metadata - What tagging system do you use?

What tagging system do you use for your photo collection?
I ask because tagging is the only way I can make sense of my large photo collection and I am trying to improve the effectiveness of my photo tagging.

For example, do you simply tag on the fly, creating tags to fit the photo? Do you have a well defined set of tags? Do you have a hierarchical tagging system? Do you have rules for the way you create or assign tags? Is there a better way of organising my photos than using tags?

Answer

I sometimes do a little bit of stock photography, where tagging is extremely important to get your images appearing in sales correctly.

I aim to tag all of my stock photos by thinking about the following:

• People - who is in the shot?


• Places - where was this taken? Include significant places, streets, towns, cities, countries, regions. Alternatively, use geotagging for this


• Subject - what is the subject of the photo? For a ham sandwich, we could use tags of "bread", "sandwich", "meat", "ham", "food" and so forth



• Photo type - is it portrait, landscape, macro, black & white, sport, street, abstract, or something else?


• Adjectives - for example, the colour of the subject, size, movement, etc


• Concepts - does the photo represent a particular concept? Examples include success, happiness, environmentally friendly, businesslike, and so forth

I should arrange these in hierarchies but I've fallen out of the habit.

Ultimately, though, tags serve the user. If the user is you (i.e. you want to be able to find photos later on), think about how you might search and what kind of things you would need to find.