On 23/01/2008, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)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".
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk