Keywords are the soul of my workflow.
Keywords are obviously useful in providing the means by which I can find photos in the future but they provide so much more than that. When used in conjunction with Smart Collections (next section), they prove to be a powerful tool to help in my workflow.
I always tell folks embarking on the process of determining a Keyword structure, think of what Keywords would come to mind when they want to find a photo or a set of photos. I find that this advice doesn't seem to help them breakthrough. I them tell them to start somewhere. Lightroom Classic allows you to evolve this task over time. If you find you need a new Keyword, add it to your list. If you list gets too long, create a Collection Set and drag the appropriate Keywords into that.
Assigning Keywords to Photos
If one has a large number of photos that have not had keywords assigned to them, the task of assigning keywords can seem like a daunting one. Like any time consuming task, it is best tackled in small chunks.
Once established, adding keywords to photos can be a pretty simple thing to do with Lightroom Classic providing help along the way.
My Keywords
For my purposes, two major categories of Keywords (Collection Sets) suit my needs quite well. Those are Location and Subject.
- Location -
Every photo is taken in some Location so this is pretty straight forward. In the Import window of Lightroom Classic one can assign a Keyword to all of the photos that are being imported from your day's shoot. As these are probably all taken at the same place, this is a good place to assign a Location keyword to all of these photos at once.
My Collections Sets are: National Parks, National Monuments and States. Underneath those are Keywords for individual National Parks, National Monuments and States. Not really rocket science!
- Subject -
Every photo also has some sort of Subject. Unfortunately, you most likely will have to assign these Subject Keywords to each individual photo after it has been imported into Lightroom Classic. I have also set up Collections Sets for Subject Keywords as well.
My Collection Sets are: Animals, Astrophotography, Plants, People and Sports
Note:
I have some other Subject Keywords that don't fit into these categories that I use for other purposes. Examples of these are: Rainbow, Sand Dunes, Stormy weather, Sunrise, Sunset and Water. You can probably come up with some of your own!
- How I Use These Keywords -
If you take a look at the Photo Collections that are on the home page of my web site, you will see that the Keywords described above correspond to those Photo Collections. Thus it makes it quite simple to gather the candidate photos that I want to use in the Photo Collections on my web site.