4 Things I Look For When Hiring a Photographer, Part 2

When considering a photographer to hire, I expect excellent NGO photos.  That’s just a given, but that’s also just the starting point.  The second criteria I use to sort out excellent NGO photographers from the not-so-great is…

CRITERIA 2:  HOW GOOD ARE YOUR CAPTIONS?

Captions are critical for us, and just as important as the quality of the photos. If we have the best photo in the world but a poor or no caption, the photo isn’t of much use to use.  At my NGO we have a saying: “No caption = no photo.”

Gone are the days when you could write a cryptic “Nepalese boy with a goat.” We need much more info than that. I’ll write a future post on what most NGOs expect for good captioning, but for now, just know that when I’m considering photographers, I’m definitely rating them on how good their captioning is. If you have the greatest photos in the world but lousy captioning, I just not likely to hire you.

And now it’s on to my third criteria.