I know, it’s a pain. You get finished with a long shoot and then completely edit the photos for submission. So who has the time or energy to sit there and enter keywords into all the photos?
I learned the importance of captioning photos through working as a freelance photographer with The Pocono Record. Editors need to know exactly who the players are in the photos and a brief description of what is happening. Captions are important!
Keywords are important, too!
This past week I was asked to submit some sports photos I captured back in 2013 and 2009. They needed to be full resolution images, so I could not just send the images that were in my portfolio because they were not large enough. Fortunately, I have a strategy to keep the original names of my photos wherever I use them–galleries, portfolios, etc. This is extremely helpful when I have to backtrack and locate an image that someone saw on my website. As long as I have the original name, I can go into my database and locate the original file, make any necessary corrections, and then export the file in the size needed for my client.
Keywords can help locate photos more quickly. For example, if I had all my photos of Juli Inkster keyworded with her name, then I could find any photo of her in my database very quickly. My problem is, I get too busy and forget or ignore this necessary step. Then, like yesterday, I was forced to go through tons of photos to find the exact one I am looking to locate. Geez, I wish I added keywords when I added these photos to my database!
What about you? Can you quickly and efficiently locate photos on request? What strategies do you utilize to assist you? Do you realize the importance of adding keywords to your images?
