Our understanding of the image of often largely determined by the caption. The information under a caption is often accepted without demur by the reader of the image as factually correct, and often determines how we perceive that image. For instance, image (a) says that it is 'Glasgow, 1868' - how do we know that this is factually correct. How do we know that we can trust the person who claimed that this is what it is, is there anything in the image itself that can corroborate that information? In this age of digital technology can we take any image at face value? In image (b) the caption claims that it is a 'Christmas display', which we may have deduced from the vast numbers of turkeys as this is something that we are culturally familiar with. However, to someone totally unfamiliar with that concept, it may have been assumed that this was a traditional butcher's, and that this was how the shop looked all year round.

Using our general knowledge of such images, which often appear in popular history books, we may well have been able to guess at the dates, and to some extent the content of such images. For instance, we would have to question why such images were taken. Taking image (b) again, it could be assumed that the shopkeepers regularly lined up outside the shop, but if we research the reasons for which photos were taken in that day and age, we would possibly find that it was taken for promotional purposes.

With image (d) we would again question why the image was taken. The caption shows that it is a 'still' from some news footage and it would be interesting to see the rest of the footage to determine where this particular image fits in, and whether it was representative of the rest of the tape. The caption claims that it is 'at the height of the miners strike' and this indicates that this was the worst that it achieved. We would look at the image itself to see if it appeared to corroborate the information.

We would question what difference another caption would make to the image. A caption can sometimes demonstrate lend a 'bias' to an image that we may be unaware of, therefore we must question the caption as much as we would question the image itself. Often we do need to accept a caption at face value, but we need to use it as a starting point to determine further information, rather than 'as is'.