Intimidated By Keywording -- Use Captions Instead
I made a reply in the comments that I reproduce here:I’ve never really known why I couldn’t get into it, but last night I realised: Aperture’s beautiful hierarchical keywording system paralyses some part of my brain.
Better than keywording is captioning. The problem with keywording is that there is a temptation to worry about creating consistency, planning for the future, not duplicating things etc. It’s like trying to organize a chest of drawers when you have more kinds of things than you have drawers and you know that you will have to accomodate more things in the future that you’ve never even heard of. Keywording really exists to help other people.
So caption instead. Aperture allows you to layer captions. Caption everything with “Beach trip with Brian and Jan”, then add “In the car”, “On the beach”, “In the sea”, and “Evening bonfire” as appropriate. Then caption some of those with “Down the winding path” and others with “Falling into the water”, adding “Silly face”, “Too much beer”, and “Not enough beer” to others.
Really. Don't go overboard with rigidity. The takeaway is simple: keywords are for other people; captions are for you. Ask yourself why you are applying metadata.Captions are far richer and will capture much more of what is going on. Do you really have keywords for Silly, Face, Beer, Beach, Too much, Not enough, Winding, Path, etc.? They’re not noun-bound as keywords tend to be. And there is no structure. Why should there be? No use for it. Captions are there to help you. Think of them as evidence, not proof.
Villain Chair
I want one of those. It would go well with my grey cat. Many other hard-to-find items at Suck UK. I also like the egg timer and the pen holder.