How do you describe/tag your photos?

[Shelybear]

Hello everyone.

 

I'm interested in how do contributors here tag or describe their own photos to archive a higher discoverability. And what's supertag? I haven't found any yet, so I'm super-curious about that.

Lately I've been given a useful website (https://keyword.io/tool/stock-photo-research) by Rick, which helped me already to add a few more tags. However the discoverability (shown by automatic scale) is still not good enough. Therefore I'd like to know how I could improve on this.  Well I had a quick search on the forum and found many people think this discoverability thing is somehow just annoying than actually useful, thus there's no need to stress myself with that. However I'm still curious how do you normally do with your photos.

 

Please tell me how to you tag them and what information do you normally add in. And thanks in advance for any information shared

[John Morrison]

You've asked too broad a question! Check out the contributors' guidelines, for info about tags, etc. I'd suggest you forget about 'discoverability' (and maybe Alamy should too).

 

Add the tags that will help buyers to find your pix, but make sure they are directly relevant to your pix. You don't want your pix being viewed when they aren't relevant to a search.

[Shelybear]

23 minutes ago, John Morrison said:

You've asked too broad a question! Check out the contributors' guidelines, for info about tags, etc. I'd suggest you forget about 'discoverability' (and maybe Alamy should too).

 

Add the tags that will help buyers to find your pix, but make sure they are directly relevant to your pix. You don't want your pix being viewed when they aren't relevant to a search.

I'm actually not asking 'how should people describe the photos', but rather I would like to how people here in this forum (personally) do so after the photos have passed QC.

For me, I filled in every single blank which is applicable (although some of them are under 'optional' tab). But I found it really a bit way too time-consuming.

 

So I'd like to know, from personal perspective (or from rule of thumb) which information find people useful and what don't they even bother to do.

[John Morrison]

Too time-consuming? Tagging/keywording is just as important, in selling stock, as actually taking the pix.

[Betty LaRue]

Put the best description you can squeeze in in your caption. Who, (woman, man, child) what they are doing (running, playing) where (location). Repeat those words in your tags.

On the second Optional page, I fill out every single blank. I copy the caption to More information and add anything that I want to say about the image that didn’t fit into the caption. I always assign a category. The more information you put on the Optional page might be a few facts that makes a buyer choose yours over someone else’s similar.

An image with people or property you have no release for needs to be listed as RM or RF editorial.

Time spent on prepping your images properly is not wasted.

I will say that not everyone does it the way I do. Some of those people are high-volume shooters who can’t take the time. They sell a lot, because they have thousands of images. Whose to say if all the information was added that they wouldn’t sell more? Nobody knows for sure.

I’m not a high-volume shooter so I take care with each image.

Betty

[Jill Morgan]

I do most of my keywording before I submit my images to Alamy.  I fill in all info, have a comprehensive caption and often will study the last year on AoA to see what searches buyers have made that may be relevant to my image.  For example, you have a pic of autumn leaves.  You haven't mentioned what type of tree, both common and scientific names.  Buyers search using both.  Some one might be doing an article on trees in autumn in Germany but your image would not come up as it doesn't specify the type or where it was taken. Being that Alamy generally sells editorial images, buyers are looking for images to compliment an article or news story. 

 

I use all 10 supertags allowed with every image.  Although you are allowed 50 total tags, it is pretty rare to come up with that many relevant tags for one image.  Only 10% of my images have what Alamy calls good discoverability, which actually is meaningless.

 

The more information you provide a buyer, the better your chances of a sale.

 

Jill

 

[Stokie]

2 hours ago, Shelybear said:

Hello everyone.

 

I'm interested in how do contributors here tag or describe their own photos to archive a higher discoverability. And what's supertag? I haven't found any yet, so I'm super-curious about that.

Lately I've been given a useful website (https://keyword.io/tool/stock-photo-research) by Rick, which helped me already to add a few more tags. However the discoverability (shown by automatic scale) is still not good enough. Therefore I'd like to know how I could improve on this.  Well I had a quick search on the forum and found many people think this discoverability thing is somehow just annoying than actually useful, thus there's no need to stress myself with that. However I'm still curious how do you normally do with your photos.

 

Please tell me how to you tag them and what information do you normally add in. And thanks in advance for any information shared

 

You can see other people's tags if you click on the blue number next to Images (on this forum, the panel on the left), then just click on an image to see what tags they have added.

 

John.

[Rico]

The OP asked about supertags.

When you are adding keywords in the Image Manager you will see a star next to the K word, click on the star and it will turn blue. Now you have a supertag. 

You are allowed a maximum of 10 supertags. Supertags are keywords that are given priority in searches so use them just for the most important and obvious descriptions.

Rick 

[Shelybear]

Thank you for everyone who have provided useful information. And thank you Rick for solve my question again!

 

2 hours ago, Jill Morgan said:

I do most of my keywording before I submit my images to Alamy.  I fill in all info, have a comprehensive caption and often will study the last year on AoA to see what searches buyers have made that may be relevant to my image.  For example, you have a pic of autumn leaves.  You haven't mentioned what type of tree, both common and scientific names.  Buyers search using both.  Some one might be doing an article on trees in autumn in Germany but your image would not come up as it doesn't specify the type or where it was taken. Being that Alamy generally sells editorial images, buyers are looking for images to compliment an article or news story. 

 

I use all 10 supertags allowed with every image.  Although you are allowed 50 total tags, it is pretty rare to come up with that many relevant tags for one image.  Only 10% of my images have what Alamy calls good discoverability, which actually is meaningless.

 

The more information you provide a buyer, the better your chances of a sale.

 

Jill

 

And thank you very much for this reply. Now I understand a bit more about how it works on this website and who the main audience are. I haven't thought from this perspective before.

 

Keywording (especially in a very different language from my native language) was not so easy for me. I enjoy taking photos and editing photos afterwards. And I normally take photos under my themes/catagories. But I don't to deep on describing my photos or so and haven't thought about it from an editorial point of view.

[Cryptoprocta]

You have my sympathy, I'd hate to have to keyword in any other language.

 

[Zigzagmtart]

I usually consider taking the photo to be about 10% of the work.  Uploading, title, description, keywords is the rest.  I fill out everything I can that applies.

[DDoug]

I think knowing what to leave out is as important as what to include in your tags. Ask yourself what buyers are probably looking for when they input a given search term. A photo of mine has a pileated woodpecker in the distance, so, to be  thorough, I included that. Then I noticed that the shot was coming up in Alamy Measures among a bunch of others that were close-up or telephoto shots of pileated woodpeckers. Mine didn't belong there and its inclusion would only hurt my CTR, so I deleted the tag. If the bird had been more prominently visible in the photo, I'd have left it.

As for workflow, the last software stage for me is Photoshop and I do my keywording there. That leaves minimal time to complete the task and fill in the blanks after QC.

[Bryan]

Once you have a sizeable portfolio it is instructive to study the searches made that have produced views amongst your photos. You will often find different uses for keywords that were not apparent to you when keywording. I check this every working day, and it's rare that I don't find something new to add. e.g. today I saw a search for "vegetable plot" a phrase that I had failed to apply to some of my vegetable garden photos. 

 

Another tip, applicable to all, always check your keywords after they become live.  Maybe I am more error prone than most, but I often find errors or, more particularly, omissions on a second look.  I occasionally find long standing errors , years after uploading, when checking or amending keywords.

 

As others have said, it is impossible to over emphasise the importance of good key wording. 

 

Checking for images in the papers every day, I see numerous examples of inadequate or bad practice. All the better for the conscientious key-worders  of course.......

 

[Southpole]

4 hours ago, Bryan said:

Once you have a sizeable portfolio it is instructive to study the searches made that have produced views amongst your photos. You will often find different uses for keywords that were not apparent to you when keywording. I check this every working day, and it's rare that I don't find something new to add. e.g. today I saw a search for "vegetable plot" a phrase that I had failed to apply to some of my vegetable garden photos. 

 

Another tip, applicable to all, always check your keywords after they become live.  Maybe I am more error prone than most, but I often find errors or, more particularly, omissions on a second look.  I occasionally find long standing errors , years after uploading, when checking or amending keywords.

 

As others have said, it is impossible to stress the importance of good key wording. 

 

Checking for images in the papers every day, I see numerous examples of inadequate or bad practice. All the better for the conscientious key-worders  of course.......

 

I have started looking at my searched images and often find mistakes even mis spelling 

[Allan Bell]

 

How do you describe/tag your photos?

Carefully.

 

Allan

 

 

[Matt Limb]

On 3/8/2018 at 13:42, John Morrison said:

Too time-consuming? Tagging/keywording is just as important, in selling stock, as actually taking the pix.

 

 

You can take the best selling stock picture ever ............................ but it will not sell if it can't be found!

 

 

[Shelybear]

On 3/9/2018 at 07:20, DDoug said:

I think knowing what to leave out is as important as what to include in your tags. Ask yourself what buyers are probably looking for when they input a given search term. A photo of mine has a pileated woodpecker in the distance, so, to be  thorough, I included that. Then I noticed that the shot was coming up in Alamy Measures among a bunch of others that were close-up or telephoto shots of pileated woodpeckers. Mine didn't belong there and its inclusion would only hurt my CTR, so I deleted the tag. If the bird had been more prominently visible in the photo, I'd have left it.

As for workflow, the last software stage for me is Photoshop and I do my keywording there. That leaves minimal time to complete the task and fill in the blanks after QC.

 

Hm..maybe I'm not familiar with the website and this searching stuff. How do you know what people have searched for? I've checked my photos, they show me the tag I've added in. But I have no idea what other people might look for it. I think it would be helpful in terms of adding relevant tags as only working by self could be limited.

 

Also thanks for the software tips. I haven't use this tool in PS before (I only edit my photo as I like and didn't need to think of keywording), therefore I just tag them on the website. And most of the time I need to choose them one by one manually, adding address and sometime even dates (I'm not sure why, as they should be included in the photo anyway. Sometime they work well, but sometime didn't come up).

[DDoug]

In your Dashboard (alamy.com/myalamy-aim.aspx) click on Alamy Measures and under that click on Your images. There you will find links to the views for the last 30 days for each Pseudonym. If you click the radio button Yesterday, you'll see just the previous day.

In Photoshop, under File you'll see File Info. You can also get there on a PC by holding down alt-shift-control and clicking the letter I. There you will see Basic, where you can do keywording. At the bottom of the panel you will see Template. If you have several photos that use the same set of keywords, you can export the tags, giving them a name. Then, with another photo info open, you can go back to Template and import the whole set so you don't have to do it all again.