ShutterPoint Blog

What is the most crucial point of selling images online? Believe it or not, having an outstanding image is not the answer. That is because in order to sell online, your image must first be found by the image buyer and the most common way to find it is by searching. Therefore, the answer is keywording!

Keywording, or defining the keywords to describe your image, is key to attracting customers to your images.

Remember, the designer who is looking for an image is an intelligent human just like you. He/she has a specific idea of what kind of image is needed and to find it, will input just a few words into the search field. Your task is to figure out what these few words might be.

This is a photo of a young woman in a black swimming suit, coming out from being under water, flipping her hair back, and creating a big splash with water. Her setting is in a swimming pool.

The paragraph above should really be the description of this photo. It also contains information that can be used for keywords.

When defining keywords for your image, start naming exactly what is depicted in the photo. Lets start with this:

“woman in water, hair flip, woman in pool, wet woman, woman, female, girl, swimsuit, bikini, hair, flip, flipping, swimming, swim, pool, water, liquid, wet, splash, in”

Now we have keywords describing the visible attributes of the image. Notice that phrases are ok to use. If the image buyer will be looking for simply “woman in water,” we are covered for that in the basic list. But what if the image buyer has something else in mind. Lets think about what else might be happening in this photograph. How about we add these to our existing keywords:

“action, vacation, summer, play, cheerful, relaxation, relaxing, happy, sexy, fun, active”

By adding keywords that suggest the setting or mood of an image, we are opening up for more interpretations of the image, and thus more usage possibilities. Now if someone is looking for “relaxing vacation” photo or “fun in water” photo, this image will come up.

Try to order the keywords in order of relevance. Note that keyword “sexy” will trigger the adult content filter. If your images do not imply adult content, avoid keywords that suggest adult content and your images will always show up in search results, regardless of content filter settings.

Keywording guidelines

• Use commas as delimiters for words
• Use singular form, not plural (unless its an irregular noun: e.g. man/men; foot/feet)
• Include both singular and plural for irregular nouns
• Do not put a period at end of list (it will be used as part of last keyword)
• Avoid non-readable characters (!#$%, etc.)
• Use dash (-) only if it is part of the keyword
• Do not use name of the model unless it is a known celebrity
• Avoid unrelated keywords (e.g. stock photography, high resolution, portrait orientation)
• When including keywords in foreign language, make sure same set of keywords in English is added
• When using misspellings of words, make sure the correctly spelled keyword is present

ShutterPoint encourages the use of IPTC standards. When you submit image files containing IPTC profiles, the site will pre-fill the fields with the data extracted from the IPTC profiles - keywords, titles, descriptions, and copyright information.

Remember to always check your keyword lists after uploading images, just to be sure!

The 2008 edition of ShutterPoint’s Marketable Photography E-Book is now available!

Please download it here: Marketable Photography Guide 2008 (104 pages in PDF format)

Contents include:

A guide to lead you through all the aspects of making and marketing your images. It will take you from shooting to post-processing to uploading images.

Tips and advice from some of our best-selling image contributors. Photographers and graphic artists of various levels shared their wisdom about creating marketable images and selling them.

Showcase of over 600 images sold on ShutterPoint.com at least once in 2007.

This year’s edition includes a content menu for super-easy navigation.

Make some time to go through the image showcase. As you look through the images that sell, you will get inspired and come up with your own ideas for the next shoot or image post process!

Lighting is an extremely important aspect of photography, though often it is overlooked. Common sense tells us that objects in front of us will appear on a photograph exactly the same way as we see them. However, in many situations this is not the case. The camera is not capable to capture exactly what we see, unless the photographer makes an effort to light the scene in a certain way.

When you photograph isolated objects, use soft diffused light for best results. Surely soft vs hard lighting may be considered a matter of taste, but for purpose of stock photography, soft light is preferred because it brings out the best in objects and helps communicate its 3-dimensional elements.

I hope the contributors of images I am going to use in this example do not take this post as an insult, but rather as constructive criticism. Metal and glass are some of the toughest materials to photograph, so you get credit for trying!

Metal

	This image suffers from hard lighting. Light is reflected by the curvature of forks, creating bright white triangles that distract the mind from understanding that this is in fact a bunch of forks.
	This is a better representation of cutlery because lighting is soft and comes from a larger source, making the object appear 3-D.

Glass

	Here again, small direct light was used, hence contrasting reflections are noticeable on the bottles and glasses. Green bottle has some interesting detail at the base, which is impossible to distinguish due to incorrect lighting.
	Objects in this photo are properly lit, letting the viewer concentrate on the idea rather than trying to figure out what the objects are.

When photographing objects that reflect light by nature, pay attention to your lighting. Try to use a large light source and diffuse the light. If you are using a flash, apply a diffuser or a soft box. Same goes for any other lighting. Place tracing paper in front of light source for a quick solution.

Let there be light! Diffused light, that is.

I came across the following quotations by three famous photographers.

1. “By observation and study, you can learn the technique, but you must reach inside yourself to find the emotion, the essential element for a photograph to make a difference.” - Anne Geddes

2. “I’m looking for the unexpected. I’m looking for things I’ve never seen before.” - Robert Mapplethorpe

3. “Photograph is a recording of an emotional situation. In my mind’s eye, I visualize how a particular . . . sight and feeling will appear on a print. If it excites me, there is a good chance it will make a good photograph. It is an intuitive sense, an ability that comes from a lot of practice.” - Ansel Adams

Emotion, excitement, and the unexpected - the above mentioned photography legends put their heart into photography. That is what makes their photographs especially good. Although these photographers are considered fine art photographers, their quotations surely apply to any type of photography, including stock. In fact, the best stock photos are have an emotion attached to them.

An egg for instance. How can an interesting image be captured with an egg? Take a look.

“Egg and Wrench”

“Golden Nest Egg”

Both by Jerry Jones.

These images are conceptual. The photographer had an idea and a vision that was nicely carried out.

Let the quotations of famous photographers inspire you to look at your image subjects with a different perspective because the egg is fragile next to the wrench, and the same egg is very valuable when its gold!

No, there is no such institution! However, SP offers so many ways for photographers to sharpen their skill.

1. Read Articles
   Article collection in the Learning section lists lots of articles written by various subject experts. Topics include image manipulation, photo equipment, technique, and much more. Each article was manually reviewed and approved by SP. Did I mention that you can submit your own articles there? Yep, we’ll give you a free link to your article for being so generous as to offer your expert advice to our curious members.
2. Talk to photographers
   Forums is a great place to ask lots of questions about photography. In addition to general discussions, there is a “How can I improve this photo” section where you can ask other photographers for advice on a specific image. This is how to use this feature:
   • Login to your account
   • Open the image you would like to be reviewed in forums
   • Below your image, you will see a section that looks like this
   • Click on the link to “Post this image” and sit and wait for photographers to praise your work.
3. Learn from Experts
   SP Guide to Marketable Photography: your secret weapon to staying ahead in the stock photography market. We developed this 95-page no-nonsense e-book in PDF format so that photographers better understand what makes a marketable image. The e-book contains a comprehensive guide, a showcase of over 600 images sold on ShutterPoint, and interviews with some of the finest SP photographers.
   
4. Read Some More
   Selling Photos section offers even more information on selling on ShutterPoint.com. Some of it might be redundant with the Marketable Photography Guide, but still there is plenty of great reads, including Self Promotion and Basic Marketing, Assigning Keywords, Titles, Descriptions, and Setting Prices.

We need those creative one-of-a-kind images! Keep them coming please!