Keywords. 2,048 species list. Any interest?

This might seem a little over the top but I just finished converting the AOU's (American Ornithologists Union) list of 2,048 known bird species of North America into a keyword list that can be imported into Lightroom or Bridge or whatever else allows for keyword importing. It's in a tab delimited text format. If you set your keywording up right, when you select the bird it will add the order, family, and bird to the keyword as well.

If you want to try it out and you already have a keyword list I would suggest exporting your keyword list before you import this one. That way you can use clear and import to put things back like they were should you decide that mine sucks :grin:

I can't attach a text file to this post so of you are interested send me a PM and I'll email it to you. It's only 48k (19k zipped) so it's not a huge deal. BUT- don't expect it to come right away. Sometimes I actually work :)

It looks something like this only a lot longer. It took me 5 hours to build this in Excel (x's are there to add space and do not appear in the keyword list):

Birds
xxxxx Passeriformes
xxxxxxxxxx Eberizidae
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx Abert's Towhee
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx American Tree Sparrow

If you set keywording up right when you select the bird it will add the order, family, and the keyword "bird" to your image.

If you don't know what keywording is you are missing out on a handy tool.

One amazing project Michael !!! I'm impressed !!!!

You are correct about key wording and yours is the best I've seen.

Mines free too :) I got tired of not having a keyword for the birds that I shoot.

Anyone that wants it is welcome to it. It would be nice to be able to post it as a download somewhere but I don't know where that would be. I suppose that I could contact the AOU and see if they would host it?

I'm sure it will take a while to keyword all the images but what a trip afterwards !!!!

I think that I am going to do another version with the bird name first followed by taxonomy and include the latin name as well. It will take a little time to do but a lot of people aren't going to like the idea that they have to expand the order and family out just to see the name. If I'm going to do all of the work it needs to be useful. The new version will have bird name first and ore/family/latin name will be sub-keywords. We'll see how that works.

I have two more versions now.
Version one is Bird name first followed by order and family. There may be more info but I honestly don't know right now. Version 2 took all of my brains...

Version 2 is a bit more involved. There are over 10,000 lines in the file :)
It contains
Bird
Sibley Heading (from the Sibley Guide)
Common Name
Latin name
Order
Family
and in some cases the subfamily name

What a fantastic gift to all of us! I am just initiating keywording in Lightroom, this couldn't have come at a better time.

Let's see, I have about 35 species in 4 years of shooting....how long before I need all 2048? :-)

PM sent for the files. Thanks!

Bill

Very generous of you Michael, I thank you very much for this nice gesture! PM sent :-)

Sorry for the late reply guys. I've been out.

Bill... if you shoot fast not long at all :D

The Sibleys list has some orphans in it. I don't know if I overlooked them in the book or what. Actually, I looked for some of them in the index and I didn't see them there. I'm not sure what the deal is. I'll fine tune it and resend if it is necessary.

BTW- I would export your existing keyword list to back it up. Clear and Import the new list. Look it over and see if it's what you want. If not Clear and Import your backup. If it is and you want to add your backup just import it and it will be added to what I've done. I would then export another backup.

PS- it also works in Lightroom 2.0

I'd certainly be interested.....and hopefully your next project is a European list ;-)

I wish there was a way to attach zip files. The newest version is only 36k. How about it mods??? Any chance we can add the ability to attach a small (256k or less) text or zip file? Even better a "Download your Keyword List Here!" Sticky with the current version?

I'm finished with the Sibley's version. Someone on Texas Photo Forum has done a

Mammals: Common Name
Mammals: Scientific Name
and
is working on Reptiles...

For those that keyword these are a blessing. For those that don't... it's a worthwhile effort.

Hey Michael, Thanks for the heads up. We like to keep things simple at BAA. None of our images are key-worded. Me bad.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Arthur Morris

. . . We like to keep things simple at BAA. None of our images are key-worded. . . .

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Arthur,

Somebody is keywording your images. I just checked the Corbis site, searched for Whooping Crane, and found one of your close-ups with these keywords: Animal, Beak, Bird, Close-up View, Crane, Daytime, Deep South, Florida, Grus, Nobody, North America, Outdoors, Southern United States, USA, Whooping Crane.

Hey Cliff, For the most part that keywording is done by Corbis. Did you by anything? <smile>

Hope that you and Susan are both well. Will you be at NANAP?

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Originally Posted by Arthur Morris

Hey Cliff, For the most part that keywording is done by Corbis. Did you by anything? <SMILE>

Hope that you and Susan are both well. Will you be at NANAP?

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Arthur,

Yes, I assumed they did it, as the style is uniform across different images on the site. My point was only that they (and other stock sites) seem to think keywording important. Certainly within our own portfolios, we normally know where to find things without keywords. Buy anything at Corbis? No, but I have checked other photographers sites to see how they handle keywording. Many do it intensively--i.e., as many as 50 or more keywords per image.

We are both healthy, thanks. Hope you are too. We're enjoying a new Concept 2 rower--the most strenuous workout I've had since junior high football, or at least since bowling ball tundra or tussock grass, and highly recommended. No NANPA again this year; I always look at the expense and--being a terrible marketer, especially in person :o--figure the money should go to equipment or travel instead. :)

ps: What's with "nobody"???

I'll toss in what little I know about the significance of keywording... a friend of mine is fairly successful in wildlife stock, ag stock, and a few other stock genres and he keywords (or has someone do it) extensively so that the customer can search his database for specific images and view them on a "light table" to determine if the image meets their needs.

From my POV it's nice to be able to do a search in Bridge, for Hummingbirds for instance, and have Bridge return every file that has that keyword associated with it. I further sort by file type, etc, etc.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Arthur Morris

ps: What's with "nobody"???

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I didn't understand that either. At first I thought it was a misspelling of "no body," i.e., a headshot (the image I was looking at was a headshot). But looking again at Corbis Whooping Cranes, "nobody" seems to be used with all images that show only cranes, but not in photos that also show people (i.e., researchers working with cranes). So it may be an odd way of denoting "no people". Which again shows the potential importance of using the right keywords, since almost nobody searching on "nobody" would actually be looking for Whooping Cranes.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Arthur Morris

ps: What's with "nobody"???

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I think Cliff has it right with respect to "nobody" meaning no people.
Doesn't make much sense on its own but "nobody" could be very useful when
ANDed with other search terms, e.g. "x AND nobody" for images of x with no
people or "x AND NOT nobody" for images of x with people.