Keywording

The key to selling photos where most sales are made today:

ONLINE

How images were sold last century

• Buyer contacts photographers or photo agents about particular subject

• Original Slides are sent unseen, usually at buyer’s expense (FedEx)

• Buyer views individual slides at light table• Buyer stores/protects slides until returns

made• Slides are valued at $1,500 each if lost or

damaged. Big risk for Buyer.

This Was a Seller’s Market

• Individual photographers could compete with stock agencies and retain 100% of their income from sales

• Most volume photo buyers were willing to build long-term relationships with photographers

• Descriptions given by buyers tended to be vague geographic location requests – for ”Caribbean” or “South Florida” or “St. Lucia.”

What Happened?

• Stock agencies began offering online portfolios (West Stock’s Muse)

• Photo buyers could review a greater selection of material

• Instant availability, no delay

• Importance of relationships with individual photographers diminished

• Conglomerates began to dominate

Photography became Googleized

• As choices grew greater, buyers had to search harder.

• Instead of receiving images, Buyers now had to seek them out.

• Buyers began developing a language that doesn’t always equate to how photographers perceive their work.

• Photographers have had to learn Buyer-speak.

Keywords = Buyer-speak

• How good a photographer you are may become secondary to how skillfully you keyword

• Because what good are your images if no one ever sees them?

• To see them, buyers must find them easily

Keywords are the primary way images are found today. Words have become more important than the actual images

Alamy Images

Bermuda, Hamilton, Sessions, Building, landmark, Government, Buildings, horizontal, impressive, stately, historic, tropical, tropic, like, caribbean, islands, island, blue, sky, travel, tourism, cruise, ship, m, timothy, okeefe, vacations, holiday, destination, summer, seasonal

Vs.

The new wonderfully enhanced versions such as The Angel of Harmony

Creating Your Keyword Lists

• It has been said it takes as many as 422 keywords to describe a photo.

• No photo is worth half a thousand words.

• Too many keywords can work against you.

• You specialize in travel. Therefore many of your words will repeat

Some Advice from Alamy

• in the way they are described. For example, the term ”woman”, could also be keyworded as ‘female’, 'girl’ or ’lady’. To make sure you see all relevant images, you will need to use brackets to group similar nouns and adjectives, i.e. (woman OR female OR girl OR lady).

• You can add "OR", "NOT" or "AND" to your keyword(s) to widen or narrow your search. For example - "London NOT bus" will return images keyworded "London" but not those keyworded "London, bus".

• To find an exact phrase use single speech marks around the words. For example, 'Victoria Falls' will deliver results only where the words Victoria and Falls are next to each other in the keywording.

Tips from Photoshelter

• Think like a buyer Buyers search for images by both subject (actual content) and concept (ideas or mood).  They might also have technical requirements, such as the type of shot (aerial, close up, etc) or if there is copy space. (Keywords, copy space, copy space cover, copy space double truck spread)

Have a System

• You specialize in travel.

#1 Destination name but approach it the way a normal person does, not a geographer. Go to Google and see the way most people look up a location.

Keep to a Format

• Many general terms will apply to most of your images: m tim timothy okeefe, travel, tourism, vacations, holidays, tourist destination, usa, united states, america, blue sky, sunny, horizontal (or vertical), nobody, “background, concept, idea,” “patterns,” outdoor/interior indoors,

Get to the Point

#2 But is the attraction or place more important than the location? For instance no one really looks up Orlando, Florida, attractions, Epcot, Walt Disney World, Mission to Mars

vs.

Mission to Mars, Epcot, Walt Disney World, WDW

Visual Description

• Next describe your image to someone who can't see it.

• Provide information on all aspects of the image. This includes:

People: LIFESTYLE, number of people, multi(-)ethnic group, diversity, race, real people/studio shot, seniors, kids, children, child (specific age), couple, couples, young family, young families, male, female, man, woman, girl, boy, teen, looking at camera (eye contact), young people, youth culture, disabilities, alternative lifestyle (gay, lesbian, etc.)

Science, Medical

• Doctors

• Patients

• Doctor's Offices

• Details of Procedures

• Still life

• Body parts

• Scans

Business

• Office, Boardroom

• Business Travel

• Family Business

• Technology, Communications

• Finance, Retail

• Industry

• Conceptual

Still Life

• Food/Drink

• Silhouette (aka "Silo")

• Environmental

Health, Beauty

• Healthy Living

• Pregnancy

• Exercise, Yoga

• Spa, Resort

• Beauty, Bathing

Sports/Recreation/Adventure

• Sport, sports

• Outdoor recreation

• Adventure travel

• Ecotourism, ecotravel

• Green, green travel

Shelter

Architecture, style (be specific including date range)

Building, design

Interiors, exteriors

Gardens, flowers

Nature

Animals

Wildlife

Weather

Underwater

News

Sports

Entertainment

Documentary

Celebrity name

Play the game

Include any current MEDIA FAD or MEDIA FRENZY (green, global warming, political correctness, PC)

WHATEVER WORKS

Corbis Search Categories

Time and Place Street scenes

Summer

Classroom

Coffee shop

Home office

Suburb

Barbeque

Happy hour

Weekend

Indoors

People

African Americans Hispanic Middle Easterners Asians Couples Homecoming queen Real people Tween Teenager Wealthy people

Corbis Search Categories

Compositional Lens flare Half-length Low section View from above Red Bright colors Background Copy space Photographic studies Single object

Conceptual

Away from it all Crime scene Drama queen Erotic Humor Night life Retro Role reversal Trendy Unexpected

Corbis Search Aids

LifestyleHuman relationshipsEcotourismLOHASCuddlingGirls’ night outMulti-taskingPlaying dress upReal peopleTextingWeekend

Business and FinanceConnectivityOn the goOverworkedConference roomCustomer service

representativeFinanceHomeshoringJob seekerOffice romancePodcasting

Corbis Search Tips

Health and Beauty Botox

SonogramAlternative medicineFacialFitnessGroomingHairstyleBody imageSpaWindblown

Sports Extreme sports

AgilityDedicationDisciplineNumber oneGymnasticsBench pressCheeringFinish lineSnowboarding

Corbis Search Tips

Travel

AdventureMancationBoutique hotelEcotourismHotel roomLandmarkRoom serviceSunbathingBarcelonaIndia

Nature and Wildlife

OutdoorsEnvironmentalismLushBeluga whaleDahliaErodingGlobal warmingOne animalPredatorSunset

Corbis Search Tips

Home and Architecture

Interior designMid-century modernShabby chicChandelierClub chairConverted industrial buildingKitchenMounted animalRecessed lightingZebra skin pattern

Corbis Keyword Guide PDF

File

Corbis Flash Guide

IPTC Codes

• The IPTC NewsCodes • Metadata taxonomies

for the news industry • The IPTC not only provides news exchange formats to

the news industry but also creates and maintains sets of topics to be assigned as metadata values to news objects like text, photographs, graphics, audio- and video files and streams for many years now. This allows for a consistent coding of news metadata over the course of time - thus we call them IPTC NewsCodes.