Finding The Orange Lifeboat - Will Your Images Be Lost at Sea? by Brigitte Martin
December 22, 2011
Today's post about tagging your images is by Brigitte Martin, curator, book author, and administrator of Crafthaus. Martin begins by taking us on a rescue mission to stress the importance of tagging your images on the Internet. Will your images be lost on the Internet? Are they drowning in an ocean of information?
Note: The opinions expressed by the author, Brigitte Marin, in this post are hers and hers alone, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of ASKHarriete or Harriete Estel Berman. No endorsement or refutation is implied.
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Imagine you are a military helicopter pilot charged with a rescue mission in the choppy seas off of Wales. (Prince William of England generously offered to be our model for this edifying story. Thanks, Will.)
Someone fell off a fishing boat and is now missing at sea. Prince William must find this person within minutes. (If he does this right, he can keep gallivanting around England a bit longer with the new wife. If he fails, he’ll need to return to London and sit in the rain for 3 dreadfully long parades with grandma.)
So Will decides he doesn’t enjoy parades all that much after all, waves bye-bye to Kate and takes off to find the lost sailor.
And this is what he sees: Water.
A great big sea of water. Lots of it and then some more. The minutes are ticking by and he just can’t find the person he needs to save.
Then finally, after 29 minutes, Will sees something. A bright orange spot in the wide-open sea! Brilliant. The sailor can now be rescued by our hero!Will goes home and tells his grandmother that she’ll have to ask someone else to sit through the parades.
The End. Well, almost...
Now, what on earth is the point of this story? Imagine: Instead of royal Will on a rescue mission, there’s a charming, good looking, and very smart editor/curator out there (theoretically speaking, it’s no one we would know personally) who urgently needs to find a photo of one of your pieces on the Internet for a groundbreaking story she wants to write about you and your work! But the photo our editor is looking for is - literally - lost at sea.
Oh no! Why, you ask? Well, because YOU FORGOT TO TAG YOUR IMAGES. That’s why!
See, the thing is, the Internet is kind of like the huge, blue ocean. Without tags on your photo, the image is just LOST AT SEA, it is invisible.
I found this image of a hand on Crafthaus. It has no tags. This image is lost. No one can find it. In a minute it will be drowned.
However, with tags on your photos, your tags become the orange lifeboat, the one thing the editor can now see against the blue waters. That’s how it works!
So, will you start tagging your images now? You can easily tag images on crafthaus, Flickr, and other image-sharing sites.
Start with the photos you have uploaded already and continue tagging as you go along.
Suggested tags are:
- your name
- title of piece
- material
- what object it is (ring, necklace, vase, etc.)
- location
- descriptions or keywords that would help someone find your work
- name of website
If you tag your photos, others can find them. It’s that easy. You are doing this for yourself!
Your charming, good looking and very smart editor thanks you sincerely.
Brigitte Martin
Appropriate tags for this photo might be:
Aline Battengay (artist name), ring, hand, doll, jewelry, found object, plastic,
POSTS on ASK Harriete about Image Tags.
Search Engines Have No Vision - Play TAG, Your IT - Create Tags for better SEO from 2.0 sites
SUPERSIZE Your VISIBILITY with TAGS
Mail without an address? Titles, tags, and descriptions for Search Engine Optimization.
Images on your website, Are they lost or found?
This post was updated on February 17, 2022.