Years ago, when gathering names for captions I would write a name, age and location in a notebook. I had tons of these notebooks. Many times, when I’d get back to the newsroom to process my film and edit my images I would barely be able to read my chicken scratch writing. I’d figure it out, but it became a real pain in the neck at times.

Fast forward 20 years later. An iPhone…. video camera built in, it’s now so much easier to keep track of id’s for photographic captions. Nowadays I videotape my photographic subjects saying their names and where they are from. That way, there’s no doubt I have the names spelled correctly .

This video is a small sampling of some of the people I’ve photographed recently as they give me their names.