Stock Photography and keywording

By far the most challenging activity a stock photographer and especially a small stock agency has is the task of captioning and keywording images
Captioning is quite a lot of fun

We sit with various resources; books, dictionaries, on line resources and research each topic. The fun part is learning. We try to answer the relevant W questions in this part

Keywords on the other hand is more of an art than a task. When is enough enough?
Some keywording tips:

1. Remember to use both American and UK spelling - Harbour / Harbor
2. Remember to add words from American and UK English Trunk and boot spring to mind
3. Plurals are needed at some outlets others do this automatically
4. Various forms of the verbs used such as: run running
5. Don't get carried away some words are more commonly is other meanings
6. Spell check. This is probably the most important tip. I have seen way too many images ith incorrect spelling including images I got back from a keywording company - Never used that company again

Look at the following image carefully and tell me if you would order the dish


Summary: We don't use any bells and whistles software we use our brain. In one word THINK And we try to think as a buyer / researcher may think. For each relevant keyword we ask ourselves: Would this image be used for to represent that word or phrase. If there is a chair in the background would this be a good keyword to use? Probably not as the image will never be licensed for it's chair quality. That's the easy example, It becomes much more difficult with concept keywords

so here is the image to lead you down the right path



Hope this helps you all
Ilan Rosen
PhotoStock-Israel