"CAPTION COMPETITION"
Every time there's a caption competition, no matter what the picture is, I always send the same suggestion for a caption: "CAPTION COMPETITION".
This has a couple of benefits:
1) It is appropriate.
2) If I win (or when I win), they'll have to print it. And people will assume that it's a whole new competition. They'll send in suggestions to caption the picture, even though my caption has already been chosen. In fact, I'll enter again. My suggestion will be "CAPTION COMPETITION", and the whole cycle will start anew. It will be like a piece of conceptual art. The New Yorker will probably give me a staff job.
Another good technique for caption competitions is to use dialogue spoken by characters not featured in the picture itself. For example:
"I think I might be getting a sore throat." - Old Woman (not pictured)
It doesn't relate directly to the picture, but who's to say there wasn't an old woman with a sore throat in that room somewhere? I'm certainly not to say that.
People will search for some double-meaning, but there isn't one. They might think it's some commentary on how politicians never listen to the pleas of pensioners. But it isn't that. It's just something that woman said.
A well-known "alternative" caption technique is to just state exactly what's happening in the scene. For example:
"Two people in costumes hold bubble-making items and capture the attention of two children."
I think this is a bit predictable. Something done by lesser captioners (like Nick Ward). People espousing this method tend to think they're being satirical, but they're not. I like to turn that whole thing on its head.
"Two people in costumes DON'T hold bubble-making items and DON'T capture the attention of two children."
You see? Much better. It raises doubts. That's what all great artists should do.
Some people try to say that captioning "funny" photos isn't art. But they're wrong. It is art. It is exactly art.
Art is about labelling the world in misleading ways. I'm the captioners' Picasso. I've been called that before, by Caption, the country's leading captioning magazine. (Not this country, but still...)
Lately, I've been experimenting with autobiographical captions. These help to flesh out not just the picture in question, but the captioner's frame of mind.
"Make sure this guy can't move! Much like a friend of mine who writes captions. He can't move because he's STIFLED. Stifled by life. Stifled by the rigours of the captioning profession. Trapped in a prison of his own snappy summarising. He can step outside and objectively view everything except himself. He tries! He tries! But no man can caption himself. The only caption awaiting my friend is the one on his tombstone - carved by a bitter contemporary (like Nick Ward) - which simultaneously, bitingly, sums up and dismisses his life. The poor bastard. He'll only be happy when he's dead."
It might need a bit of fine-tuning, but I think that could grace any humorous up-market publication. People are bored of traditional captions. They want something deeper.
The world of captioning never stands still. Which is why we find it difficult to describe it. You can't caption a moving image.
That's just subtitling.
And subtitling is not art.
Despite what Nick Ward's idiot subtitling brother Jonathan says.
"Blue"
--- EDIT 15:10 PM
I've just tried my first technique. Let's see if it works.
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