is taking some of that off our plate.

One of the keystones for effective photo management is some unique context. Data that the application search can’t ferret out on its own.

With an iPhone, capture date, location, people, pets, and text are all there for the search engine to see. Even objects including geography, landmarks, creatures, and situations (i.e. at the beach, restaurant, airport) are available with a complex search.

What’s left for us to contribute are the context and the curation.

And as it happens, you can easily add context to a shot on the iPhone by writing a caption with as much detail as you want. Get in the habit when you’re taking a series and you can easily search on any word in the notation.

Here’s a great example of some photos where a caption makes all the difference.

Pam was offered the chance to do a chalk drawing on the seawall of a local artist and took our son, Carson, along for the task. The iPhone caught all the normal metadata (information about the photo) but didn’t capture any context. I chose one of the photos in the series and added a fairly detailed description.

Now, when I’m back at my Mac, I can review all the photos in the series, cull it down to the ‘keepers,’ and paste the caption to all of them if I want.

Or not.

I find that just having one detailed caption in a series is often enough for me to find them at a later date. By searching on a known photo I can then find to that whole group using the Show in All Photos button.

Now you may be wondering, “What about Keywords?” Or file names? Or Titles? Why Captions?

All of those are time tested legitimate parts of photo metadata, for sure. But here’s my thinking.

The game changer is that captions can be added on the spot right after you take that photo. And nothing beats having it done. The other metadata has to be added afterwards on your Mac when you get home. I may have to clean the gutters. Feed the cats. Watch The West Wing. It’s complicated.

The other thing is that you can be sloppy. File naming generally involves some rigid protocol. Keywords must be exactly the same. But a caption is just a description that can include anything useful. In natural language. Plus - get this - you can dictate it.

Captions get the User Friendly Award for ease of use and timeliness. I can always go back and tweak the rest of the fields if I get tired of The West Wing.

And for me, the real payoff is that future search when my kids ponder, “Hey, what was that chalk thing you did with Mom? At the beach?”

Got it covered.

If you are confused and struggling with the new Apple Photos layout on your iPhone, watch for my new Quick Course -

Find Your Photos Fast: Master the New Apple Photos on iPhone.

Coming in June.