How I pick my keywords, my method of madness

I want to share my method of picking keywords for an image. Keywording is important in helping a potential customer find your images, some external search engines have reduced the importance on keywording, in favour of your descriptions. This is because people abused it, and crammed any top words in their list, relevant or not. Anyway, it should help with people finding your images on Fine art America.

First, I look at my image, and think what is it about, is it about the colours, the magnificent structure, a stunning landscape, or the fine art forms of a human body?

I would put that first, even in the title, if it is a photograph of the 'Lloyds of London' building, or a sunset, I would list that first. Name and place, i.e. Lloyds of London, the square mile, London.

From this, I can think what are the key elements? What draws me to this picture? That is what I want to describe in the words, so customers can find it. The lloyds building, it was the spinal element of the structure, that and that i got a reflection of another famous building in the reflection.

So why did I choose this image, and not another, what made it special to me?
What is important about the image,
• The location, is it remote, pretty or a different viewpoint,
• A great picture of a species of plant / animal, or
• a famous or unusual building,
• or an event?

Noting down words like this in your keyword list is important, it will set you aside if done correctly. Which hopefully will lead to views and maybe sales.

Another thing that is important to the customer is the medium, is it a black and white photo, a colour (color) painting, digital, or a mixture.

I normally open textedit (being a mac owner), it’s a simple text editor, with spell check and that is all I require. There is no point in having words in the list, if they are spelled wrong.

Once I have a rough list, I type a couple into FAA search and see what shows. Down the side is a list of more words associated with the images displayed, I could use any of those, if they are relevant. But make sure that they are relevant. Being a more visual person than written, I miss obvious words, like the name of the structure, the architect, or the main element like a flower. I sometimes also, if the is list short or the words are too similar, grab a thesaurus, and try to expand my list in that way.

Near to finishing, I look at the common keywords page searched for on Fine Art America, can I use any of those? Plus it will give me a chance to remove words, and order then, highest hitters first.

Oh, a final note, spelling, some common words are spell differently from America to the UK, like colour and color. Or we use holiday, you call vacation, so keep your mind open for those.