Keywords and Captions – Get it right now and improve your exposure forever!

A picture paints a thousand words

A picture might paint a thousand words as they say but in the digital world of picture agencies, it’s sometimes words that make the pictures. Well they may not necessarily make the picture but it certainly goes a long way to enabling picture researchers to find exactly what they’re looking for in a timely manner.

The recent enhancements to the Demotix website have now gone a long way to improving our search engine immeasurably and for a few months now, Demotix contributors have had the opportunity to individually caption their stories and add multiple keywords.

It’s these captions and keywords that enable visitors to find your images as and when they turn to Demotix to find breaking news pictures or pictures from our archive. As we all know; time is money where newspapers are concerned so they need to find the right images as soon as possible or they will turn to another source.

The stories below are a perfect example of how a great set of pictures can be enhanced by comprehensive key wording and accurate captions. I’ve highlighted this story because it’s a sports report and pictures which can be notoriously difficult to capture.

FC Zenit St.Petersburg beat FC Spartak Nalchik 3-1 by Mike Kireev

Caption:
Danny of Zenit St. Petersburg (R) vies for the ball with Miodrag Djudovic of Spartak Nalchik (L) during their Russian Football Premier League match.
Keywords: ball, clash, collision, game, goal, match, Nalchik, pitch, player, rfpl, Russian Football Premier League, soccer, Spartak, zenit

The image below was picked up by the Guardian primarily because of the accurate captions and excellent keywords:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/gallery/2010/may/21/cannes-film-festival-...

Filmmakers show their support for Jafar Panahi in Cannes Film Festival by RFE/RL

Caption:
Iranian film director Bahman Ghobadi (2nd from left) and Mohsen Makhmalbaf (4th from left) hold a photo of fellow film director Jafar Panahi, who was arrested at his home in at a news conference at the Cannes film festival.

Keywords: Bahman Ghobadi, Cannes 2010, cannes film festival, cannes filom festival, film festival, filmamkers, filmmaker, filmmakers, Golden Lion, hunger strike, Jafar Panahi, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Vicious Circle