I have a figure with a caption and it doesn't seem to center properly. It seems to left justify the figure:
\begin{figure}
{\centering\includegraphics[width=.9\textwidth]{figures/afigure}}
\protect\caption{Some Title\label{fig:some_label}}
\vspace{.3cm}
\footnotesize
A really nice description of the plot that you see above. It talks about all the interesting aspects of this plot.
\normalsize
\end{figure}
\protect
looks very odd there (it never does anything useful if it is not in the argument of some other command that needs it (a "moving argument")