Captions hell, It turned into a Journal

The picture captures the scene. The words capture a little bit of me.

PHOTO JOURNAL 2026

James Bradley

9/10/202610 min read

Captions hell, It turned into a Journal

Captions hell, It turned into a Journal

Susan made a comment to me about the captions and hashtags I write to go with my social media posts. I didn’t really think much of it at first because it didn’t register until a while later. Here we go with that whole slowing down thing again. She told me she enjoys reading them because they feel like a reflection of what I’ve been doing with the camera, my life, and my interaction with the world around me. They are not just what I photographed, but what I was thinking, what I noticed, where I was, what I was trying to do, and, occasionally, how badly something was going. And as you all well know, I have as many bad days as anyone else does. As much as I would like to have the monopoly on that particular market, I don’t!

It got me thinking. I’ve written a metric buttload (yes this is an actual scientific unit of measure) of captions this year. Some serious, some informative, some simple, and some are probably a little stupid. Okay, some are definitely a whole lot stupid. I’ll admit that I never really thought of them as anything more than something to go with the photograph as a short description. I was wrong. I’ve been unintentionally keeping a journal. I just didn’t know it. Susan and I refer to things like this as “happy accidents”.

It Started With “Here’s a Bird”

Early on, a lot of my captions were pretty straightforward. Here’s a bird. Here’s a flower. Here’s a reflection. Here’s a lake. Here’s another bird.

Photo-journalism at its finest, right?

I wasn’t trying to write anything profound. Hell, when I started this, I had no idea I was going to start writing a blog to go along with it. Well, lo and behold, here I am. Most of the time I was just trying to give the picture a little context without sounding like some overly pretentious photo genius describing how the light “whispered across the landscape.” How does light even do that? Can light whisper? No. The light did not whisper. Maybe it did….maybe. I live in southeast Idaho. The wind usually does NOT “whisper” here. It was light. See my confusion here?I’ll stop there. Not a rabbit hole I want to go down right now.

Somewhere along the way, though, the captions started changing. I stopped only writing about what was in the picture and started writing more about why I stopped to take it. Big difference.

A great blue heron wasn’t just a bird anymore. I started noticing how it stood, how it moved, what direction it was looking, whether it looked patient or irritated or like a cartoon character, and whether I had enough time to get the camera up before it decided to bail on me and screw my shot up. A reflection stopped being just a reflection. I began to notice whether the water was still, what the clouds were doing, whether the light was changing, how it was changing and how the reflection affected the composition. I wasn’t just labeling things anymore. I was paying attention.

Apparently, I Have Subjects (not the loyal kind)

If you had asked me at the beginning of the year what kind of photographer I was, my answer probably would have been something along the lines of, “I don’t know. I take pictures of stuff.”

That’s still mostly true.

I haven’t suddenly developed one specialty and decided that I only photograph birds, landscapes, flowers, or whatever else professional photographers are apparently supposed to choose. I’m still taking pictures of everything. While I have a tendency to duplicate a lot of my effort taking photos every day with a plethora of subjects, I think it has made me a better photographer (See jack of all trades). But going back through the captions shows patterns I didn’t realize were there. Susan got it. It was too close for me to see it. Thanks Dear!

I get a lot of bird photos, and I mean a lot. It’s almost like I am specializing in bird photography. Wait, No specialty for you!

Herons, egrets, owls, grackles, harriers, wood storks, swallows, robins, doves…. and whatever else happens to stand still long enough for me to get it in front of my camera. You get the picture. Water shows up constantly too. Market Lake, Leigh Lake, Fall Creek, the Snake River, reflections, still water, moving water, birds standing in water, birds flying over water.

I may have a problem. I definitely do. What a good problem though.

Flowers, gardens, home, travel, desert landscapes, old trucks, farm scenes, boardwalks, weird experiments, intentional camera movement, and whatever else catches my attention all show up too. Oh, and let’s not forget the sports photos, basketball, golf, women’s roller derby, and soccer among them. Apparently, my style is still pretty much, “Hey, that looks cool.”

I’m okay with that.

The Captions have Bad Days Too

One of my favorite things about looking back is that the captions don’t only document the good days. That may actually be the most honest part of the whole thing.

There are days where I had great light, interesting wildlife, dramatic clouds, and a pretty easy time finding something to photograph. Then there are the other days. Smoke, haze, bad weather, nothing interesting happening, feeling like crap, no time, no motivation, and even a tooth extraction.

Yes, I took a picture of my big toe. Any of you that follow my social media pages have that shot.

I’m not proud.

Okay, maybe a little.

I think that post actually says more about the photo challenge than some of the better photographs do. The caption was basically: yesterday was tooth extraction day, today I feel like garbage, so here’s my foot because the challenge does not care about excuses. It’s about consistency, habits, and growth.

That’s not exactly National Geographic material, but it’s real.

The daily challenge never promised that every picture would be good. It’s only mandatory that I take one…every day. That has turned out to matter more than I expected. Some of the least impressive photographs probably say more about that consistency than some of the ones I’m most proud of.

The Challenge Changed Where I Look

One of the things I notice in the captions is how often I stopped needing a “big” subject.

At first, I think I assumed I needed to go somewhere. Someplace scenic. Somewhere with wildlife. A great sunset. Susan and I chase them all the time. Mountains. Water. Something impressive. Over time, more of the pictures started coming from much closer to home.

A smoky sunrise. The garden. Flowers. A squash patch. My mother-in-law’s farm. A tree. The light or shadows on a building. Whatever happened to be outside when I decided to actually look. There was a time when I struggled to figure out what I was going to shoot for the day. “There is nothing to take pictures of”. WORNG, that is a straight up lie. I was kidding myself. I can literally find something to photograph every day. I just had to learn to look. The subjects are there.

One caption summed it up pretty well: “No mountains, no big trip, no fancy plan.”

That’s probably one of the more important changes photography has made in me. I’m not always looking for something spectacular anymore. Sometimes the picture is five minutes away. Sometimes it’s behind the house.

Sometimes it’s in the yard.

Sometimes it’s my damned toe.

I work with what I have.

I Started Seeing Composition Without Calling It Composition

It's another thing I didn’t notice while it was happening.

I started talking about how things were arranged in the frame, rule of thirds, and camera setup. The old truck and silos. A flower making a circular frame around a bee. A reflection under a bird. A boardwalk disappearing into the trees. Getting the camera down low in the garden. Clouds become part of the picture instead of just being in the sky.

I started using words like composition, perspective, reflection, low angle, shallow depth of field, and leading lines more naturally. That’s interesting because I didn’t sit down one day and decide, “Today I shall become a photographer who understands composition.”

I just kept taking pictures. Every day. Some worked. Some didn’t. Some really didn’t. Some were flat out horrible and will never see the light of day!

But repetition started changing what I noticed.

That’s the whole reason I started the challenge in the first place. I wanted to get better.

Apparently, I have been.

Sneaky little bastard.

My Sense of Humor Showed Up Too

Wait, what? Me with a sense of humor?

Another thing Susan’s comment made me realize is that the captions started sounding more like me.

That took a while.

There’s a temptation when you post photography online to sound like a photographer or try to. I honestly think it is hard not to (at least a little) once you learn some of the terminology and can start talking shop. You know the type. Some poetic statements about light, emotion, timeless moments, and the soul of the landscape.

That’s fine if that’s how you actually talk.

I don’t.

I’m more likely to write something like, “The desert does most of the work. I just point the camera and try not to mess it up too badly.”

That sounds more like me.

Or, “Finally found a horse that would hold still.”

Or, “Some days the photo is not hiding very hard.”

That’s where I’m more comfortable. I don’t want every caption to sound like a joke, but I also don’t want to pretend I’m standing on a mountain giving a TED Talk about the spiritual meaning of aperture (even though it can be almost spiritual when you get the shot right).

Sometimes I’m just trying not to screw up the picture.

That’s the honest truth.

I Thought I Was Writing Captions

Travel has expanded the challenge in ways I didn’t really expect. Being away from home has forced me to photograph things I don’t normally see. South Carolina gives me marshes, Spanish moss, wood storks, different birds, and boardwalks that looked like something out of a swamp movie.

New Mexico gives me desert landscapes, rock, haze, moonlight, and several opportunities to stand around in the middle of the night in the dark wondering whether skinwalkers are real.

Idaho gives me home. Water, birds, fields, mountains, sunrises, and places I recognize.

My captions show the difference between those environments.

They also show that I’m beginning to react to the place instead of simply taking the same kind of photograph everywhere I go.

That feels like progress to me.

I’m learning to let the location tell me what’s worth seeing instead of arriving with a picture already built in my head. Most of the time the location has a better idea than I do.

Hashtags Are Weirdly Useful Too

I never expected hashtags to tell me anything. Mostly, I think of them as the little pile of words I stick at the bottom of a social media post so somebody might actually find the picture. Hell, for the longest time I had no idea if they were even relevant, how they worked, or what they were supposed to do. But when I look through them over time, they act almost like labels in a filing cabinet.

#BirdPhotography.

#ReflectionPhotography.

#LandscapePhotography.

#GardenPhotography.

#CreativePhotography.

#WildlifePhotography.

They’re basically little markers showing what I was working on at different points in the year. I can see when I was photographing more wildlife, when I was experimenting, when travel changed the subjects, and when reflections kept showing up.

My photo hashtags have been keeping records.

Who knew?

I Thought I Was Posting Pictures

That’s the part I keep coming back to.

I thought I was posting photographs. Take the picture, edit the picture, write the caption, add the hashtags, post it, and repeat the next day.

But Susan noticed something I didn’t. She always sees the things I don’t. Her perspective is vastly different from mine. She is unintentionally inspiring to me and she doesn’t even know it.

My captions are telling the story between the photographs.

They are showing my frustration, humor, travel, learning, bad days, good days, experiments, mistakes, and other crap I noticed, and things I probably would’ve ignored before. They show how I’m seeing differently, not just how I photograph differently.

This is a huge deal to me! It’s changed the way I shoot.

The photographs are showing what was in front of me. The captions are starting to show what was going on inside my head while I was looking at it.

It wasn’t part of the plan.

A Journal I Didn’t Mean to Write

I’ve never been particularly good at keeping a journal.

I have tried.

Like many of my projects, I’m sure there is a partially completed notebook somewhere waiting patiently for archaeologists. Last time I actually remember physically writing a journal was when the wife and I were on our cross country motorcycle trip back in 2018. Ancient history, I know.

But apparently, if I disguise journaling as photography and social media, I’ll do it every day. Surprise!

That sounds about right.

Here’s the funny thing. Someday I may value the captions as much as some of the photographs. Why? Because a photograph can show me what something looked like, but the caption reminds me what was in my head when I took it.

Where I was.

What I was learning.

Whether Susan was with me.

Whether I was tired.

Whether the day was going great or completely off the rails.

The picture captures the scene. The words capture a little bit of me.

Not something I planned.

So, What Happens Next

I’m not going to suddenly start treating every caption like it needs to become a miniature blog post. Nobody needs that and it isn’t intended to be that.

Sometimes it’s just a bird.

Sometimes “Rough Day at Market Lake” is enough. Poor Heron was struggling.

But I think I’ll pay a little more attention to what I write from here on out. Not because I want the captions to sound more polished, but because now I know what they’re doing. They’re documenting the challenge right along with the photographs. They help complete my content. They make the finished product what it is.

By the end of this year, I won’t just have 365 daily photographs. I’ll literally have hundreds of little notes about where I went, what I saw, what I tried, what worked, what didn’t, what made Susan and me laugh, and what made me stop long enough to take the picture.

Here all along I thought I was just writing captions.

As it turns out, I’ve been writing the story the whole time.

Susan noticed it before I did.

Of course she did.