If you follow my photography you might notice that the titles I give to my photographs are not typically very “poetic,” instead tending to be relatively straightforward labels of the subjects. If a photograph is of a place I often simply refer to the location in the title, perhaps with the addition of a word or two identifying aspects such as season or time of day. If the photograph features a snow-covered tree, my title will likely be along the lines of “Snow-Covered Tree, Clouds.”

Not very creative, but I have my reasons.

Some photographers prefer to provide evocative and poetic titles for their images. To make up a few examples that sound like what I’m thinking of, you might see titles along the lines of “Endurance,” “At the Ends of the Earth,” or “Standing Against the Storm.” Another approach is to use enigmatic titles along the lines of “What She Saw,” “It Came in the Night,” “Sometimes it Gets Old,” “I Think of You When the Light Fades.”  (To the best of my knowledge these are not the actual titles of anyone’s actual photographs… but you never know! If it turns out that they are real, the connections were entirely coincidental.)

I’m not generally a fan of that approach to naming photographs. I hope that the photograph may speak for itself through whatever it is and says as a photograph. If the subject and its execution as a photograph evoke thoughts of strength or beauty or wonder or something else compelling, then I prefer to let the photograph do the talking. If it doesn’t have this effect on its own, I’d rather not try to gussy it up by adding a title to compensate for what it doesn’t intrinsically “say” as a visual image.

In addition, often the photograph is not “about” anything other than the subject itself – it is simply presented as is for consideration on its own. Not every photograph of the sea has to try to explicitly be about loneliness or a distant shore or an emotional storm or calm thoughts or a long voyage, real or metaphorical – sometimes it is just a beautiful image of the sea, with all of the interesting (we hope!) visual elements of place, light, color, texture, form, and so forth. Not every photograph of an urban environment must try to suggest a story of alienation, or urbane sophistication, or people in a rush, etc. – it may just present elements of the urban scene for your consideration as imagery. You are free—encouraged, even—to make your own associations and find whatever meaning of your own you can in the image.

I suppose that I do need to qualify all of this a bit.

First, this is my point of view, and I understand and appreciate that others may feel that the title is part of the message of the photograph. In fact, there are great examples of photographs in which the title really is a significant part of what “makes the photograph work.” In some cases an ironic dissonance between the nature of the image and the title can be effective, for example.

Second, I don’t necessarily think that description of the context of the photograph is a bad thing. (I’d better not think that – or I’d have a lot of explaining to do concerning how I present photographs in this blog!) I think it is reasonable to inform viewers about the subject and say something about the circumstances of the creation of the photograph, for a bunch of reasons that I won’t enumerate here.

Third, I suppose that my bias might be traced to several sources. One may be the fact that many (but not all) of the photographers whose work I admire tend to take a similar approach. Another may be from my background in music, where a piece may simply be what it is and not have a specific non-musical meaning at all.

One more thing…

I decided a few years ago to mostly avoid using photograph titles that identify places that are best not named. Sometimes this is simply because the photograph is more about the immediate subject (those “rocks and trees”) than about the large and specific area and its identity. In other cases those “Trees and Rocks” are in a location whose character might be harmed by too many visits by too many people. If I were to name the location with too much specificity this could make me complicit in a process that accelerates the destruction of the very things that make it so precious— its quiet, peace, remoteness, and even its loneliness. In the past, when news traveled more slowly and among smaller numbers of people, naming these places had a much less dramatic effect. However, today, any mention is instantly cataloged and entered into searchable databases, cross-linked with other references, ready to be looking up and attached to full GPS coordinates and detailed directions for access. In this world I think it is better to be circumspect about such places. And, no, I’m not trying to “keep my places secret.” I’m happy for other people who deeply love and appreciate them as I do to discover them in the same ways I do… and to join me in sharing a responsibility for their protection and safety.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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