A Caption Is Also the Alt Text and the Search Description
Every photo you upload can carry a caption, and if you have not written one, a usable one is generated from what your account already knows. That matters more than a caption normally would, because on a web page a caption does three separate jobs.
The three jobs
It is the visible caption. In a gallery or a lightbox it is the line under the image, which is where it does the obvious work of saying what the shot is.
It is the alt text. That is the text a screen reader announces in place of the image, and it is what appears if the image fails to load. Without one, a screen reader falls back to reading out the file name, which on most platforms is a string of characters that means nothing to anybody.
It is what search engines index. An image with no description is close to invisible in image search. For an actor whose name is the search term, headshots that surface are worth having.
What gets written for you
A generated caption is built from your own details rather than guessed from the picture: your name, and where a photo is attached to something, what it is attached to. It is a floor, not a ceiling. It guarantees that no photo on your site is completely undescribed.
You can overwrite any of them, and it is worth doing on the handful that matter. A production still gains from naming the production. A headshot gains from naming the photographer, which is a courtesy as well as useful text.
Writing a good one
Describe what is in the frame, plainly, as if to somebody who cannot see it. "Headshot, natural light, dark background" beats "Me looking serious". Avoid opening with "photo of" or "image of", because the context already establishes that.
Keep it to a line. A caption is not a place for a paragraph, and a screen reader reads the whole thing out before the visitor can move on.
Related: photo categories and lightbox viewing, which is where captions are shown. On the pictures themselves, the professional photo gallery guide.
Create a free actor website and every photo you upload gets one.
