Myerson Photo Blog

I touched on this briefly in a previous post, but after a recent conversation with a contributor, I decided to expand on this idea. When you get keyword rejections or keyword removals from your iStock uploads it’s usually because of one of three reasons:

1. The term was spam.
2. The term was a “multiple incompatible”.
3. The term was a stretch.

#3 is where I want to spend some time with you today. Stretch terms are those terms that are related to but not conveyed by the subject and context of the image. They usually take the form of concept terms. A real life example to get us all on the same page:

This is one stern math teacher. The kind one used to know in high school after being a little late with the homework.  Not that that ever happened to me, of course.

The terms currently applied to this image:

• Education
• School
• Classroom
• Only Mature Men
• 40s
• Teacher
• Serious
• Mathematics
• Mathematical Symbol
• Whiteboard
• One Man Only
• One Person
• Horizontal
• Photography
• Mature Adult
• Mature Men
• Necktie
• Looking At Camera
• Displeased
• Anger
• Indoors
• Head And Shoulders
• Color Image

What’s not on the list? “Homework”, for one. This image is not about homework, it doesn’t depict homework, and a buyer looking for “Homework” shots would pass over this image in a heartbeat. “Homework” would be a stretch term, and it would be removed by an inspector without hesitation. It’s the kind of stretch term that we see people try to use often.

Enter the concept of Opportunity Rejection. An Opportunity Rejection is a rejection that should spur you on to create and upload something new. By removing the term, the inspector has essentially said to the contributor that this image of a disappointed teacher doesn’t convey the notion of “Homework”. Contributors should take that as a challenge to then create an image of a stern teacher that does convey the notion of “Homework”. By putting the term “Homework” on the original image, the contributor made it clear that he felt there was a market for “Stern” AND “Teacher” AND “Homework”. If there’s a market for it, why on earth wouldn’t he create an image that is undeniably and unequivocally about those things?

The benefit of turning an opportunity rejection into a new separate upload is that you can create a file that is geared specifically to the terms you want to use. You can achieve that Laser Focus I mentioned last week. An image geared specifically to the concept will likely sell better for that collection of terms than will a generalized image. The image above is mostly a generalized image. The teacher is stern, but nothing in the image indicates why that is so, so it’s left open for a number of interpretations, making it a good general option. The flip side of that is that I can’t keyword for every possible interpretation – I can’t drill down to the specifics of “Homework” and “Excuses” and “Poor Performance” and “Class Clown” and every other concept that might disappoint a teacher (again, not that I’d have any first-hand experience with the things that annoy teachers).

I say “mostly generalized”, however, because I did make some specific choices as well. For one thing, he’s a white male adult. So those specifics preclude other specifics. But that kind of thing happens almost any time you use a model. The other specific choice was to make him a math teacher. The formulae on the board behind him put him pretty squarely into the math realm (maybe physics, but I chose math – again, it’s not both). If a buyer needed an image of a disappointed teacher of chemistry, this file would either not work for their purposes, or they’d generalize their search (”Teacher” instead of “Teacher” AND “Chemistry”) and edit the file for their own needs.

Sorry, this is not a post about achieving photographic focus. You and your camera will have to figure that one out without me. This is about achieving content focus in your iStock images.

Content focus is, in short, the subject of your image; the content or concept that the image is meant to convey. One of the most important factors in a stock image is how quickly, clearly and concisely the image conveys a concept. If the image is about a college graduate entering the workplace for the first time, for instance, you’re going to want the image to convey that concept quickly and unambiguously. Because if your image does not, someone else’s will and that’s where the customer will spend his credits.

Because of the way the latest iteration of iStock’s “Best Match” algorthm works (the so-called “BM 2.0″), images will move up the rankings the more clearly they are associated with a given term. Images that are muddled in their presentation or that do not clearly convey a concept will find themselves languishing near the bottom. If you want to appear near the front of a Best Match sort, be sure your file is unambiguous in its meaning.

Lets look at an example. This image is a pretty good match for “Paperwork”, showing up in about the 15th place in a Best Match sort for that keyword as of this writing. It’s also a fine match for “Drowning”, currently occupying the #1 slot there. It also appears in a search for “Emergence”, but while “Emergence” is an appropriate term, this image isn’t really the best image in our database to convey that concept. For exactly that reason, it doesn’t even show in the first 500 results for that term.

The million dollar question, of course, is how to get your own images to move up the rankings? There are a few techniques you can consider:

• Trim the fat: One of the best things you can do is remove keywords that are unlikely to be of any help at all. If I had “Life Vest” on that drowning image above, that would be a prime candidate for removal (and let’s be frank, a term like that should be removed before you even upload). There is no “Life Vest” in the image, and no one searching for “Life Vest” is likely to buy an image that doesn’t contain or even relate to the term.But what about “Photography”, “One Person”, “Vertical”, and those other meta descriptors? No one is likely to search for “Vertical” to buy this image, right, so should that be trimmed? Nope, those kinds of meta terms are fine to keep on because they are usually used in a boolean mode – “Drowning NOT Illustration” or “Paperwork AND Vertical”. Those terms are not subject and concept terms, so they don’t muddy the subject and concept focus of the image.
• Consider Underserved Niches: It’s a whole lot easier to move up the results rankings when there are only a hundred or so images between your image and the top. Lets say you’ve hired a model, and you have a prop closet and wardrobe full of options. You can dress your model in a suit and tie and do a “Businessman” series. Upload that as your concept and you’ll be up against some 77,000 files. Might take a while to climb that ladder. Or you can put him in jeans and a flannel shirt, plunk a guitar in his hand and sit him down by a campfire to make him a “Camp Counselor”. Go search on iStock and see how many files you’re up against in that case. I’ll wait here.Back so soon? Now, it’s clear that “Businessman” is a more common search term than “Camp Counselor”. I’ll grant you that. Is it 20,000 times more common? Let’s look at this from the view point of expected value. This is an Econ 101 concept that seeks to describe the expected potential for a given action. For easy math, let’s first say that the average royalty per sale is $1. Now let us imagine that the search term “Businessman” leads to 100,000 sales per day. That comes to $1.29 per “Businessman” image per day (assuming that sales, on average, will spread out to everyone in the search results. Which they will not, of course. If your image is on page 50+ for that search term, you’ll be very lucky to have “Businessman” lead to any sales at all).

  Now lets say that “Camp Counselor” gets 1% of the search traffic that “Businessman” gets. That would be 100 sales per day for that term*. If there were just 10 matching files, they’d each have an expected value of $10/day. Much sweeter return than the $1.29 “Businessman” average. Of course, this example uses some assumptions. You’d have to make your own assumptions about the numbers in order to determine your own expected value.

• Generic is A Focus: I was recently chatting with another inspector about the notion of a generic file and specific keywords. The file depicted a series of generic spice rack spice jars. The keywords included every kind of spice imaginable. Now, we had to remove all those spice keywords, because the image didn’t actually depict them. The focus of the image is “Spices” in the generic. There are plenty of times when a buyer needs an illustration depicting a parent term in the generic, and not the specific instantiations of that parent. A wise contributor, however, would see the opportunity in this. Illustrate the generic parent term, and keyword it just for the generic, then also create the specific instances of the child terms (the parsleys, sages, rosemaries, and thymeses). The contributor would have to be careful not to make the specific instance illustrations too similar to each other, to avoid the “Duplicate/Serial” rejection, but I think a talented illustrator should be able to do that without much problem.
• Keep The Content Clutter Free As Well: Clutter-free keywording is important, but let’s not forget the content of the image must also immediately convey the concept. Take care to include just those image elements that lead the viewer to that concept, and eliminate everything else that doesn’t support the concept. This isn’t to say that all images must be isolated on white. That would be horrible. Keep in elements that set the stage and make the photo convincing, but if that coffee mug on the table isn’t helping to set the stage or sell the concept, lose it.

If you find that you’d like to improve your Best Match standings, try implementing some of the above. Feel free to drop a line in the comments to let me know what you find.

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* Cry Foul! How can I claim the term Camp Counselor gets 100 sales a day when the few files keyworded with “Camp Counselor” together have a total download count of less than 100? One of the assumptions in the calculations above is that the demand for “Camp Counselor” is 100/day. The existing files in that search may not be suitable for the customers looking for that term, so they may not be buying any Camp Counselor images at all.

As a commercial photographer, I try to inject a little humor into my imagery when possible. Some commercial jobs, of course, don’t allow for this, but when I can – especially in my stock photography – I’ll throw a funny twist into the portfolio. So when I saw this web post from a comedian-photographer (there’s an awesome hyphenated job title), I had to stop and read.

The blog post isn’t so much about making funny pictures, but rather the lessons that professionals in the photo world should take from professionals in  the comedy world. It’s a great read… David duChemin is a great writer and a hell of a photgrapher. Do check out the site when you get a chance.