On 23/01/2008, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
Certantly there are many cases where the date and place are very relevant. In many of those cases we find that information in the captions already. The photographer is usually pretty irrelevant to someone simply learning about a subject
It's an interesting question. The photographer is useful if they're an "artist" - it's interesting and "adds value" to know that a photo was taken by Adams or Capa or Carroll. If they're you or me, it's less helpful, because the name has no immediate meaning.
On the other hand, it may be useful to characterise the photographer - "taken by a pedestrian" or "taken by a visitor" or "taken by a staff member" - to give context to the image within the context of the topic. For a lot of our military / governmental images, captioning the unit or organisation is helpful.
The rule I tend to use, incidentally, is "give a name prominently in the caption if that name might reasonably get wikilinked to an article".