Photographs aren’t much good if you can’t find them. They’ll never get published or even discovered. Of course, that’s where keywords, captions and metadata come in.

Assigning keywords is a much more complicated endeavor than one might think, however. Words have several meanings, different spellings, synonyms. We choose words carefully to describe very specific things but those choices are highly subjective and cultural. Keywords need to anticipate the words other people might carefully choose. At the same time, keywords can’t be so broad that the individuality of each image is lost. Too many generic results is just as bad as too few results. In short, keywords must provide the greatest chance for discovery while remaining highly specific; Broadly written but specifically focused.

Here is an example of words that would be associated with something as deceivingly simple as two humans kissing in the street. Note, the keywords are just emotions.

Example Emotion Keywords: absurd; affecting; affection; agog; allure; amity; amour; anxious; ardent; ardor; asinine; athirst; attachment; attraction; avid; balmy; bananas; batty; beaming; beguile; benevolence; bewitch; blessedness; bliss; blissful; blissfulness; blithe; blithesome; brainless; buoyant; captivate; carefree; careless; carried away; carry away; cavalier; cheerful; cheery; chirpy; cockeyed; content; contented; cordiality; crackbrained; cracked; crazed; crazy; crush; cuckoo; daffy; daft; delight; delighted; demented; deranged; desirous; devil-may-care; devoted; devotedness; devotion; dotty; draw; drollness; eager; easygoing; ecstatic; elated; electrify; emotion; emotional; enamored; enamoured; enchant; enrapture; enraptured; enthrall; enthusiastic; entrance; entranced; euphoric; excite; excited; exhilarate; exhilarated; exuberant; exultant; fascinate; fatuous; felicity; fellowship; fervency; fervidness; fervor; festive; fondness; foolish; friendliness; friendship; funniness; galvanize; gay; gladness; gladsome; gleeful; goodwill; gratified; gung ho; half-witted; happiness; happy; happy-go-lucky; harebrained; heat; hilariousness; hopeful; hot; humor; humorousness; humour; hungry; impatient; impressive; infatuated; infatuation; insane; insouciant; intensity; intoxicate; intoxicated; jerky; jocose; jocund; jolly; jovial; joy; joyful; joyous; jubilant; keen; kindliness; kooky; laughing; lighthearted; loco; lodestone; looney; loony; love; love affair; lunatic; mad; magnet; magnetize; maniac; maniacal; mental; merry; mirthful; moonstruck; moving; nonsensical; nuts; nutty; optimistic; overjoy; passion; pleased; poignant; preposterous; rapt; rapturous; raring; ravish; rejoicing; rhapsodic; richness; romance; romantic; rosy; sanguine; sappy; satisfied; screwball; screwy; senseless; silly; simpleminded; smiling; solicitous; stirring; stupid; sunny; thirsty; thrill; thrilled; tickled; titillate; touching; transport; turn on; turn-on; unbalanced; unconcerned; unsound; unwise; upbeat; vehemence; voracious; wacky; warmth; weak-minded; wile; witless; zany

Keywording certainly isn’t simple but thankfully we are ahead of the library card systems used only a little while ago. Adobe Lightroom in fact has very useful keyword/metadata features. But it leaves a frustrating level of discretion on how everything should be done…

A built-in thesaurus for Adobe Lightroom would be amazing, of course — some sort of system to auto-assign related words to a photo based on an universal mutually-respected database of synonyms. For example, I should be able to choose “child” and have it auto-assign “kid”, “youngster”, etc…

Until we have that level of convenience, I’ve begun solving the problem by building a list based on sixteen human emotions. There are more, of course, (closer to 40, depending on who you ask) but sixteen covers the common ones. The ones I chose are:

* anger
* attraction
* confidence
* determination (determined)
* fear
* grief
* guilt
* happiness
* loneliness
* love
* pleasure (pleased)
* pride
* sadness
* sorrow
* submissive
* surprise

Then, for each emotion I’ve included related words, each with all the synonyms provided by http://www.merriam-webster.com/. All this results in no less than 2,388 words carefully organized to balance specificity with as little repetition as possible. For example, “sadness” does not include things like “heartbroken” and “mournful.” You have to choose those explicitly depending on the exact type of “sadness” in the image. But it does auto-include such words as “joylessness” and “melancholy” since one can’t really be sad and not also be described as “joyless” or “melancholy.”

You can download my system of human emotions here.

Yup, for free. This should leave you feeling.. “amaze; amazed; appreciative; astonish; astound; beaming; blessedness; bliss; blissful; blissfulness; blithe; blithesome; bowl-over; buoyant; carried away; cheerful; cheery; chirpy; content; contented; delight; delighted; dumbfound; dumbfounded; dumfound; ecstatic; elated; electrify; enraptured; entranced; euphoric; excite; exhilarate; exhilarated; exuberant; exultant; felicity; flabbergast; floor; floored; fortunate; galvanize; gay; glad; gladness; gladsome; gleeful; grateful; gratified; happiness; happy; hopeful; intoxicate; intoxicated; jocund; jolly; jovial; joy; joyful; joyous; jubilant; laughing; lighthearted; lucky; merry; mirthful; obliged; optimistic; pleased; rapt; rapturous; rejoicing; rhapsodic; rosy; sanguine; satisfied; shock; shocked; smiling; startle; startled; stun; stunned; stupefy; sunny; surprise; surprised; thankful; thrilled; tickled; titillate; upbeat”