Is adding keywords to your images vital (stock photographer maybe?) If so, I need your help.

This is for my user experience class. I need to construct a user research by asking questions that will clarify product viability. My target audience is photographers who work with keywords. All answers are anonymous and won't be shown to anyone, even to my professor - I will create a combined summary.

I would appreciate if you could take this 7 question survey - http://svy.mk/1QDAh80

Took the poll, just bumping so that you may get new answers.

Your survey has no questions to establish demographics at all. To make the survey have more statistical significance add some questions to classify the person being surveyed.

At least it would be nice to know how much of the responders income is from photography in general and also how much of their photography income is earned from selling stock photos.

I took your survey. I agree with Nogo in that it could probably be a more effective survey if it were re-written. See my survey answers for more about this.

Unfortunately I am limited by 7 questions and all of them must target product viability. I guess if it were an in person interview, I would ask follow up questions that would have addressed supplementary information.

Thank you for the suggestions, I would appreciate some more.

I just took the survey, and thought I would add a few comments here. I always keyword my images, usually fairly thoroughly, certainly try to get more than just a location/event. I now use LR for all my photo management needs, although I only have a relatively modest library, 39528 as of this moment, looking at the total image option in my library. By using keywords, as well as IPTC Subject codes I can build Smart Collections (essentially save searches using just about any type of metadata) that allow me to locate pretty much any image simply from the keywords and other metadata.

The real advantage of doing it this way is that the same image can be included in multiple Smart Collections, or searches, while still only needing one copy of the image. I cannot think of any way that I could do that using images in folders. It also makes needing any sort of folder structure unnecessary, although I do actually store the images in folders by year/date. I do not do enough photography that I find using month folders useful.

I do not do stock photography, although I am semi-pro mostly doing product photography for money. I do have kids who are pretty active, and provide some photography for local voluntary groups that I am involved with at their events.

Alan

Dmitriy, I should add that I do shoot and sell stock photography. And I think that keywording is extremely important, as it has a very direct effect on my income. Your survey seems to be about programs that come up with keywords for you. For me to accomplish my goals, this type of program is completely useless. Why? Well, those programs come up with the keywords that are pretty much obvious, or expected, for any given subject matter. They think "inside the box", so to speak. My goal when keywording is to come up with keywords that are beyond the obvious. I want to my images to reach people that may not be entering the typical keywords associated with my image. Why? Well, I figure that I am already going to have the image "found" by the people searching for the obvious (for that subject) keywords. But I also want to reach people who may not have had my subject matter in mind when they first started searching. I want to show people that my image can work for their application, even if it is not what they were originally thinking of using. And it is precisely this type of keyword that those boring, "inside-the-box" keywording programs fail to come up with.

Have you any examples to shew, Tom? I was perusing the images on your site but all the ones I clicked on had no keywords.

Alveric wrote in post #17590243
Have you any examples to shew, Tom? I was perusing the images on your site but all the ones I clicked on had no keywords.

I won't show you examples, but I will tell you some. How about "iridescent" for a close up of a wild turkey's feathers"? Or "WMU" for a photo of an Elk, Deer, Wild Sheep, or Mountain Goat"? Or "Boone & Crockett" for a photo of a large Black Bear? Or "muzzleloader" and "black powder" for a photo of a Whitetail Deer?

Also very important can be the locational names for where the photo was taken. If I photograph a Blue Jay at my parent's bird feeder in Southampton, Pennsylvania, then you can bet that my keywords for that image are going to include:
Southampton
South Hampton
Bucks County
suburban Philadelphia
suburb
Philadelphia
Philadelphia, PA
suburban wildlife
urban wildlife
backyard
backyard wildlife
bird feeder
Pennsylvania
PA
tri-state
Delaware Valley

Any of these so-called keyword finder programs - if I enter "Blue Jay" are they going to give me any of that locational info? Of course not! All they will give me are the painfully obvious keywords such as bird, wildlife, blue, ornithology, plumage, feather, bird watching, birding, nature, etc, etc, etc. Why would I need a program to help me with those kind of words? - they are the "no-brainer" ones that I can come up with off the top of my head in a few seconds.

That's helpful, thanks. I am looking for ways to go beyond the obvious and to land images in front of someone who's not even thinking of the content of mine. Say, for instance, a photo of a bird with several worms in its bill popping up when someone types 'lunch' in a stock agency's search function. I don't think there's software that can do that, and I pray there never is.

Thank you all for taking the survey, I really appreciate it. Also, thank you for the detailed additions - this is what I was looking for.

To continue the conversation, a few questions:

But if I enter "Blue Jay" and the software will, besides the obvious ones, list scientific names, other official names, kingdom, class, order, family, genus, etc. Wouldn't it be a real time saver?

I have some experience as a stock photographer as well as a photo buyer, and if I were looking for "lunch" image, there would be a minuscule chance of me licensing a photo of a bird with several worms in its bill. The same goes for "iridescent" for turkey. I strongly believe that keywords should be absolutely relevant (although "lunch" in this case isn't a bad idea) otherwise they are just dead weight. Most people will quit searching when all obvious options are exhausted. What is your opinion on that?

What other limitations those tools have?

Dmitriy wrote in post #17592233
Thank you all for taking the survey, I really appreciate it. Also, thank you for the detailed additions - this is what I was looking for.

To continue the conversation, a few questions:

But if I enter "Blue Jay" and the software will, besides the obvious ones, list scientific names, other official names, kingdom, class, order, family, genus, etc. Wouldn't it be a real time saver?

I have some experience as a stock photographer as well as a photo buyer, and if I were looking for "lunch" image, there would be a minuscule chance of me licensing a photo of a bird with several worms in its bill. The same goes for "iridescent" for turkey. I strongly believe that keywords should be absolutely relevant (although "lunch" in this case isn't a bad idea) otherwise they are just dead weight. Most people will quit searching when all obvious options are exhausted. What is your opinion on that?

What other limitations those tools have?

Unless you can read minds, you cannot assume that you know what people will be searching for, or that they won't change their mind on their design ideas when they see an image they weren't expecting.

Bear in mind also, that software like Photo Mechanic, which I use, already has a structured keywords module that can organise keywords hierarchically and with a double click add them to an image or a group of images: very little effort and time needed. You can even create your own hierarchies and keyword collections using simple and unassuming text files. Whilst a software that automatically adds everything and the kitchen sink might be a time saver at times, at other times its unbridled automation will actually WASTE my time as I have to be manually removing keywords I don't want for an image, however relevant they might seem to the logic of the program's algorithms.

Sometimes, the best way to be most helpful is not to help out.

Dmitriy wrote in post #17592233
But if I enter "Blue Jay" and the software will, besides the obvious ones, list scientific names, other official names, kingdom, class, order, family, genus, etc. Wouldn't it be a real time saver?

Not really. I have a couple dozen Blue Jay images on file with a stock agency. Altogether they have sold a couple hundred times. Not once has anyone who has licensed one of these images found it by using the latin name (scientific name) in a search, much less the kingdom, phylum, order, etc. I do feel that the scientific name is important, so I do, of course, include it in my keywords, as well as in the images title. But it is very seldom used by image buyers, at least in my experience thus far.

I would not bother using kingdom, phylum, etc - I simply don't believe such words would ever lead to even a single sale.

I copy & paste the scientific name when I research my subject on wikipedia (or on the Cornell bird site or the Audubon bird site). Copy & paste takes all of a second or two - I don't need or want a separate program to do that for me.

Dmitriy wrote in post #17592233
I have some experience as a stock photographer as well as a photo buyer, and if I were looking for "lunch" image, there would be a minuscule chance of me licensing a photo of a bird with several worms in its bill.

But that is you, and you are probably not indicative of the target market that I, and other nature photographers, have. If you were an editor at Nature Friend magazine, or at Ranger Rick, or at Bird Watching magazine, or at Wild Bird magazine, or at Nature Photographer, or at Montana Outdoors, etc, etc, etc, and you were putting together a fun little sidebar on "lunch", a photo of bird with worms in its mouth is exactly the type of image you would license. And it is not far-fetched to say that such a person, with such a project, might enter search terms such as: bird, animal, lunch, dinner, eating, feeding, breakfast.

"Predator" would also be an excellent keyword for such an image.

So would "early bird"! But, I guarantee you that no keyword program would give you "early bird" for such an image - and that keyword is what would probably lead to a good number of sales, as there are gazillions of restaurants offering early bird menus , many of which would like to have a pertinent image on their blog, website, or window ad.

Dmitriy wrote in post #17592233
The same goes for "iridescent" for turkey. I strongly believe that keywords should be absolutely relevant (although "lunch" in this case isn't a bad idea) otherwise they are just dead weight. Most people will quit searching when all obvious options are exhausted. What is your opinion on that?

If you were doing a study on iridescence and it's occurrence in the natural world, why would you not consider an image of a turkey's iridescent feathers for your project? Bird feathers are the most prevalent place in which iridescent occurs in nature.

Also, as with the "lunch" discussion, if you were an author writing a piece on bird plumages for submission to a publication such as Nature Friend magazine, or Ranger Rick, or Bird Watching magazine, or Wild Bird magazine, or Nature Photographer, or Montana Outdoors, or Bird Talk magazine etc, etc, etc, then iridescence is certainly something you should be discussing in your article, and would not a close-up of a turkey's iridescent plumage be a good fit for such an article?

_______________
I think you are approaching this from YOUR perspective. Yet it would behoove you to realize that there are many niche and specialty topics out there for which people buy images. Most images are NOT being bought for mainstream publications to be seen by the "average joe". There are literally millions of publications, blogs, websites, social media pages, etc that deal with highly specialized, niche topics. The folks who run and contribute to these publications will be looking for images that are far different from what one may think if approaching the whole thing from a mainstream perspective.

Tom Reichner wrote in post #17592873
If you were an editor at Nature Friend magazine, or at Ranger Rick, or at Bird Watching magazine, or at Wild Bird magazine, or at Nature Photographer, or at Montana Outdoors, etc, etc, etc, and you were putting together a fun little sidebar on "lunch", a photo of bird with worms in its mouth is exactly the type of image you would license. And it is not far-fetched to say that such a person, with such a project, might enter search terms such as: bird, animal, lunch, dinner, eating, feeding, breakfast.

May I add 2¢? Use of such images isn't limited to nature publications. For an article on human diet, an editor who is allowed or instructed to include humor might choose a bird-and-worms image to illustrate not just "breakfast" but "protein," "red meat," "raw foods," "soft foods" or "soft diet," "natural foods," "organic." "Hunting," "wiggle," "slippery," and "grip" are relevant terms for other reasons.

Clever captioning can be an easier way to add humor and a friendly feel to a factual essay than thinking up jokey lines to insert into a text that someone else wrote.

OhLook wrote in post #17592898
May I add 2¢? Use of such images isn't limited to nature publications. For an article on human diet, an editor who is allowed or instructed to include humor might choose a bird-and-worms image to illustrate not just "breakfast" but "protein," "red meat," "raw foods," "soft foods" or "soft diet," "natural foods," "organic." "Hunting," "wiggle," "slippery," and "grip" are relevant terms for other reasons.

Clever captioning can be an easier way to add humor and a friendly feel to a factual essay than thinking up jokey lines to insert into a text that someone else wrote.

It is an editor's job to think creatively of the images they need : ie. I want an animal eating lunch. How about a bird with a worm? It isn't the agencies job to brainstorm for the buyer. ie. I'm just going to search on bird, lunch . It does a disservice to people who are actually looking for images of lunch foods with a keyword like "lunch". Birds don't eat "lunch". That's like saying you should keyword an image of a cow with "hamburger, food, protein, etc.". Just because a cow might eventually be turned into food, does not mean you get to keyword with those types of words.