Assignment: Writing Captions

The assignment: Write the two assigned captions for the following photos, and e-mail them to me by 9 a.m. Thursday morning.Photo No. 1:

The task

: Write a short headline and caption for this photo that will run without astory. Limit yourself to no more than six words for the headline and 45 words for thecaption.Caption information from photographer:“This photo is of an unidentified woman. I should have gotten her name, but itslipped my mind, and when I remembered, she was gone. Sorry. Anyway, whatshe’s doing here, obviously, is getting ready to kiss a toad. Yuk. I got the shot at theLondon Bridge Experience, which is a big tourist attraction in London. They have acreepy show and a museum, with special exhibitions. This week they’re doing aspecial called on Phobophobia. It’s all about facing your fears of such things likedark corners, spiders, slithering snakes, creepy clowns, witches and even reptiles(hence the toad), though I guess toads are technically amphibians. I think that’scalled batrachophobia, but I could be wrong. And, yeah, she actually kissed thetoad.”

Photo No. 2

The task:

Write a caption for this photo that will run with the accompanying story.Limit the caption to 45 words or less. Base the caption on the photographer’s notes,the story and any other research you need to do.

Photographer’s notes

: Here’s a photo I took Monday of a little girl. She wasriding in the back of a truck with her family through Pasig City, a suburb of thegreater Manila metro area, in the Philippines. The truck was part of a convoy takingrefugees such as these back to the homes they left in the city’s outlying areas. Herfamily’s home, like thousands of others, was destroyed by the deadly flooding thatfollowed two recent typhoons that struck the island nation. Hundreds of people diedin the flooding, and some people are still dying as a result of illnesses related to theflooding.

Foreign health experts in Philippines to study flood-borne disease

MANILA (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) – Foreign health experts on Tuesday began anassessment of a outbreak of a flood-borne disease that has killed 167 people in the Philippines.The four-member team was dispatched to Manila by the World Health Organization after thePhilippines sought international assistance to deal with the increasing cases of leptospirosis.The experts were expected to be in the Philippines for three weeks to study the strain of leptospirosis that has also infected more than 2,000 people.“They will help identify why the current leptospirosis is fierce, resulting to a lot of deaths,” saidEric Tayag, chief epidemiologist of the Philippine Department of Health.Leptospirosis is a life-threatening bacterial infection acquired when water contaminated byanimal urine comes into contact with breaks in the skin, eyes or mucous membranes. Theinfection could trigger kidney, liver and brain damage that could be fatal.The outbreak occurred after Tropical Storm Ketsana dumped one month's worth of rain onManila and its outlying areas on Sept. 26, causing the worst flooding in more than 40 years. Thedeluge killed 464 people. One week later, Typhoon Parma battered the northern Philippines,