Keywords and metadata
If you are a social, portrait or wedding photographer, have never submitted your pictures to a picture library, I suggest, read no further. If you are or aspire to be a travel, nature or wildlife photographer, submit your pictures to picture libraries then read on. OK; now you’ve been warned, so let’s delve into the often-murky depths of keywords and metadata.
For those lucky enough, not to have their lives affected, by metadata let me explain what it is. Metadata is data that describes other data. “Simples”. Yep; I didn’t get it the first time I was told that. It’s data about data, so err, its data then, or am I missing something? Data perhaps?
And now, for the confused amongst us. It all started in libraries. Not picture libraries, but the ones full of books, like The British Library or The Library of Congress. With thousands of books, it’s very helpful; to be able to find the one you are looking for. Enter metadata; or a card index as it was known in the old libraries. Each card held information about each book. It was far easier to look through a bunch of cards, compared to walking up and down rows of books, trying to find the right one.
So what has books and libraries got to do with photography? Almost every picture taken with a digital camera contains metadata; we know it as EXIF (Exchangeable Image File format). This is metadata, written into each picture we take. The information varies between camera manufacturers. While some cameras record time and date and exposure, others can record where the picture was taken, using GPS (Global Positioning Satellites). Very useful for letting burglars know when you are on holiday.
When you process your images using tools like Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop you can add to the EXIF metadata with metadata of you own. And this is where metadata can become very useful to you.
This additional metadata is known as IPTC (International Press Telecommunications Council) metadata. And most image processing software will allow you to add IPTC data to your image, for example, in the Library view, in Lightroom or File > File Info panel, in Photoshop. IPTC metadata can help you identify your pictures and should you send them to someone else, you can enter your contact details.
The most obvious IPTC fields to fill in are the address metadata. Anyone with suitable software can read this information and find out who took the picture. You never know, someone may want to buy your work of art, for tens of thousands. What a shame if they can’t find out who took the picture and how to contact you.
Fields like the Caption, Description and Title fields are important to us. Our pictures normally sell to people looking for a specific image. Picture editors and buyers, very rarely ask for a picture of just any old bird. Normally; they know what sort of bird they are looking for. You get a request for Barn Owls or perhaps just British Owls. Using Lightroom and provided you have entered the metadata, you can search all your pictures of owls and find a Barn Owl. Of course if you are really flash like what we are. You can also search for Tyto alba; which is the Latin for Barn Owl and some picture editors will search using this very specific term.
Keywords are metadata but a special type of metadata. These are words used to describe the content of the picture. So for our example of a Barn Owl, the following keywords could be used.
Barn, Owl, Tyto alba, bird, Strigiformes, Tytonidae, prey, UK, white, farm buildings, hedge rows, small mammals, hunting, countryside, iconic, endangered, rare,
Keywords are searchable in programs like Lightroom. A search for “white and bird” should bring up the Barn Owl pictures. Unfortunately; it will also bring up all the pictures of swans, gulls and terns.
Keywords become one of the most important, when our pictures are sold via a picture library. Here we have to try and select keywords that bring your images to the picture buyers. They might be looking pictures of Barn Owls or perhaps iconic countryside images. A search for [Tyto alba] will work for those that want a Barn Owl. Buyers searching for [countryside and iconic and UK] with luck, might see our picture of a Barn Owl and use it to portray the idea of an idyllic country scene. One always lives in hope.
Well done if you have got to this point. Hopefully; you now know a little more, than you did at the start. You may have decided that keywords and metadata, are not for you and that’s OK. But I would perhaps urge you to think ahead, you have lots of pictures sitting on a hard drive, how will you find that one important original that Sotheby’s want to auction for you? Keywords and metadata might just be the answer, to fame and fortune.
Tell us how you use metadata in your pictures, leave a comment.
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