“A picture is worth a thousand words.”
 
This is one of my least favorite clichés…for two reasons.
 
· Very few pictures communicate that many words.
 
· The cliché implies that pictures should stand on their own without words. Good pictures do that, but photographers should appreciate that adding words can inform, entertain and inspire, just like adding lyrics to music.
 
So when you present your pictures—in a book, album, gallery or slide show—consider adding words.   What kind?  That all depends on the picture, the audience, and what you feel like writing about.
 
The most obvious words are informational:
 
“Here’s where I took the picture…here’s the name of the person in the photo…here’s the date...”
 
OR
 
Technical factsabout how the picture was made.  But why not go beyond informational and technical and tell a story?” Consider:
 
Facts:“The Queen died. Then the King died.”
Story:“The Queen died. Then the King died…of a broken heart.”
 
Facts don’t have emotional power, stories do. If your mind doesn’t think in terms of stories or you can’t develop a story specifically about the picture, why not add interesting observations or thoughts that have some relationship to the picture, much as a travel writer might.
 
Every picture in “Flush,” my bathroom book-in-the-making,  will have a caption. For the photo above, I might reuse the caption I used in my book, Abandoned America:
 
“This ordinary toilet and bathtub, rising out of the coagulated dust of decades, were located in a majestic house with wide hallways, sweeping staircases, ornate banisters, and spacious rooms. One could lounge in the tub while soaking up a breathtaking view of the Allegheny Mountains.” 
 
Then again, I might take a different direction:
 
“Bathroom, restroom, lavatory, toilet, john, powder room, men’s room, ladies room, latrine, loo, WC, urinal, outhouse, powder room, washroom, can, facilities, comfort station, head, little boys’ room, commode, ladies/gents, cowboys/cowgirls. Could it be that the number of synonyms we have for a word is in direct proportion to our awkwardness in using it?”
 
Many other lines of approach are available. I could write about bathrooms from an interior design standpoint, or bathroom history or the time I couldn’t find a bathroom when I desperately needed one.
 
Before you dismiss the idea of combining pictures and words—you may think you don’t like writing or storytelling or that you’re not good at it—consider this:
 
I used to dislike writing immensely, and wasn’t very proficient.
Years ago, when I switched careers from law/corporate management to commercial photography, I felt relieved that writing was no longer a job requirement. But to my surprise, when I added words to a book of photographs I was publishing, I was transformed: writing became deeply satisfying. And as an added plus, readers (including book reviewers) liked what they read. Why not give it a try and see what happens…
 
P.S. My love of combining pictures and words has led to a presentation called “25 Pictures/25 Stories.” Curious? See: www.25stories.com.
 
 
 

One of the joys of working on a book project, or any personal photography project, is the search for subject matter. For me, it feels like a treasure hunt. For “Flush” (the tentative title for my book of bathroom photos), I found treasure in Tierra Amarilla in north central New Mexico. In the town center of “TA,” as the locals call it, sits a beautifully restored county courthouse and a modern town hall/sheriff’s office. In stark contrast, much of the rest of the town is in an advanced state of decay.
 
Amidst the decay, our New Mexico workshop group found something unexpected: “Three Ravens Coffee House” run by Korean-American Paul Namkung. Paul (and assistant) served up coffee and pastries rivaling Starbucks, while our group shot pics of him at work. Paul is also a top-flight woodworker; we traded him some of our tourist dollars for a few gorgeous cutting boards.
 
When I heard that Paul had build a modern composting outhouse—he called it an “outerhouse” to distinguish it from a typical outhouse—I asked him to pose for me and he agreed…so long as he didn’t have to sit “on the throne.” (To advance your book project, you'll ask people to do most anything.)

 Tech note: the outerhouse interior was dark so flash was required because. I chose an ambient exposure that preserved the detail in the window. (I think it was a window…could it have been a mirror?) I really dislike the flat, stark quality of light from on-camera flash; whenever possible I bounce my flash off walls or ceilings for a softer, more directional look. That wasn’t possible here. To the rescue: the 1½ foot square heavy-duty aluminum foil sheet I always carry in my bag. I bounced the flash off the foil, which was held over my head, behind me and slightly to camera right, to produce a natural light look.
 

Working on book projects focuses my visual energy – without that direction, I'm meandering, looking for anything that catches my eye. That can serve its purposes, but it's like looking at a colossal menu – too many choices. Where do you begin?

Here's a great example – there's an old outdoor mining museum in Jerome, Arizona. It offers limitless photo opps. I decided to focus on bathroom, and voila! A colorful Studebaker “posed” beneath the “Rest Room” sign. And the icing on the cake? Signs for “men” and “women” appeared in the frame. Since I shot it with a 10mm lens there was plenty of depth of field to keep both signs in clear focus.

Falling rain gave a sweet luster to the car. I got wet bringing the camera to ground level for perspective. I only mention this because many of my students have an irrational loathing of getting wet – they would likely get over this if a little water were the only thing in the way of capturing a stellar photo destined for a place in a book.