Stealing Keywords
Keywords are one of the most difficult task in the photo business. Most photo buyers do not browse the photos, then decide of what to get. My experience has been that they search by keyword, then look at the photos based on the keywords.
Yuri Arcurs claims to be the most successful stock photographer. He created an "almost great" tool for keywording Keywords. The great idea is that by entering a few basic keywords, Arcurs will return you photos that will match these keywords, then you select the photos that look like yours, and he will show you:
- The keywords
- Their frequencies
- The number of images with that keyword
Arcurs Screenshot
- I would have thought that when looking for panorama, the most popular keyword would be panorama and/or the name of the place, in this case Vancouver.
- In fact, at Shutterstock, the most often used keyword is: "tourist".
- I would have never thought of that. For me tourist would be toward the bottom of the list.
- Water is OK, since Vancouver is a port.
So why is it almost a great tool?
- Can keywords or keyword sequence be copyrighted?
- If you copy other people's keywords are you stealing?
- The engine looks at only Shutterstock and at Luckyoliver
- How legit is it?
- How long will Shutterstock and Luckyoliver allow it?
I personally use it about once per week to give me ideas for photos. But, I am sure that in the end, many of these keywords do end up in my collection.