Useful captions to enhance visuals

The text concludes with Resources for every travel journalist to consider taking advantage of. The matador Network’s David Miller drops another gem for the journalist. No doubt photographs have the ability to add value to a travel journalist’s work. Miller explains how to enhance these visuals with useful captions.  Miller explains,

Instead of simply reducing / restating what’s already obvious in the photo, strong captions — what we at Matador call “narrative” captions — give the viewer context, backstory, information that the viewer CAN’T see for him or herself. This includes things like:

  • Place names
  • Subject names
  • Backstory on the scene (example: at what point of the trip the shot occurred)
  • Backstory or technical info on the shot itself
  • Challenges or special circumstances not identifiable in the shot itself
  • Information on future events the shot puts into perspective

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Add visuals to writing for a more complete story

Chapter 4 discusses the need for research prior to travel. While the chapter focuses more on writing, Rose Walker offers this advice in Do Your Research to Become a Travel Writer to researching the destination:

“your next step as a travel writer is photography. Most travel writers take photos to go with their articles and most editors want photos. I am sure you have taken pictures while on vacation, but now you want to take professional pictures to sell. Do your research on what editors want in a photo, but most importantly do research on how to photograph pictures to sell.”

Using Walkers advice in addition to Chapter 4 the travel writer should have a complete set of tools to get their writing published along with some stunning visuals.