keywording the key to selling photos where most sales are made today: online
Post on 25-Dec-2015
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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.
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