Keyword sorting

I've spent some time sorting my keywords recently, after watching the fabulous Luminous Landscape video on organising. It's taken a couple weeks, but then I only have about 1400 keywords and a decent starting point on a structure.

Along the way, I tried doing plants according to the scientific hierarchy with kingdom, family, species, clade etc. It was fascinating work (for me at least), but when I got to "grass" and took a look at the pictures in question, it struck me: Do I really want every picture that just happens to have grass as the background to include Plantae, Angiosperms, Monocots, Commelinids, Poales, and Poaceae in its keywords? Not really. So I scratched that idea and made a much simpler structure - for instance, arctic wolf is now in wolf inside canine inside mammal, and that's it. It's a good lithmus test for hierarchies: Would I want these parent keywords along whenever I use this keyword?

I have a few keywords left over that I'm not sure what do do about, especially the almost 3000 pictures that I have actually managed to tag with Nature.


Found a couple tricks on the way:

When moving keywords around, Lightroom has this funny idea of popping keyword folders open apparently for no good reason. Not just the ones you're moving into, see. Entirely different ones that have nothing to do with the keyword you're moving and that you didn't go anywhere near. It turns out, though, that it only happens when you have some pictures showing in the grid view - like you do after you've clicked the arrow on the right side to check out what a keyword really means. I made sure to keep my Quick Collection empty, and then every time I'd checked out some pictures, I'd Apple-B to go to the quick collection. No more random opening.

LR doesn't allow you to select a number of keywords and delete them all at once. If you right-click after selecting multiple keywords, it will just delete one. You can get around this by moving all but one of the keywords you want to delete into the last one and then deleting that, LR will take all the sub-keywords with it.

It's not a bad idea to put the same keyword in multiple places, as long as you used the keyword entry line that gives drop-down suggestions when entering keywords. In that one, you see not just the keyword, but also what it's inside, so you can pick the right one based on context. Just be careful to not overdo it - for instance, adding color keywords inside animals (black > cat, black > dog etc.) will get very messy very fast.

By prepending a ~ to your keyword folders, you can put them at the bottom of the list. That way, you can always see when you have entered new keywords without getting them into the right place. It might be a good idea to do even before sorting out your year-old list of keywords. By starting at the end of the alphabet, you won't end up having to scroll over a lot of keywords to find the group you where looking for (say, because aadvark, anteater, ape, bird, beetle, and canine all came before feline where you want to drop cat into). I didn't actually do that because I was halfway through before I thought of it.

If there are keywords you just can't figure out where to put, put them aside for a while and go on with other ones. Not only will you get something done instead of frustrating yourself, you might find that subsequent revision of your keyword structure or just more familiarity with it tells you where to place them. Out of 1400 keywords, I have 11 I haven't found a good place for.

Don't try to improve the keywording on the pictures you run across while reorganising, or you'll get nowhere. Only if the same keyword has been used with different meanings, or you've created better hierarchy for something you labelled very generally at first should you change what keywords are on the photos.

If you find a keyword that has since turned into a keyword structure, and you want to sort them further down the structure, you may find that some of your pictures have the more precise keywords already. Say you find a few hundred pictures with USA on them, and in the meanwhile you've added Kansas, California, Idaho and Florida under USA in your World Location keyword folder. Some of them, but not all, have the state already on them. To avoid having to re-keyword unnecessarily, use the Quick Collection as a scratch pad. Select and add all the USA pictures to Quick Collection. Then go through the sub-keywords that have a 'partial match' dash next to them, and for each of those, go to those pictures, select them all and remove them from Quick Collection. Eventually you'll end up with a Quick Collection of just photos that need to be re-keyworded to something more precise. This can also be used later when you find a good way to subdivide a keyword.

More wedding photography, and classes

I did another wedding photography session, this time for pay (though somewhat discounted since they are good friends of ours and I'm still new), and it came out absolutely beautiful. Even though I've been warned against wedding photography and children photography, the combination here was great.

I've also taught not one but two classes on Lightroom, and hope to do one again next spring.

B&W vs. color

Browsing through a photo series by Vlad Artazov (quite cute in its own right), I was struck by the effect when it halfway through changes from B&W to colour. The color images, even though they have nice colours, have less impact and seem harder to read. The story doesn't come through nearly as easily. Yet more proof that B&W is an important skill to learn.

Wedding photography

I am now officially a wedding photographer. While no payment was involved (it was a wedding gift for a pair of very good friends of ours), I was the main photographer for them. The results were pretty good in my opinion (they will be put up here when and if the pair okays it). I would not be averse to doing it again for money, though I might want to rent an extra body for it.

Some things learned:

* Shoot for getting there at least an hour early, just to account for problems, getting lost etc. If possible, check out the place some days in advance if you don't know it well already.
* Have a large reflector. The small one I have will bounce light into a face, but not onto a full body.
* Have a good flash and plenty of backup batteries. I ran through one set of batteries. A good flash can be rotated as well as turned up and down, and recharges quickly (look into LiIon AA batteries, they might give enough power, NiMH batteries certainly don't)
* The lenses don't matter so much, but you gotta have a standard zoom (something like 24-150 mm equiv). A fast portrait prime is a good thing too.
* Learn to do a good fill flash for indoors.
* Look for different angles/framings. One of the more interesting shots was a silhouette kiss taken framed between two candles.
* If shooting outdoors, have something the bride can sit on. White dresses get really dirty really quickly.
* Avoid sunlight if possible. The black vs. white contrast is a killer.
* Consider the age of the inlaws before you ask the to sit down on their knees:)
* Talk, talk, talk. You pretty much can't talk enough during the photo session proper.
* If possible, get shots of everybody at the tables (if there's a formal dinner) and the seating arrangement. Then you can match up people and names afterwards.

Portrait class

These are the best results from the portrait photography class I took through local adult education organization FOF:

A photo idea

This idea for a photo project just occurred to me on the way to work:

I have long been annoyed at what architects were able to sell to cities as being great, innovative architecture, which then turns out to be ugly or boring or impractical or all of the above. That's actually one of the few things that have ever tempted me to get into politics, just to be able to be on a committee to choose designs and go "No! That's ugly! Go away!" when needed. However, it'd be a lot of bother to get elected and do all the other stuff just to have that pleasure on occasion.

Instead, I could dig out the original architect's impressions and put them up next to a photo -- from the same spot, with the same perspective -- of how it turned out in reality. Maybe do it as a triptych with the original drawing, a photo converted into drawing style, and a full photo. Since I can't pass a law to require all architects to live in the buildings they design*, this would be one way to put the spotlight on "architectural marketing".

* And for children's books authors to read their books to children every night:)

Images on RedBubble, not on DeviantArt

I have been uploading a number of my older pictures on RedBubble. I am quite happy with how it works, upload is simple and fast, and they provide not only website creation tools, but also embedding of slideshow or semi-shops within your own website.

I am not uploading on DeviantArt, as I am less impressed by the overall quality of the pictures there, and I would have to pay $25 per year to be able to get more than about 10 % of the sales price. Given my sales so far, this would be money out of the window. If RedBubble gives some results, I may revisit other sites. Or just stick with them. I like them.