*GASP!*

You mean a NON-exclusive has keyworded a file incorrectly? AND it was accepted?

That really NEVER EVER happens!  

There is an article somewhere about proper keyword practices that clearly states to keyword what you see in the photo, but I will agree that the inspectors have not reached the level of perfection that we require of them, and they are not 100% consistent with the enforcement. Conceptual keywords are a point of contention and I think they should err on the side of leniency with concept words when the concept is CLEARLY being illustrated, which to me does not include every other word that may be related to the photo.

That being said, the vast majority of the rants I see have been rightfully rejected, in my opinion, and others sometimes withhold info regarding additional reasons for their rejection so that they can be all dramatic and indignant about how "ridiculous" their rejection was... which doesn't really help anyone.

Of course that never happens on Istock. Looking for "police donuts" gives this on Page #1:



Keywords: Doughnut, Police Officer, Eating, Breakfast, Indulgence, Overweight, Food, Morning, Cream Cake, Doughnut, Elevated View, Snack, Sugar, sweetened, Yeast, Restaurant, Diner, Baking, Bakery, Freshness, Dieting

Where is the indulging overweight baking police officer dieting on his lofty elevated restaurant taking sweetened donuts for diner? 

Alright, this is offtopic but those donuts look more than yummi. Must be the policeman inside me 
So yummi that I haven't noticed the peppers in the background at a first glance.

Maybe I'm making a wrong inference, but I assume that sometimes image buyers need, want, should be, reminded of alternatives. You know i worked as a designer for a few years before starting to shoot stock and when I searched for an image for a project, sometimes, many times, I would find alternatives that hadn't occurred to me that ended up working better in the design or worked as an additional image in the design. Hence, related but not literal keywords. That's how and why I think the way I do when keywording. Police officers use handcuffs. I'm dyslexic so maybe that doesn't make sense to anybody else but it sure does to me. If you're searching for a police officer then a picture of handcuffs show up, you might say, "that's a good picture of handcuffs, I could use that here instead of that other imgae or maybe I'll throw that in over here under this text in addition to that other image." As a designer I worked very organically, so sometimes my designs evolved, they were not always 100% set to the initial layout. So a different image from my original idea, that popped up in searches would sometimes get used. Extra money for the agency. Again, that is just my way of seeing things.

I guess that's why there were (and maybe still are, I hope they've gone) so many apples keyworded also orange, banana, plum etc. Maybe they were just trying to help 'uneducated' designers to find other fruits instead of apples, because they imagine the designer doesn't want to use the generic word 'fruit'.
If you go with the utter brainstorming idea, you'll have every photo tagged with every possible keyword, as there are probably tenuous links between all of them, if you try hard enough.
That's why they're trying to cut down to the most literal keywords. Heck, I had waves removed from a photo of a fluke in the Atlantic Ocean ('choppy sea' was helpfully suggested as a replacement, though it's not in the CV). I let it be; 'wave' was hardly the most important thing in the image, but there were, in my defence y'r honour, plenty of actual waves in the image. So that's an example - yours (although we haven't seen the image) wouldn't even seem to come close.

Maybe I'm making a wrong inference, but I assume that sometimes image buyers need, want, should be, reminded of alternatives. You know i worked as a designer for a few years before starting to shoot stock and when I searched for an image for a project, sometimes, many times, I would find alternatives that hadn't occurred to me that ended up working better in the design or worked as an additional image in the design. Hence, related but not literal keywords. That's how and why I think the way I do when keywording. Police officers use handcuffs. I'm dyslexic so maybe that doesn't make sense to anybody else but it sure does to me. If you're searching for a police officer then a picture of handcuffs show up, you might say, "that's a good picture of handcuffs, I could use that here instead of that other imgae or maybe I'll throw that in over here under this text in addition to that other image." As a designer I worked very organically, so sometimes my designs evolved, they were not always 100% set to the initial layout. So a different image from my original idea, that popped up in searches would sometimes get used. Extra money for the agency. Again, that is just my way of seeing things.

While you might find the extra keywords inspirational, many many more buyers complain about just the opposite...that they can't find the image they want because of the sheer volume of improperly keyworded images that push properly keyworded images back. 

Case in point from my own portfolio.  I have several photos of an old movie theater with a neon light marquee...two of which are my all-time best sellers across the sites.  They are the only photos of their kind on all of microstock, and have been for a couple of years (there are similar illustrations, but no photos).  I can't tell you how many times I have searched for those photos, only to find them buried on page 25 behind numerous pictures of popcorn or generic tickets.  Granted, sometimes popcorn can be known as "movie theater popcorn," so this might not be the best example, but the point is that this occasional name for popcorn is burying unique images of an actual movie theater, and as are generic tickets that don't even look like the kind of tickets one gets at a movie theater.

What you need to start thinking about is how images improperly keyworded impacts you as a contributor, not how images with implied keywords might possibly inspire you as a buyer.  If you ever did photograph a police officer arresting someone and putting handcuffs on them, would you want that image buried underneath piles of handcuffs, police badges, donuts, and who knows what else?  No...you wouldn't.  You would want that photo front and center, just like I do with my vintage movie theater.  What all of those improperly keyworded images are doing is pushing back your opportunity to sell photos that actually depict what the buyer has in mind, and thus they are taking money out of your pocket.  Many buyers won't search through 25, 50, 100 pages to find the one correctly keyworded image buried behind hundreds of handcuffs, police badges, donuts, etc.  What will they do?  They will either buy someone else's image that is close to what they had in mind, or they will go somewhere else.  It's that simple.

Quote from: stock shooter on May 12, 2009, 11:13

Are you serious?
... blather snipped ...
say "istock"

Sorry, you are ... who ... again?

< crickets... >

no it's legit... I can see the policeman's reflection in the donut glaze 

So, to sum up then. Someone thought they were right. Other people tried to be helpful and show them why they were wrong. A few people gave examples of where other people had thought they were right too (when they were wrong). Someone was upset that other people still thought he was wrong, despite his reasoned debate.  And then it was time for homework and bed.