In one word: yes. Before we talk about how and what to use for your keywords first you need to work out your particular situation and what will work best for you.
For instance, if you are just keywording for your own use to
find images easily in the future then that makes it fairly easy but if you are
keywording for a stock image library, agency, magazine etc you need to be more
specific.
Many agencies and stock libraries have specific guidelines
and if your images are not keyworded no one will ever fine them, you’ll never
make a sale and it’s a waste of time uploading them to the agency. These days
it is important to find these guidelines and take note of the length of the captions
and the quality of the key words used. For instance a stock library I submit to
also has cartoons and graphics in it so the word photograph is very important
in that collection of keywording. Many have limits on the number of keywords or
total characters (this may or may not include spaces) you can use. If you
exceed that then the keywording may be cut off and never be seen.
Take your time when keywording. Research what others have
done: what works and what does not. Look at your image if you were a buyer:
what would you type into a search engine? This is another reason captioning
(which we’ll cover later) is important to be keyworder-friendly. Just because
you think it’s a logical process does not mean others will.
