John Mitchell Posted November 12, 2014 Share Posted November 12, 2014 Have never been able to figure this term out. Is a "cityscape" only a shot of a city's skyline? Or can it also mean a shot of a street or prominent landmark? Or...? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Rooney Posted November 12, 2014 Share Posted November 12, 2014 Cityscape is the term I use most often, but some say 'urban landscape.' There is some wiggle room in what can be label as such . . . and we can calls it as we sees it, no? Not just skylines, surely? I guess the term or terms we use in our keywords is important. So which of these is what? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Mitchell Posted November 12, 2014 Author Share Posted November 12, 2014 Edo, I'd call all of those shots "cityscapes," but then I'm not sure what a cityscape is. Reason I'm asking is that I've seen image requests for "cityscapes" recently and haven't known what was meant exactly. "Urbanscapes" anyone? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Rooney Posted November 12, 2014 Share Posted November 12, 2014 John John John, what have you done? Now I have to go running through my collection and adding keywords again? I don't think the Mulberry Street sign is a cityscape. A landmark, yes . . . because it's in English and Chinese. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Betty LaRue Posted November 12, 2014 Share Posted November 12, 2014 When I hear the term, I always think of a wide angle, somewhat distant view of a good number of the buildings, and also showing some of the sky. Yes, skyline. But what do I know,that's just my own perception. Like this one of mine. E17EXJ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Mitchell Posted November 12, 2014 Author Share Posted November 12, 2014 When I hear the term, I always think of a wide angle, somewhat distant view of a good number of the buildings, and also showing some of the sky. Yes, skyline. But what do I know,that's just my own perception. Like this one of mine. E17EXJ Yes, that's what first comes to mind for me as well. But ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TokyoM1ke Posted November 12, 2014 Share Posted November 12, 2014 Isn't there the same problem with defining a "landscape"? According to Google (must be true!), the word came into common usage in about 1950. And it is "the visual appearance of a city or urban area; a city landscape." Are we being a bit pedantic... splitting hairs... not considering the obvious? Or am I missing something? Edit: From a personal point of view it brings to mind more than a single building centre-frame. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Mitchell Posted November 12, 2014 Author Share Posted November 12, 2014 Isn't there the same problem with defining a "landscape"? According to Google (must be true!), the word came into common usage in about 1950. And it is "the visual appearance of a city or urban area; a city landscape." Are we being a bit pedantic... splitting hairs... not considering the obvious? Or am I missing something? We probably are being somewhat pedantic, but does the "visual appearance of a city" mean an overall view of a city (e.g. skyline), or does it include street scenes, specific buildings, parks, etc. A quick check of Alamy Measures / All of Alamy shows a lot of searches containing the term "cityscape." What were these clients looking for? P.S. Isn't "city landscape" something of an oxymoron? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TokyoM1ke Posted November 12, 2014 Share Posted November 12, 2014 Isn't there the same problem with defining a "landscape"? According to Google (must be true!), the word came into common usage in about 1950. And it is "the visual appearance of a city or urban area; a city landscape." Are we being a bit pedantic... splitting hairs... not considering the obvious? Or am I missing something? We probably are being somewhat pedantic, but does the "visual appearance of a city" mean an overall view of a city (e.g. skyline), or does it include street scenes, specific buildings, parks, etc. A quick check of Alamy Measures / All of Alamy shows a lot of searches containing the term "cityscape." What were these clients looking for? P.S. Isn't "city landscape" something of an oxymoron? Maybe an oxymoron but cities are built on land... urban landscape and rural landscape might be easier to interpret. Isn't keywording a game of 'better include it'? If this forum is struggling to work out what it means, I would consider it for anything that is not just one object/building centre frame, giving the impression of a continuous urban area. But I'd probably include it more widely after reading this thread... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted November 12, 2014 Share Posted November 12, 2014 The customer is always right and I suspect that, to most customers, cityscape is a pretty conventional definition. Don't want unwanted views, particularly when I have possibly more relevant images that I want them to see, so tend to stick, boringly, to convention. Just had a (Creative) view of one the most unlikely of my shots of given object - despite relegating some keywords to Comprehensive and location to Location - I noticed that someone else got the sale - so pretty keen to avoid future occurrences. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doc Posted November 12, 2014 Share Posted November 12, 2014 John, Thanks for bringing this subject up - it has enabled me to realise that all my images I had keyworded had "cityscape" spelled incorrectly! (Number of searches in the past year for "citiscape" - 6 Number of searches in the past year for "cityscape" - more than 100) Kumar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacecadet Posted November 12, 2014 Share Posted November 12, 2014 A tenth of my images have 'cityscape' and I've had exactly 3 searches on it this year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digi2ap Posted November 12, 2014 Share Posted November 12, 2014 Thanks for raising this. Cityscape is clearly a useful keyword and is relevant to several of my images but none of which have it included. Some re-keywording is now needed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inchiquin Posted November 12, 2014 Share Posted November 12, 2014 And when the planners cock-up there is an inevitable search for the cityscapegoat. Not forgetting those who got out of Stalag Luft III on wheelchairs, who took part in the Great Sit Escape... Sorry... I'll just get my coat. Alan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martin P Wilson Posted November 12, 2014 Share Posted November 12, 2014 Then there was that big heist in Spain - the Sitges Caper Ehw, sorry everyone! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill Kuta Posted November 12, 2014 Share Posted November 12, 2014 And Christo has made a city's cape or two... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Rooney Posted November 12, 2014 Share Posted November 12, 2014 When I hear the term, I always think of a wide angle, somewhat distant view of a good number of the buildings, and also showing some of the sky. Yes, skyline. But what do I know,that's just my own perception. Like this one of mine. E17EXJ Yes, that's what first comes to mind for me as well. But ... No. A skyline is a cityscape but not all cityscapes are skylines. Take NYC. There are only a few view points where we CAN take the classic New York skyline image -- from New Jersey or from Brooklyn . . . and a few others. But if you make a wide shot of Time Square or the Wall Street area or the 9/11 Memorial area, well I would refer to those as cityscapes and landmarks, but not skylines (unless the 9/11 Memorial area is viewed as part of the bigger picture. None of this would matter if it was not for keywords. I'm gonna put them all in. And as Mike pointed out, there is not one narrow definition of a landscape either. (Sorry about that typo I just corrected.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill Brooks Posted November 12, 2014 Share Posted November 12, 2014 Edo: You make a good point. I always used cityscape and skyline as meaning the same thing. Perhaps I should be keywording, could only be in Toronto city views, that are not skylines, as Toronto cityscape? I wonder if the client would use cityscape as a keyword on this Toronto image? It is not a skyline, but maybe the streetcar identifies it as a Toronto cityscape? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Rooney Posted November 12, 2014 Share Posted November 12, 2014 I would be comfortable calling that scene a cityscape, Bill. It shows the character of that neighborhood. And you have a classic skyline as seen from across the water with the CN Tower. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clupica Posted November 12, 2014 Share Posted November 12, 2014 Looking at Alamy Measures, there has been over 400 searches in the past year that included the word "cityscape". Almost all of those include the name of a city , many of them include additional keywords. There were 21 UCOs (Unique Customers) that did a search on just the word "cityscape". Clearly cityscape is a more important keyword than I (we ?) thought. Seascape has less than 40 searches. While it seems like such a generic term, "landscape" has a whopping 2400 searches. Again, nearly all of these include a place and additional keywords. Keeping in mind that keyword order and keyword phrases do impact searches, even if the phrases can't be delineated, it might be a useful endeavor to look through the keywords for phrases that should be used with your images. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Mitchell Posted November 12, 2014 Author Share Posted November 12, 2014 Thanks for all the useful feedback. I too have tended to use "cityscape" as a keyword only with skyline shots. Guess I'll have to go back sometime and do a lot of updating. There's no e-scape-ing it, I'm afraid. Really liked Mike's concise definition of "cityscape" (quoted below): "...I would consider it for anything that is not just one object/building centre frame, giving the impression of a continuous urban area." However, I have a feeling clients have varying ideas about what constitutes a cityscape. Unfortunately, that one is impossible to sort out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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