DSLR Photography Forum

A couple of our recent discussions have touched on the subject of titles in our photography. These are the kind of questions that I've been trying to answer for myself, so I thought I'd put them out here for discussion.

For other people's artwork:
• How important is the title of an artwork in shaping how you think about it?
• What do you like to learn from a title?
• What do you think when an artwork is called "Untitled"?

For your own artwork:
• How permanent are your titles?
• Do they change depending on where and how you present the photo? (Forum, blog, print, etc)
• What traits do your titles have in common - do you have a style or theme for them?
• How important is it that people know what the title is, and should they learn it before or after seeing the work?


I'll be able to add some of my musings when I have a little more time with the computer, but I know we have a lot of very bright and creative people here - I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on the subject.

Titles - yes that is the topic of the moment for me - so this thread is very timely.

My own titles are pretty fluid to a point. When I originally process a photo, I always save it to disk with some sort of working title - generally these are painfully poor - and are just some descriptive phrase to help me locate the image later - I have posted a couple of examples of crap working titles here lately. I usually process in binges where I do many pieces at the same time - and I don't bother trying to come up with final titles under those circumstances. The *real* titles of my pieces usually come when I post them somewhere - and maybe not even then. If I actually offer something for sale, my titles get a lot more locked down - and even then, I have sometimes changed them later. I realize that this practice is highly frowned on in the art world - because it damages the ability to properly catalog your body of work.

Historically, my titles have been painfully descriptive like "Bench in the Fog" or "Autumn Leaves". Lately, I have been trying to get away from simply stating the obvious in my titles - and start being a bit more creative. I am happy with a title if it brings some association to mind that the viewer didn't initially make, but that makes sense to them when they read the title in context. Ideally, I like a title that expresses some thought that hasn't already been expressed at length by the photo itself - a play on words or a moment of free association.

I don't know why I bother. I usually don't care much about other peoples' titles - so why should mine be any different? A lot of times, I find titles really pretentious, and I have to assume that mine are equally pretentious.

I have on occasion named a photo "Untitled". Almost always that has been because the photograph that I took was so obtrusive to somebody else's personal space, that I shied away from being even more obtrusive by putting words in their mouths. Here is an example: Untitled Obtrusive Photo

I am trying to sell my works in an on line gallery. Not successfully.... yet, but the thing is that they ask you to title each of your pictures. That has been the most difficult part in the process because I was not familiar with the task. My titles normally are a description of image.

So then I started to search for writings about the topic and I found things so touching from a painter that he wrote "My painting is born the day I give it a title". Other ideas more in the area of marketing say that collectors when buying art, pay much attention in the titles, they like good titles. The article never tells what a good title is.

So then I thought. Well, how do you want your work to be introduced? Let's say someone buys your picture. How do you want that person to introduce your work to others?

My titles are very simple, some of them still describe what they are, but how would you title a picture of an apple and a pear... Telling the truth. I had the perfect title for my picture but I felt ridiculous when I thought about titling it "Cozy Apple". But it is because the apple looks so comfy, so supported by the pear... but is this kind of thoughts that make a good title?

In some way, still life photography gives you more time and room to think about the title. As you create the setup based on what you want to say, so you have more idea about the title.

To call Pastoral 1, 2 or 3 to the elements of a series of pictures... Hmmm... It sounds like a catalog. To named it Untitled... makes me think whether this is the last picture or the best picture of the photographer... sounds a bit uncertain and unclear. At the end, how many pictures can you call Untitled? What does it really mean not to have a name? There must be something that called you to take that picture, based on that, one can create a title to introduce our image to others. Not an easy task, anyway.

Very interesting topic, Matthew.

Ps. I just read Toad's post and saw the picture he showed. I wouldn't know how to title an image like that one.

A disclaimer: it's possible that I over-think things.

For other people's artwork, titles are very important to me: it's what I see first. When looking through a photo book, I'll have read the caption before I see the image - I can't help it, I'm drawn to words with a compulsion and immediacy that I don't feel for pictures. I think in words. So for better or worse, what someone writes about a photo will influence my first impression. My favourite titles are the ones that clearly communicate what's important to the artist, and the more literal, the better. If something's titled "Dancing Shadows of Enlightenment", it's a pretty safe bet that the photo won't do it for me; leaving something "Untitled" leaves me thinking that the photographer hasn't figured it out yet. The one exception might be for modern art, which gets the benefir of the doubt, but not a free pass. After all, there's frequently so little there that the title is all we have to work from.

The titles that I give are usually painfully literal. When I take a photo of a yellow daisy, there's no question about what it will be called. Sometimes I go even more documentary, calling out exact specifics specifics of the image. Occasionally a title can be a comment on the content, and even more rarely it's meant to be funny. But then I've always seen my photography as being reductive instead of creative, so it makes sense to me that my titles are minimalistic.

I've recently - a year or so - started adding numbers to my titles. This means that when I have photos with the same name (for example I have three "Sunflowers", only two of which are actually flowers) there's an additional bit of information to distinguish them. Keeping track of a sequence would be too much like work, so instead I've been using the last number of the day of the month and the last two numbers of the file name. I'm looking at a way of making this more useful in the new year, but haven't come up with something that I like yet.

While I need a title for everything that I put on my blog, they actual photos don't earn the title as their own name until I start thinking of them by it. The photo needs to make enough of an impression on me, or on other people, for me to need to call it something. This doesn't happen very often.

A title is a tag appended to an object, the purpose of which is to relate the object to whomever is interacting with it.
The object may thus have several tags: one or more for the creator so as to locate it when it needs to be categorised or deployed; one or more depending on what relationship its creator intends between the object and the interactor.
Some titles, like any transmission of words to another, may be elucidatory about the object..even didactic, if the creator doesn't think his work speaks clearly or emphatically enough on its own.
Some creators, out of fear that their own self-worth is dependent on their work's recognition, use a title as anything from a shout to a bludgeon in order to coerce the interactor into behaving as the creator wishes
. Some titles are manipulative and game-playing exercises in disingenuity: these are masturbatory, narcissistic and pseudo-arcane attempts to pass off superficiality as depth..."don't-beat-me, treat-me" bleatings of self-obsessed King Babies who mistakenly believe their trite ejaculations are in fact the rhythmic grumblings of the Misunderstood Artist.
Of course, some titles are purely catalogue numbers...others are because the object is in a public space and a catchy title could both alleviate the tediousness of catalogue numbers and serve as an aide-memoire.
I myself never quite trust the Great Unwashed to shuck off the tawdry rags of their last visit to Flickr-book or Twatface, and to fully allow their aesthetic consciousness to rest in the fine cleft of artistic appreciation of my work...so I normally give them a catchy, arty or posy title that sounds nice. With any luck, it will also get some of the real meaning of the object banged into their skull, with all the finesse of Odysseus ramming a sharpened spike into the myopic and bestial single eye of Polyphemus the Cyclops.

Er...what was the question again...?

Zig Wrote:Er...what was the question again...?

You made my day...

I like to use a title that adds the single bit of information that might be missing, and hopefully helps the photo make more sense to everyone.

But I also like to go with whatever pops into my head when I decide to work on a particular file instead of the others from the same shoot.

For me the title can change from showing to showing of an image, I have to have titles for images in Photo-Competitions for the camera club I am in an the Council events.

Most judges take little notice of the title, though in Photojournalism and Nature the titles are most important. I have been studying a photo critique course for the last few months with a view to judging for some local camera clubs, and have been invited to judge my first competition in March.... The critique course said that the title while not affecting the technical merit of the image, should be a deciding influence when you can't choose between 2 scores for an image... a good title might push that 9.5 to a 10 as it were....