How do you obtain your keywords?

[Trevor Chriss]

Without giving away your closely guarded secrets, I was just wondering how you go about keywording.  Anybody using third party sites etc , or software, I know there are some but they seem quite expensive - Worth It?

Yes of course I have a vested interest in asking but also quite curious.

[Trevor Chriss]

Thanks Philippe

 

Yes I have been realising of late that I need to keep a file of strings. I need to rework my older images so I think I will combine to the two jobs.

[Robert M Estall]

there's a neat little application "post it notes" works just like the things some of us plaster all over our monitors & desk surfaces  You can keep it over in the corner of your screen and keep selections of words/keywords/your own misspellings etc. Or you can just keep a scaled down page of Word and use that to cut and paste strings. not elegant but works for me. Just don't copy other photographers sets, they may be wrong, and it's not allowed

 

Robert

[ann]

Can't offer much help, Jeff, but - based on brain + common sense + increasing experience counter-balanced by decreasing memory - I add keywords in Adobe Bridge metadata 

 

passengers? commuters? riders? self-serve?

 

- Ann

[Jane Hobson]

Hmm, how do I 'obtain' my keywords? Are you asking on a deep, philosophical level? Or a mundane, everyday, level? Either way, it's pretty much the same. I THINK. 

[Richard Baker]

Ditto, I'm afraid. No use of extra-clever systems or Heath-Robinson contraptions - just the power of thought and as Jeff says, "experience". 

 

But I still make stupid mistakes and omissions. The words that should be summing up the image often haven't surfaced then days after the upload, I might insert a few into comp keys days plus remove or demote the irrelevant ones found years later. Might not help to the extent that it changes my ranking but it's just a personal thing.   

 

Richard. 

[DickJ]

One thing I think I have learned:  just because you can see something in the image when it is at 100% does not mean that it is important enough to keyword.  It probably isn't the reason for the image.

Dick Janzig

[Ed Rooney]

Okay, what's next? This guy playing the piano on the street . . . with a little dog on top of the piano. Hmm. I'll put his name in first: Dotan Negrin. And I better put in his dog's name too: Brando. Is that a Jack Russell? No, part Jack, maybe, but a mixed breed. Don't say mute. In Essential I'll put Dotan Negrin, busker, piano, dog, Brando and entertainment . . . but without the commas. I better put music and upright piano and Little Italy and NYC and mixed breed in Main. And that's it, I think? Yeah, that's enough. It will never sell, anyway.   CPPDXN

[wiskerke]

Okay, what's next? This guy playing the piano on the street . . . with a little dog on top of the piano. Hmm. I'll put his name in first: Dotan Negrin. And I better put in his dog's name too: Brando. Is that a Jack Russell? No, part Jack, maybe, but a mixed breed. Don't say mute. In Essential I'll put Dotan Negrin, busker, piano, dog, Brando and entertainment . . . but without the commas. I better put music and upright piano and Little Italy and NYC and mixed breed in Main. And that's it, I think? Yeah, that's enough. It will never sell, anyway. CPPDXN

Ed,

so you think you know that nobody will search for this guy, right? And you are using the most valuable keyword space for just that info?

It is probably very useful info for a client, after he/she has found the image and is thinking about using it. Just for that one person looking for Dotan (his mom?) it would suffice to put his and his dog's name in Comprehensive. If there were a 100 images of this quite famous busker, then it would be appropriate to use the valuable Esskeys real estate for that.

Somehow I can't believe you did that ;-)

 

What would a client be looking for? What is the story you would love to see illustrated with this guy's picture? Little Italy street life, maybe. So that goes in Esskeys. Busker with dog or pet, maybe. Waitaminit, what's that sign at the bottom of the piano? Facebook! A busker using Facebook! So is he a musician that used to play stadiums and is now playing the streets? Or is it the other way around?

I would do something with that in both the description and in Main. Facebook should even go in Esskeys I think, and in Caption: with Facebook sign. Although in that case I would crop the image to an exact square, so that the dog; the pianist and the sign form a triangle. Your thumbnail, thus the Facebook sign is 50% bigger that way.

Maybe just try that as a test, to see if there's any interest in the guy after all. (Not just from his mom.)

 

I just checked AoA for searches on Facebook and it won't be easy to fit this image in any of the 600+ searches. Facebook marketing; Facebook sign; advertising maybe. It is a man using Facebook, but the client looking for an image of a man using Facebook, means a guy with an iPad. On facebook comes pretty close. Following, maybe or just social media and public space. But you are right who would ever look for an image, no: who would ever write about that, other then facebook while driving? ;-)

 

You're probably right: maybe just busker Little Italy after all ;-) Maybe with dog or pet. Famous busker, maybe. And street, music, playing, because there are not a lot of searches for buskers. There have been searches for musical street performers in new york; street musician; street piano, even. Oh and 10,000 searches for with.

 

wim

[Photoguy]

I write the caption first. Then use the caption to suggest the most likely terms that a potential buyer is likely to search so he can find the image, inserting synonyms as I go along. 

[Ed Rooney]

 

Okay, what's next? This guy playing the piano on the street . . . with a little dog on top of the piano. Hmm. I'll put his name in first: Dotan Negrin. And I better put in his dog's name too: Brando. Is that a Jack Russell? No, part Jack, maybe, but a mixed breed. Don't say mute. In Essential I'll put Dotan Negrin, busker, piano, dog, Brando and entertainment . . . but without the commas. I better put music and upright piano and Little Italy and NYC and mixed breed in Main. And that's it, I think? Yeah, that's enough. It will never sell, anyway. CPPDXN

Ed,

so you think you know that nobody will search for this guy, right? And you are using the most valuable keyword space for just that info?

It is probably very useful info for a client, after he/she has found the image and is thinking about using it. Just for that one person looking for Dotan (his mom?) it would suffice to put his and his dog's name in Comprehensive. If there were a 100 images of this quite famous busker, then it would be appropriate to use the valuable Esskeys real estate for that.

Somehow I can't believe you did that ;-)

 

What would a client be looking for? What is the story you would love to see illustrated with this guy's picture? Little Italy street life, maybe. So that goes in Esskeys. Busker with dog or pet, maybe. Waitaminit, what's that sign at the bottom of the piano? Facebook! A busker using Facebook! So is he a musician that used to play stadiums and is now playing the streets? Or is it the other way around?

I would do something with that in both the description and in Main. Facebook should even go in Esskeys I think, and in Caption: with Facebook sign. Although in that case I would crop the image to an exact square, so that the dog; the pianist and the sign form a triangle. Your thumbnail, thus the Facebook sign is 50% bigger that way.

Maybe just try that as a test, to see if there's any interest in the guy after all. (Not just from his mom.)

 

I just checked AoA for searches on Facebook and it won't be easy to fit this image in any of the 600+ searches. Facebook marketing; Facebook sign; advertising maybe. It is a man using Facebook, but the client looking for an image of a man using Facebook, means a guy with an iPad. On facebook comes pretty close. Following, maybe or just social media and public space. But you are right who would ever look for an image, no: who would ever write about that, other then facebook while driving? ;-)

 

You're probably right: maybe just busker Little Italy after all ;-) Maybe with dog or pet. Famous busker, maybe. And street, music, playing, because there are not a lot of searches for buskers. There have been searches for musical street performers in new york; street musician; street piano, even. Oh and 10,000 searches for with.

 

wim

 

Wim, my response to the OP's somewhat oddly worded "How do you obtain your keywords" was to create a mini-drama of me doing key wording. I could have said that I look at the image, I think, enter keywords, and I move on. Getting a third party to "obtain" keywords is like getting a third party to do scanning---a bad idea. Stock is a labor-intensive business. 

 

I did make two changes based on your input: moved "busker" to the first-word position and (reluctantly) added Facebook sign. In fact I don't recall if he was busking, a very British term. I don't see any hat or can in evidence. "a person who entertains in a public place for donations," says Webs. 

 

With regard to my saying the image won't sell, who knows what's going to sell? But if I were the buyer, and I have been a buyer, I would look for a picture of this guy surrounded by people listening to the music with happy expressions. 

 

My own CTR and sales and position were pretty good in the last year . . . since I decided on the less-is-more approach to keywording. But my guess is that every contributor on Alamy would do keywording in a somewhat different way. Oh, and I did not list all my keywords in my last post. 

[Julie Edwards]

I start with the caption and move on from there. My keywording is very literal and quite tight.

[wiskerke]

Ed,

 

I guessed the last part ;-)

Ahh no public: add lonely and unsuccessful and if you're feeling conceptual even crisis in music ;-))

In AoA there were searches for man playing piano outside and outdoors. And there are images of that on Alamy: 73 come up; mostly, but not all of a man and a piano. Most of them without listeners. Piano's are maybe not the best instruments to go busking?

 

This one takes the cake:

 

Singers Andy Williams and Burt Bacharach play tennis

 

- This was the client looking for a man playing piano outside.

 

wim

[Ed Rooney]

Originally, I had typed in "white piano," but then I thought . . . if I were a buyer looking for a white piano it would probably not be that sad example, it would surely be a Liberace-style white piano. I think I might have "white upright" in there still. 

 

Brrrrrr! It's as cold as it is in South Australia here today.  

[Peter Jordan]

I have an Excell spreadsheet with details of all my Alamy Images.   For each image this includes my file no., Alamy Ref no., shoot date, upload date, original file ref, caption, keywords and description.

 

If I shoot a subject that I have done previously, I can go on Alamy "My Images" and search for it.    Using Alamy ref I then search the spreadsheet to find the image and then I can cut and paste the keywords.

 

After that I look through them very carefully, as some usually need to be changed.

 

At one time you could get a spreadsheet from Alamy with all your image details on, and then send it back to Alamy with changes to be incorporated.  Can one still do this?

[flotsom]

If you use photoshop you can save the iptc templates, I have a few saved according to scene, subject etc and then under file/info you can just apply the template and add additional keywords as needed.

[Rolf Adlercreutz]

Okay, what's next? This guy playing the piano on the street . . . with a little dog on top of the piano. Hmm. I'll put his name in first: Dotan Negrin. And I better put in his dog's name too: Brando. Is that a Jack Russell? No, part Jack, maybe, but a mixed breed. Don't say mute. In Essential I'll put Dotan Negrin, busker, piano, dog, Brando and entertainment . . . but without the commas. I better put music and upright piano and Little Italy and NYC and mixed breed in Main. And that's it, I think? Yeah, that's enough. It will never sell, anyway.   CPPDXN

I'd put the info about the guy and his dog in caption field as a complete sentence, then add keywords. Anybody looking for him will find the name and the picture.