This blog typically isn't about photography advice or instruction, but today I sold an image and it was a great lesson to not be a lazy photographer. You see we all love to go to interesting locations, make beautiful pictures and play with cool gear. Some of the geekier among us even like to spend hours in the software that has become the bane of the digital photographer. After all that, it's awfully easy to forget about an important housekeeping task... tagging your images with captions and keywords.
Captioning and keywording is electronically assigning descriptive words to your image. The who, what, where of an image as well as the attribute, emotion or feeling it evokes are all keyword examples. It isn't exciting, it doesn't make you say "wow" or give you that rush you get when you've made an image you love. But, if you're putting your images on the web, tagging is one of the strongest tools you have to get your photos seen because keywords are part of the secret sauce that make the Google world go round. I've sold two images in the last couple of months thanks to keywords, captions and good old Google images. Check your website and your blog and make sure you're doing everything you can to help people can find your good work!
