Keywording

Hi everyone,

I'm working on building a long term solid keywording structure. I thought I'd show you guys what I've got so far
before commiting to anything incase you have suggestions. Sorry about my hand writing but I'll show you what I've got so far:

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Well, assuming you are using an app that supports a keywork heirarchy, sure, you can take any approach you want! I use an "upper level", like "people, places, animals and things" and then break it down from there.

Yeah I'll be using bridge.

The good news is that you can change things "on the fly", although anything that you've converted/saved will of course have your keywords saved.

I don't see anything wrong with your approach but I think you will find that you will want to drill down deeper into your images and add more descriptives. What if you want to retrieve a picture of model-a with trees in it. I know some that keep a very high level approach such as yours. I prefer to be more descriptive so that things are easier to find and filter out. I don't know how many images you have but if you accumulate alot over the years I would consider a database driven system such as lightroom or similar.

Mmm.. that's a fair point, I'm tempted to argue that my memory would be able to remember the location and cross reference that with models but then I remember that I'm doing this because my memory isn't anywhere near as good as I think it is haha.

At the moment I have between 5-10k, learning more towards the heavier side but I really LOVE photography so I'm sure I'll build up a much larger collection over time.

Do you have any suggestions for a neat heirarchy based set of keywords? Maybe some descriptives could fit into my subjects section, though they aren't rarely actually the subject in my recent works.

I do like your suggestion so I'll be trying to think of how I can neatly introduce it.

If you're really serious you can buy a keyword list subscription from Controlled Vocabulary. It might seem a waste to many people to pay for a keyword list but the advantage is standardization expecially if some time in the future you choose to sell stock photos. Controlled Vocabulary has the most extensive keyword listing and is considered the standard: http://www.controlledv​ocabulary.com/products​/index.html

Eric Scouten, an Adobe Lightroom engineer, has some great thoughts on keyword tagging....search through his blog: http://blogs.adobe.com …t_keywords_to_h​elp_1.html

Ann Torrence, who I suspect is a librarian or works some sort of information management capacity, has written extensively about keywording for Lightroom. You can start with her "Getting Started" series about keywording: http://www.anntorrence​.com …-work-with-adobe-lig.html

She's also provided a complete list of the keywords she uses; it might not suit your needs but it will certainly give you ideas how to approach the task: http://www.anntorrence​.com …renceKeywords20​110105.txt

Personally I keep it simple; I look at each photo and ask Who, What, Why, Where, When, and How. Where and When are slightly less important since apps like Bridge and Lightroom have specific metadata fields that import that information directly from the camera generated EXIF but the other four questions serve to generate keywords for the photos or batches I'm tagging.

Whatever approach you choose I'd strongly suggest that you create your keyword list using an application like Microsoft Excel and then import the tab-delimited listing into your cataloging application. Its much easier to create hierachical keyword listings in Excel than it is in Bridge or Lightroom.

CallumPhoto wrote in post #11741385
Mmm.. that's a fair point, I'm tempted to argue that my memory would be able to remember the location and cross reference that with models but then I remember that I'm doing this because my memory isn't anywhere near as good as I think it is haha.

At the moment I have between 5-10k, learning more towards the heavier side but I really LOVE photography so I'm sure I'll build up a much larger collection over time.

Do you have any suggestions for a neat heirarchy based set of keywords? Maybe some descriptives could fit into my subjects section, though they aren't rarely actually the subject in my recent works.

I do like your suggestion so I'll be trying to think of how I can neatly introduce it.