Hard-core Keywording & Controlled Vocabulary

[E. John Thawley III]

The Lightroom or Aperture workflow help (http://community.automotivephoto.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1987) thread brought up a tangent workflow question for me:

Are any of you guys using Controlled Vocabulary (http://www.controlledvocabulary.com/) or anything similar for the keyword part of your workflow? I confess to being well below adequate in the keywording area. Typically, all I do is a few, broadly sweeping keywords for a given shoot or project. Its rare, for example, that I'd tag a detail shot with "engine" (or – God forbid – "350 Chevy").

This Controlled Vocabulary business looks great. But hardly a turn-key deal for car shooters. I'm wondering if any of you have found or developed a vocabulary system for what WE do?

(I know a lot of the sportshooter guys share code-replacement files for NBA, NFL, IRL and other sports. That's sort of where I'm headed with this. It'd be cool to build a collection of keywording resources for car shooters.)

Discuss.

[Todd Corzett]

I caption with Driver names, but they tend to change more often than NBA/NFL would. I use iView to caption and it has a memory for keywords... so as I start to type a driver's name often times it will continue to fill it in for me. I typically caption one photo manually and then apply those captions to other photos of the same car/driver.

Back in the day when I did car show/concourse photography I did walk around with a tape recorder to get year make and model information and would then caption each photo. It made it nice to search things, but took a ton of time to do. I don't really think there is a time effective way to do this though... having a caption file wouldn't really help... it's not like it would have every make/model out there... and if it did, it would take as long to select the right one as it would to just type it in.

I may be wrong though, so I'd be interested in your ideas.

-Todd...

PS - The syntax that I used was YEAR, Make, Model, etc.... so 1967 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray, but each as a separate keyword.

[John Thawley]

My name is John and I'm extremely deficient in my keywording responsibilities.

I have Categories for Series then within each Series I have keywords for Manufactures or Marques. I rarely use drivers since they don't spend any money. LOL - I also don't use the year or event as that is in each libray and project... also the date is in the EXIF. I create a new library for each year, label the project as the event.

Lastly, since albums are so easy (drag and drop) within Aperture, I rely on those a lot too.

Not perfect... but not all bad and a lot better than how I used to NOT do it. ;)

JT

[Keith Upton]

With Lightroom, you can save a set of keywords as a Preset. This might help cut down on the number of options you have for say Chevy cars. I just wish you could expand the number of keywords shown in the Keyword panel to more then 9 at a time.

[Daniel Buck]

I don't use jack. I make a folder with the date on it and throw all the images in that folder. Then throw that folder under my sub folders of vehicles, landscapes, portraits, architecture, snapshots, or other.

Along with the date for the folder name, I'll put a single-word description before the date, so I would have folders labled as "mustang.06.19.08" for a car shoot, or "louisiana.12.25.07" for landscapes, or "LACR.08.08.07" for race tracks or events. I started adding the single word description so that I can back up like-subjects together. Simple, but it works for me. I don't usually deal with huge volumes of images, so I don't need anything complex.

[Bill Jurasz]

At my day job we have a big problem with keywording, though we're not working with photographs or images. But we have an analogous problem: we have lots of similar things with key differences and we need to be able to locate subsets from that large collection that correspond to a set of criteria. As such we have a database of keywords that point back to all the files that pertain to each keyword. The problem is keeping to a consistent vocabulary and have a clear meaning of what each keyword means. Otherwise your search can turn up files that don't really apply as well as miss files you really need. And in what we're doing those search errors could possibly cause big problems.

E. John, are you wanting a vocabulary that you use only for yourself? Or are you thinking an industry-accepted keyword vocabulary would be of some utiliity? That it might help a particular set of customers (stock agencies, magazines, who knows?)?

[E. John Thawley III]

E. John, are you wanting a vocabulary that you use only for yourself? Or are you thinking an industry-accepted keyword vocabulary would be of some utiliity? That it might help a particular set of customers (stock agencies, magazines, who knows?)?
Both, I guess.

I don't want to spend the time dealing with it if its not somewhat universally understood or accepted. Chevy or Chevrolet? Small-block, small block or smallblock?

Be nice it there were commonly useful, hierarchical key words that worked across most/all automotive needs.

But who am I kidding? I'm a lazy bastard and am slow to adopt anything new. Much less a good habit like keywording... I;m really just looking for more excuses NOT to do it properly or well.

[Bill Jurasz]

All good points. I guess a big question is, is your lack of keywording causing you any particular pain? If so I wouldn't mind helping with making a controlled vocabulary. I'm not a full-time pro with tons of keywording experience to draw upon, but I happen to enjoy mental exercises like this.

[E. John Thawley III]

I guess a big question is, is your lack of keywording causing you any particular pain?
The issue is when I get calls for stock. I have to rely on my memory too often. As it is, the only "searchable" items are the file names and data or creation.

[Bill Jurasz]

A good place to start would be to go back on all those stock requests and ask what was the client asking for, and start basing keywords on that. Are they asking for particular cars? From specific events or races? Of particular car owners or drivers? Cars in particular settings (studio, landscape, motion rig, etc.)?

Speaking of keywording, even with my limited experience I've been wondering if key "words" is enough. The problem with a keyword is its a value with no context. "Porsche" for example, is that a car's make, a race team, an engine supplier, a client name? I've been wondering if compounding keywords is a good idea. Maybe its not a problem after all.

Make:Chevrolet
Model:Corvette
ModelYear:2008
ExteriorColor:Yellow
Series:ALMS
Driver:blah
Driver:blahblah
Team:blahblahblah

You get the idea. Overkill? Those who keyword far more than I would know.