T-Pain performs at Hot 97 Summer Jam, in East Rutherford New Jersey. July 1, 2008

June 23, 2009 – The New York installment of METAsmart, was a huge success. The seminar series, which teaches photographers how meta data can be used to protect copyright, streamline workflow and increase sales, featured presentations by metadata expert David Riecks, Photoshelter founder & SEO expert Allen Murabayashi, and a panel discussion by meta-savvy photographers Lou Manna, Garfield Hall and yours truly.

The presentations were so good that even I learned a lot (and I was on the panel).

DID YOU KNOW

• Google returns 140 characters of your page description before cutting it off.
• Google does include the ALT tags of images in search results but will not read the image metadata.
• The copyright symbol does not display correctly in all photo captioning software. Write out “copyright” instead.
• Including the original file name in the metadata can help you determine which image the client has even if they’ve renamed it.
• It is illegal to remove the copyright information from a photo’s metadata.

IF YOU MISSED THE NEW YORK SEMINAR

• Don’t worry, the METAsmart program notes and a host of other useful information will be downloadable from photometadata.org soon.
• Registering for one of the upcoming FREE METAsmart seminars in Washington D.C. or Atlanta.

I ALSO RECOMMEND

• Improving your website’s SEO by downloading the Photoshelter SEO Cookbook for Photographers.
• Visiting David Riecks’ Controlled Vocabulary website for more information on how to efficiently keyword your images no matter what software you’re using.

What have you learned about metadata?

Related posts:

1. Protect your hearing, a pubic service announcement

June 4, 2009 – So, I’m writing a concert photography tutorial for a guest-blogger spot on the awesomeness that is the Photoshelter Blog. (If you don’t read it already, you should.) I’ll be covering the necessary how-to topics like gear and shooting technique but I’d love to know what else you would like covered in a concert photography guide.  Would you like to know more about workflow or post processing? All suggestion are welcome!

UPDATE: Thanks to everyone who contributed topics here and via twitter.

The potential topics include:

• PR Contacts: How to Find Them
  
• Festivals: Who to Shoot, How to Survive and Still Come out with Great Images
• Doing the Work: How to Create Iconic Music Images while Keeping the Publicist Happy
• Getting into it Concert Photography (Starting from the Bottom)
• Equipment: What to Use and Why it matters
• Workflow: I just took 300 photos in 15 minutes, now what?
• Make it Look Good, Small: Post Processing Techniques for the Web
• Money: Where to spend it and even how to make it
• Primes vs. Zooms: When to use each and Why
• Critical Focusing: Beware the microphone/stand
• First Three, No Flash: How to work with the Rules and when to Break them
• To Flash or Not to Flash: That is the Question
• Change Locations: How to Decide your next Shot and Where you Need to be to Get it.

Related posts:

1. Concert Photography Questions & Answers
2. How to Take the World's Best Concert Photos
3. Canon 5D Mark II & Concert Photography: First Impressions