----- Original Message -----
From: cinderandeight@...
To: STMFC@...
Sent: Thursday, May 21, 2009 6:19:34 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: [STMFC] Re: The growing problem of erroneous captions








Guys,
I agree with so much of what you are all saying. Recently I was asked
"off handedly" if I could help with the captions of a new book. I agreed,
and the next day I received over 80 photos to caption, so I emailed back
asking for a timeframe for publication, and when he'd like the captions.
The answer was "the book is due out at the end of next month (six weeks
away), and I needed the captions two weeks ago."
I spent the next 7 days almost completely writing and rewriting
captions, farming out a small number and getting constant bombardments of emails
from the impatient editor.
The book was out on time, but given more time I certainly could have
done a lot better job. Errors might have crept into the process, but I
tried to keep the captions "within my base of knowledge". We all have a few
misconceptions from time to time, the learning process is ongoing for
everyone.
Payment for a weeks work? A free copy of the book, and the feeling
you helped record history. This is pretty typical. I wrote the freight car
section for a well known PRR book back in 1993 and got the same constant
harassment from its editor. In the end I cut off the effort at the forth
rewrite of the text. I have my free book, and the feeling I did as good a job
as I could while working 10 hours days, six days a week at a hard outside
job. (I can see Bruce Smith running to his book shelf to figure out which
book it was!)
Is possibly a rule of thumb that the more the captioner gets for his
work, the less likely it will be right? Most of us do this for the love of
it yet.
Rich Burg
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