Carrots, Tigers, Potatoes and Lions
June 11th, 2012
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
Jacqui Norman has been berated by several members for shouting at them and generally being a Bad News Bear. She has been urged to display the sunnier side of her nature and I have persuaded her to take a leaf out of the American Business Book, so in future in her Newsletters she will be presenting everything as uniformly and unfailingly wonderful, great, successful, happy, excellent and perfect. Sadly it is not her nature (I have yet to see her sunny side) but she has promised she will try.
This leaves the coast clear for me to shout at you. Well, not you personally, obviously, because your fotoLibra input is perfect in every way, but a couple of your colleagues could brush their ideas up.
I’m talking about over-enthusiastic keywording. The only people who search the fotoLibra site daily and in great depth are Yvonne and me, preparing lightbox after lightbox for our clients. We need to find the correct images fast, and in fotoLibra we have built a wonderful system that enables us to do just that.
But we are dependent on the keywording skills of our photographers. We do realise that if you’re great in the chemistry classroom that talent may not transfer to the cricket field. And if you are gifted with a photographer’s eye you may not have the same facility with language. Yet words get your pictures seen. So they are absolutely crucial to the successful retrieval and possible sale of your images. We try to assist by providing you with a Typochecker so you can catch errors such as Hippopotmus instead of Hippopotamus.
What really, really irritates picture researchers like us are people who add irrelevant keywords to images in the hope that they will rise up the visibility rankings. Last week a customer wanted a picture of a radish. fotoLibra showed me a plate of dried mushrooms. The photographer had added potato parsnip radish tomato parsley mushroom swede turnip vegetable squash courgette zucchini marrow carrot and more to his keywords. None of the keywords, apart from mushroom, was visible in the image. That is plain wrong.
Yvonne needed a picture of a hippopotamus. She found a close-up photograph of the head and shoulders of a cheetah, along with these keywords: St Lucia; safaris; estuary; boat trip; excursion; travel; holiday; sightseeing; Kwazulu; wild life; hippo; crocodile; Nile; tourists; calendar; brochure; travel; holiday; adventure; bird life; fish eagle; Hippopotamus; Hippopotmus amphibius; seekoei; fischadler; aguila pescaddora; lowenbaby; cachorro de leon; leeuwelpie; elegant; elefant; olifant; gepard; guepardo; jagluipaard; nijlpaard; nilpferd; lion; leeu; lowen; leon; Panthera leo; predator; hunter; feline. In this photograph of a cheetah, the word “Cheetah” did not appear among the keywords. But Hippopotamus did, as did Lion, Crocodile and the German for Osprey.
Why? Why? Why? What possible help can it be to add Carrot to a picture of a Tiger? Or Lion to a picture of a Potato? When two or three examples of this excessive, inaccurate keywording crop up, we simply click a button and exclude that photographer’s images from that search. So they are damaging their own chances of making a sale. I am glad to say that out of tens of thousands of fotoLibra photographers, only a handful are spoiling it for the rest of you.
So please, please, please don’t do it.
And You Know Who You Are!
WOW!! This more than gets my total support Gwyn – surely there is NO real rhyme or reason for adding in all garden vegetables when only potato is needed?
I see this a lot when I research the site for fresh angles on existing submissions (another topic for a blog!) and I think why? What are they thinking of when researchers want a shot of a hedgehog and they get slugs, saucers of bread and milk etc etc? It can ONLY have a negative effect. They will/may be excluded from future calls and in so doing lose money.
Let me suggest this – a lot of it is sheer bloody laziness. Why? Because copy/paste makes it so much quicker to keyword. Which, since the dropdowns of previous submissions, may encourage this laziness??
Anyway a very eloquently expressed, if long overdue Blog! Thanks Gwyn.
Thanks Nick! I’m keeping my head down to avoid the rotten tomatoes (radishes, aubergines, okra, lettuce) but it’s good to see someone understands and sympathises with our predicament.
I’m not guilty of anything as blatant and stupid as these examples, but if I look at a streetscape full screen and zoomed in in Photoshop and there’s a shop name visible, it gets added to the keywords even if the shop is not visible in the fotoLibra image. Equally, ‘pavement’ gets added to almost every streetscape if it shows.
Am I right, or should this enthusiasm be curbed??!!
Ho ho ho.
No Derek, that is absolutely on the button. Well done — that’s the sort of delve down data that researchers really appreciate. But I hope I’m right in that you mean not visible in the Thumbnail or Preview fotoLibra image, but can be seen on the asset once enlarged? Cos if it’s been cropped off, then it shouldn’t be mentioned.
No problem. Its there in the pic I upload, but you might have to do some enlarging to find it.
NO rotten fruit or brickbats of any kind should be thrown. To be fair everything you have said Gwyn is plain bloody common sense. If it isn’t in the picture ( clearly visible/visible at all – Derek) then WHY keyword it? Keywords guide researchers to that shot BECAUSE THE KEYWORDS REPRESENT WHAT IS CLEARLY SHOWN IN THE PHOTOGRAPH – rocket science? No.
You may have guessed this is a real bugbear of mine.
I can understand completely how this infuriates you Gwyn, how can it be useful for anybody to add words that do not relate to the image? All this will do is irritate anyone searching for images and possibly switch them off using the site and those of us who do attempt to keyword images correctly will suffer!
I’m glad it’s not just me and Yvonne!
I understand completely Gwyn, and I thought I had it right.
However, you have got me thinking now am I one of the culprits, I sincerely hope not.
I have just spent hours over the weekend captioning and Keywording ‘Insects on Flowers’. To help me I use the free Keywording tool here: http://www.arcurs.com/keywording
Please let me know if I am over egging the pud!!
Regards
Mark
Perhaps our old friend “Cut and paste” are to blame? Applying the same keywords to each batch of photos uploaded? In which case, you have to wonder at such idleness. This reminds me of a certain TV programme, where people cook for others (often very badly) to win £1000. And often put zero effort or preparation into and wonder why they lost. Having people find your photos is probably more important than the photo itself.
My comment/thought exactly Brian – also we have made it so easy ny offering up previous keywords via the drop down. MAYBE remove that??
If some people are as stupid as your examples indicate, they are not going to read or, if they do read, understand your blog or appreciate that it is directed to them. Sadly, you are probably preaching to the converted. The unconverted aren’t in the congregation. (Cautious PS: I don’t think I am one of them; my sin is probably too few keywords.)
Keywording is something of an art – a confusing one too as it depends much on the intelligence, or dare I say education, of both photographer and picture researcher. How often have I asked crucial questions when a so-called picture researcher rang, only to be answered by “Don’t know. ” My response was always ” Well go and ask someone who does know ! ” It was always a plesasure to speak to a professional – usually a PRA member – who either did know or was prepared to discuss the requirement, knowing that I was a specialist in my subject.
Digitisation has changed all that – or has it ?
I’m told that there exists somewhere a standardised key word lexicon – ? I’m also told that there is no such thing, but that the Getty system is as universal as it gets ? I’d have thought that BAPLA and the PRA might have done some work on this by now – they certainly would have done were I still on the BAPLA Exec….
Hi John, this opens up a whole new debate, i.e. do we keyword ‘manually’ or pay for keyworders/software? How do we treat USA spellings (humour/humor etc). I still suspect that the ‘route to the loot’ is sought via laziness. Cut/paste, copy/paste and a large spattering of hopelessness from some of the wannabes.
Whatever the issues there are some major horror stories on the fotoLibra site – a substantial nimber of which are really inexcusable. I flag them up to Jacqui from time to time. nj
Use both humour and humor, lift and elevator &c. is my advice.
Americans are the only people who drive on the parkway and park on the driveway.
Driving on the parkway and parking in my driveway makes perfect sense to me, while calling a sweater a jumper makes me scratch my head – but I’d add them all in as keywords when appropriate 😉
Hi Gwyn
I use both manual and structured keywording, and I haven’t the faintest idea whether what I am doing is right or wrong. So Gwyn, if you want to look at the keywording on an image or two of mine and tell me, and everybody else, what it should be then I’m quite happy to be the patsy.
Yours
Granville
Granville, I haven’t read every single one of your keywords but every one I have read tells me you’re doing it right. Repetition where repetition is valid — different angles of a cast-iron milestone share the same keywords, that’s OK — and images with sea-kale in the keywords have sea-kale in the photographs. Fine by me.
Gwyn
Although you replied to Granville’s question you didn’t reply to mine! Please check the Insects on flowers as an example and let me know if I’m putting in too many Keywords. I started using the free Keyworder a while ago when you or Jacquie suggested it. You can be honest….I’m old and ugly enough to take it!!!
Regards
Mark
sounds more than reasonable
I worry when I see keywords on places and I know that that place isn’t the one listed. For example, my research area in my non-photography role is Tetbury and doing a search for the place I found villages, buildings etc clearly not Tetbury labelled as such. This could lead to all sorts of confusion and again, is wrong and misleading.
I think Jacqui ought to yell at people who put in all those useless keywords. Over-enthusiastic keywording is forgivable, but putting in hippo for a photo of a cheetah is just plain dishonest and wastes everyone’s time.
She’s always been sunny with me 🙂
Good point Gwyn on the keywording
They used to say Keywords was the way to find your web site, I still use them. Google electronc searchers from end to end to button hole customers to you.
Carrot Images should be very precise, so their keywords must reflect what you see is what you get. Your KEYWORDs could be village vegetable competition to a display on a supermarket shelf.
Your keyword is the “Key”, to the image’s address so your customer will find your carrot for his/her choice and sale. The misplaced Tigers, Potatoes and Lions are left in the dark.
Perhaps the image file name should hold the keywords too?
Tsk! Tsk! Picking on the staff and on your contributors!!
I enjoy your wit!!!!!
Incorrect keywords can of course be completely misleading. In one of the past weekend’s national papers I saw that a caption ‘ Lulworth Cove’ accompanied a picture (sourced from Alamy) of the nearby Durdle Door bay.
I hope I haven’t made the same mistake on my pictures.
I am in full agreement, just to put CHEETAH or MUSHROOMS would make it easier to find for you,
instead of putting all that wording. Surely its common sense.
Hi Gwyn
I rush to Jacqui’s defence! I have always found her comments right on the button and indeed helpful. My wife and I indeed find most of them funny and we look forward to her next photo call to see what next she comes up. Don’t change a thing Jacqui!
Len