Creating clear, concise captions with style

An anti-government protestor, showers under water splashed from a broken water pipe, near the parliament building where he and others are camping, in Islamabad, Pakistan, Monday, Sept. 22, 2014. Anti-government demonstrators led by opposition politicians Khan and Muslim cleric Tahir-ul-Qadri converged on the capital in mid-August, demanding Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's ouster over alleged fraud in last year's election. Sharif told the parliament that protestors have damaged the image of Pakistan in the world and also caused huge economic losses in the country.   (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen)

   

    The power of photography works hand in hand with print media, not only as a lure of prospective readers, but by allowing strong emotional connections to be formed between reader and content. The photo alone is almost never enough for this to happen, the context of the picture must be explained. 
    Sure, the article itself can contain enough contextual information to explain the image, but I doubt many news photos are interesting enough to warrant that level of involvement from the average reader. So by placing a caption under the photo we empower the photo to speak to the reader. 

   I love scanning through photographs in magazines like National Geographic and online news sites like Reddit, but after finding an interesting photo the first thing I do is read what's under it. 
    It's clear that the caption has always played an important role in the media industry, so it's not surprising there is a standard guide to styling the language of them. 

   The style used by most news organizations and journalist is published and updated by the Associated Press. The AP Stylebook is the go-to guide for any punctuation, grammar or spelling issues that might come up while writing captions.

   I found that most captions follow a three sentence template:

• The first sentence is in the present tense and covers information such as who, what, where, and when.
• The second sentence is in the past tense and covers any additional info.
• The third sentence, if used, adds more additional information, usually in the form of a quote from somebody in or relevant to the photo.