Photography like any art is broken down into two aspects. You have the nuts and bolts discussion on how to use the camera, and how far you can stress the camera to get the shot you want. The other part is the crafting an image to bring out a reaction from the viewer. Without the former skills under your belt the latter becomes much harder.

However, it’s the two as a whole that drives what I think photography is. My belief is a picture is pure emotion. That could be pain, anger, suffering, joy, silliness, sadness, tranquility, etc. However, it must evoke an emotion. If it doesn’t it has failed.

Note, I’m stating “emotion” and not a “story.” Each person that sees just the picture will overlay their own story on the picture. If as a photographer you have to handhold the viewer as to what the story is you have failed. You can add scene details through a header or a short blurb, but the image should stand without them.

Why? Because more often than not the photo is out of your control. You take a picture and give it to someone. They may or may not accept your “version” of the story you tell, but they can’t deny the emotion within the shot.

This is important because photos have different meanings to different people. A bride’s wedding book has a lot of personal meaning to her, because it was her day. It was the day everyone focused on her. Her children, her children’s children, or a historian may not have such a strong emotional bond to those images. They are a “slice of life” to them. An event that happened that could be studied to explain how things were done in the past. Thus to make it have any meaning to others there has to be a strong independent emotional feeling from the pictures.

I’m not saying that storytelling is wrong in photography. I truly believe it has it has a place in series and collections. Storytelling through series is as old as cave paintings, but unless you want an isolate image to lose power you need to ensure it has an emotional appeal of its own. Images that lack this are weak links, and honestly should be limited or culled.

Most photojournalist understand this idea. They are looking for the raw emotions when they are out photographing for a story. They are never sure how many photos will be used by the periodical and in what order. So they need to ensure that each image is captivating, because it maybe their picture that draws the reader seeing a headline “Hundreds Displaced in China” to read the article instead of skipping due to a lack of any personal bond to China or the people being displaced.

So my advice, take it or leave it as you wish, is to always go for the emotion. It will be the strongest shot that you can ever take.

So today I’m going to walk through my keywording process, and explain how it improves my life. I hope by time you are finished it will inspire you in how you can improve your current photo management.

Importing the Images
We’re all guilty of wanting to see our pictures right now. Digital photography has removed the need to wait even an hour to see our snapshots, and so we rush through the Lightroom import process. I’ll confess to doing this myself when I came back to photography a few years ago. However, if we apply a bit of constraint up front it will greatly improve our life down the road.

Ok, when you import your images from your camera or from the flash card you’ll see down at the bottom the “Information to Apply” section. The section we’re concern with is the Keywords box. In my example, you’ll notice I put in the keywords: 2009, August, Minnesota Zoo, and XXUntagged.

I can already hear people go “The date is already in the meta data why are you duplicating it?” My reasons are simple. The filtering tools in Lightroom provide a nice way of looking at a lot of the meta data, but it fails to let me see dates other than “by year”. Where by at least putting the month as a keyword you can easily look for any picture shot in August of 2009.

Other than the year and month there is the locations (in this case the Minnesota Zoo), and this strange keyword called “XXUntagged”. I do this because some shoot location may have additional keywords that needs to be added, but it doesn’t make sense to mark all images with those keywords (e.g. tagging each animal for latter retrieval).

I’m sure you have notice I don’t keyword the city (Apple Valley), state (Minnesota), etc. I’ll get into why I don’t later.

Additional Keyword Tagging
There are many ways of doing this. But because I’ve added the XXUntagged keyword it becomes easier to find all images that have not gone through this phase.

I would stress how important it is to do this step right away, but looking at my own backlog (2,000+) I can’t in good faith pretend to be on top of it. I do however recommend that you take pictures of plaques and signs while you shoot to remind you of what you were looking at (I have a few animal pictures with no keywords because I’m not sure what they are. The Zoo rotated those animals off display, and they are no longer listed on their website).

However, I’ll not dwell on this step. This boils down to reviewing each shot and adding a simple keyword or two that describes what is in the picture (e.g. Amur Leopard, Grizzly Bear, etc). They should be descriptive enough to describe the picture, but you don’t need to go overboard in keywording at this point.

I do have a recommendation to make life easier. If you mouse over a keyword in the Keyword List. You’ll see an arrow appear on the right side. If you click on that arrow you are now focused on all images with that keyword.

After doing that you can start marking each image with additional keywords, and when you are finished you can just remove the XXUntagged keyword. Since the image no longer is tagged with XXUntagged keyword it will vanish from the list, and you can go on. This works well if you have ten pictures of the same animal. You can select all of them, add the right keywords, and then remove the XXUntagged before moving on to the next set of pictures.

NOTE: THIS ONLY WORKS IF YOU ARE IN GRID MODE. If you are in Loope View it will only update the selected image. This can be annoying if you prefer to use Loope View and select multiple images from the bottom filter window.

Now that we have the simple basics out of the way. Lets dive into the meat…

Managing Hierarchy of Keywords
Next lets focus on why using a hierarchy are a good thing, and where they are used. If you look at the Keywords List section each keyword can be a keyword and a container for additional keywords. Below is a snapshot from my photo library as an example.

To create a keyword inside another you just right-click (two-finger-click or control-click on the Mac) on the keyword and select ‘Create Keyword Tag inside “[keyword]“…’ and it will bring up the typical Create Keyword Tag window that we all know. If you mistaken hit “Create Keyword Tag” you still have the ‘Put inside “[keyword]“‘ checkbox.

NOTE: Watch out for the “Add to selected photos” checkbox. This is good if you have the right images selected, but it can be a problem if you are pre-generating the hierarchy and you have a random image selected. It will be selected, or not, based on what you did last time.

The main reason I do this is to ensure every time I reuse the keyword “Minnesota Zoo” it will automatically gain the keywords: States, Minnesota, and Apple Valley. This is a great time saver, but in some cases it may require some thought as to how you want to setup your library. Thankfully those keywords are not bound to the keyword container they are created in. So if you place a keyword in the wrong place you can easily drag it to the new location.

This doesn’t have to be just for shoot locations, but one should do this for most keywords that have commonly associated additional words (e.g. Animals > Felines > Snow Leopard or Bugs > Spiders > Marbled Orbweaver). The other bonus this gives you is additional groups of keywords you can use to find an image without any extra work. Say you want a picture of a spider, but you are not sure the name of it. You can go to Bugs > Spiders and browse all the spiders until you find the one you want.

So now you have these hierarchies setup, and you are looking at the Keywording section and you still only see the basic keywords you set (e.g. 2009, August, Minnesota Zoo, onFlickr, Sparrow), and you want to see all the hierarchy words as well. You can do this by changing “Keyword Tags” from “Enter Keywords” to “Keywords & Containing Keywords”.

By doing this we now see a whole host of new keywords. Ones we didn’t enter, but they are there by association. This has allowed us to quickly apply keywords in a constant manor without spending a large amount of time doing it per-import or worse per-image.

In the above screen shot you’ll notice a “–Dates” keyword. I put all my years and months under one hierarchy, and I always wish it to be at the top. As as result I added — to the front to ensure that.

The other thing you’ll notice is “Flickr” and “onFlickr”. I have a hierarchy called Flickr > onFlickr and Flickr > queueFlickr. When I started posting pictures to My Flickr account I needed a way to quickly find what I may have posted. It also provides me with a way of quickly tagging images I may want to come back later and post. These are things that can be done via Collections, and it may be more useful if I used the Slideshow, Print, and Web modules more than I do.

With this stated I have a few collections in my library, but most the time when I use collections I use the Smart Collections aspect and set rules based on keywords.

This is of course one way of working. I’ve shifted how I’ve managed keywords multiple times before I’ve settled on this method, and I’m sure I’ll make more changes as Adobe releases newer versions of Lightroom, but my main hope was that this would spark ideas on how you can be more effective on managing your images. And if showing how I worked does that for one person then it has been worth writing.

Now, let me get to the heart of this post. The final film has the same issues that the original seven page partial draft written by Mr Rothman had. There is no plot, no driving force, and no reason to empathize with the main characters. The sad thing is because what I saw in that partial draft was a deeper meaning than what Mr Rothman decided to portray. However, with the summary below it doesn’t surprise me it was lost.

“Jathia’s Wager is a science fiction film about a young man living in an isolated community of humans who must make a life changing decision about his future species.”

Actually, it isn’t. The core idea is about how humans have exceeded their time on Earth, and those that stay fight to remain in their static form because of their fear of the known. Few people can coop with dramatic change, many can handle minor changes, and there is a vocal minority that see any change as an attack against them. This to me is what Jathia’s Wager is about.

I wish Mr Rothman would have seen this aspect from my version and adopted more of it within his final piece. Truthfully, I have only myself to blame. I watched a lack of writers join in 2007 and 2008, and as a result, I lost interest in the lack of diversity of scripts. When I finally wandered back, it had been filmed.

Such is life, and I don’t consider it to be a big loss. I spent time working on a script and reminding myself why script writing always takes me ten-times longer than short stories to write, and having a learning experience is what life is all about.

On a side note, not sure if Mr Rothman meant it to be a nod to my story, but I was amused at the “prequel” at the end which is a thirty-second love story.

I hope that Mr Rothman has good luck with future projects, and I’m still interested in working as a script writer for a small production group.

This doesn’t apply just to objects, but to writers as well. Once a writer has been shoved hard enough in the right direction, he/she will continue down that path until something slows or stops them. For physical objects that tends to be friction, but for writers it could be anything–real life, sickness, lack of energy, depression, self-loathing, etc.

Now, that I have you thinking. Let me change gears slightly. Frankly, the idea of inertia isn’t interesting to me, nor will be the focus of today’s topic. But it’s the concept of creating that inertia in the first place.

As you can tell, I’ve lost all inertia. Not only on this website, on my home website, and on a writing project tentatively due at the end of March (which I blew). The energy required for me to write or edit is high (editing is the worse of the two). It isn’t that I’m lazy or I feel as if I suck at the task. It has more to do with my distractibility.

I’m not as distractible as a coyote, but there always is something more interesting than what I’m currently working on. Case in point, the last two weekends I’ve gone out to the Minnesota Zoo and Como Zoo with a friend of mine “Kurst.” Both times it focused around photography (one of my many other hobbies), and sadly it didn’t take much effort to convince me to do that instead of working on my project. Even now, I realize that my current website lacks any sane ability to manage the 500+ new images that just found their way into my Lightroom library. Thus, I’m considering blowing tomorrow (well, today) writing new code to allow me to better handle manage and update my online photo gallery.

It isn’t that I don’t enjoy writing. Just it takes a less amount of energy to set me into motion on something else, and this is the critical thing that every potential writer has to resolve. This isn’t something you can just say, “My new year’s resolution is to require less force to be acted on me to write.” It’s an honest fact. If it were that easy then we’d have a large amount of people producing good quality content and fewer people consuming it. Now, I’m not trying to say one should admit defeat, but one needs to consider what changes are needed to over come this problem.

So how does one go about doing this? This is an extremely good question, and one that I can’t really answer with any sincere convictions. I know it has to do with setting aside a consistent block of time DAILY (not weekly, not monthly, not yearly, but daily!) to devote to improve your writing. This may be as simple as picking two or three words of a day sites (e.g. Reference.com, Merrian-Webster, New YorkTimes, etc) and stating you will write a simple story using those words, or it could be asking an English Teacher or editor to supply you with five things you can work on to improve your mechanics and delivery. Then you can assign yourself one per week with a writing challenge at the end of that week to prove that you’ve successfully understood how to correct the problem.

But, I suspect the primary answer comes down to finding a way to force yourself to be accountability to someone else, and start finding ways to reduce the distractions around you.

When I sit down to write a story, be it a short piece, a novel, or a series, I tend to decide where my story takes place. Is it in a “present day” type environment, in another universe, or in an alternate time line? The next question is “how much of the world will bleed into the narrative?” If it’s a short piece I made just laid out simple ground rules (e.g., real magic, present day, etc) that I’ll follow before I start investing time into the nuts and bolts of writing [NOTE: for short stories I may not even bother to write down anything unless the piece hinges on some type of abnormal concept]. For longer pieces, I may ask a few more questions (e.g. what type of magic? Where does the power get drawn from? Is it common or rare? What are the limits?).

In any case, the ground rules you write down need to be strictly followed throughout the work. If at some point you realize they must change then you need to consider what you’ve written. Does that change the path the characters would have taken? Is there a reason why they couldn’t have done this earlier? This is extremely critical for book series. There is nothing that will gain you great scorn from your die hard readers than changing a fundamentals without some solid justification.

However, this doesn’t mean that your world has to be static. The reader will accept facts given to them if they are couched correctly. If your magic is broken up into air, water, and fire, then a fire mage (who spent his whole life in and around volcanos) may find his power weaken or almost unusable if stranded on a boat in the middle of an ocean or on an iceberg. The main thing is to ensure you don’t apply random limits that make no sense to your reader.

By putting down these world rules, you may find that as you write it will also be easier to mold your story, since the rules for how things work can now guide your writing. It can easily free you to consider the interaction of things. If your story has a fire and air mage locked in heated battling with each other what can the air mage do that will not feed the flames? Maybe instead using a gust of wind to blow out a candle, as his master taught him, he can use the wind to create a vacuum to stifle the fire magic’s ability to spread.

Just make sure you write the rules down. Not only for your sanity sake, but it can also be a good tool for your editor and trusted readers to ensure you didn’t make a mistake.

When I started doing National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) the deadline was decently real. I’d never written 50,000 in such a short time, and for the first few years I succeed at doing it. What I wrote was mostly crap, and it didn’t bother me because I knew I was writing for the sake of writing. Now, I can’t do that. However, I have multiple projects (be them programming or writing) I can work on, and the thought of writing more dribble down that will not be completed just doesn’t appeal to me anymore.

I’m not stating that NaNoWriMo is bad. It is a good way to find the story in you and drag it kicking and screaming out, but I’ve come to the point where I think I’ve outgrown it. Of course, this could be my lack of energy or depression speaking (read “writer’s block”).

Granted this isn’t due to lack of fans clamoring for me to produce them something to read. Rather scares me that people are willing to read my first draft stories. However, that is what friends are for. *Weak Smile*

So what is my rambling point? Writer’s Block isn’t just a lack of words or ideas, but can also be a lack of energy or focus. Sadly, the only way to work through this is to drag yourself kicking and screaming to the task and complete it.

Only reason I bring this up is because I know folks that are currently way behind (like I am), and the more behind you get the more the word count piles up and you get scared. You start asking why you are doing this, and how you got yourself into it. Even worse you start to doubt that you can do it.

Well, STOP IT! The way you get through a month of writing (or any project for that matter) is to look keep your eye on the closest check point, and it’s your goal to make it to the checkpoint come hell or high water.

The next bit of advice I can give for those that find themselves staring at the blank page for the two hours when you are supposed to be writing is too either write or do something else. I know it sounds a bit odd, but the best way to break writers block is to actively work on something else. Yes it doesn’t advance your word count, but it gives your brain time to mull over and figure out what you want to write.

I tend to do something close to “directive dreaming” when I go to sleep. I tend to replay the last minute of the scene I’m writing as I’m laying in bed. Then I let my mind flow to see where it continues. Sometimes I have to force it down one or two paths, but after a few minutes (normally just before I fall asleep) I come up with where I need to head, and even if I don’t remember the exact cool scene I saw. The seeds of the idea are stuck in my head, and when I start writing it will come back to me.

Another thing to do is break up your writing periods up. I know that I’m only effective at writing for about 30 – 45 minutes at any given stretch. Therefor I start writing until I’m not sure where I’m heading. Then I tend to stand up and take a walk. If it is to get something to drink, roam aimless around my house, clean up a small pile that has been siting in my living room for too long, or an extended wanderings out of my house and down to the park. The idea is to refresh your mental batteries.

Hey, sometimes just switching gears, and writing something else for a bit can help. Sometimes the reason you can’t write is because something unrelated bouncing itself around in your head, and unless you get it out of your head and on paper. It will eat away at you and cause you to lose focus.

Lastly, if you have serious problems writing the best way is not only to surround yourself with other people doing the same thing, but also find a few people willing to suffer with reading a pre-draft story. It’s amazing when you get a bit of feedback like. “That was cool. I didn’t see that coming!” Or “So… When is the next chapter coming out?” Will do for your need to write.

Now, stop reading my blog and get back to writing.

BTW, this month I may be spotty in terms of writing. So just bear with it. I know few folks are reading. So bear with me until after this month I’ll be more consistent.

The standard things I tend to consider before writing a novel in thirty days in November are simple.

• Do I have character sheets for important characters?
• Do I have a description of the location in which I’m writing in?
• Do I have an outline or time line of events?
• Do I have a genre in mind?

Not stating you need any of the above. Steven King has already admitted he doesn’t use outlines. However, I tend to find having some or all the above at least firmly in my brain, if not on paper, it makes the process better. Granted the detail in the above sections depends on how you write.

Character Sheets– Mine tend to be rather short. This is a big contrast compared to when I create a Star Trek character for role playing. The main reason is I tend to need more information up front for role playing to understand my character. So I tend to pull out the Star Trek Encyclopedia and figure out who would have been at the academy when he was, and what major events he would have been involved in. It isn’t uncommon for me to end up with two to three pages of typed history. I wouldn’t recommend doing this for a writing character because they tend to act differently. I know that may sound weird, but I’ve found the only real information that is useful to write down is name, age, sex, height, weight, personality quarks, and what the character would wear normally in the story. The rest I tend to find comes from the character. However, its common for me to add to the character sheet while writing so I can remember new things I’ve discovered about the character.

Location– I also don’t spend much of time on this. Most of the time I don’t bother unless there are certain details that must be researched. Otherwise, the location itself tends to stay in my head. There have been a few times where I’ve pulled out Google maps of downtown Minneapolis to ensure my memory of locations was correct.

Outline/Time line– This one causes people many problems. Some writers refuse to use this tool, and others go over board and pre-plan every move before they start writing. The former group I feel tends to write more organic stories, but they tend to ramble and frustrates the reader with it’s wandering. The latter may be needed if you are doing a historical, but in pure fiction it can make the writing feel stilted. I tend to pick something between. My outlines/time lines tend to grow out of future scene ideas I have before I start writing or during the writing process. It also is a nice tool to update as you write so you can easily track down details you need and can’t remember later in your story. I don’t consider my time line/outline to be the end-all-be-all of the story. It’s just milestones or potential road markers as well as a way for me to keep my pacing while I’m writing. It isn’t uncommon form me to know my first few scenes, some scenes somewhere in the middle of my story, and the ones near my climax. This doesn’t mean I know the ending of my story. Just that something like *Insert Scene Here* will happen.

Genre– Strictly not needed, but if you are looking to be published you should have an idea if you are writing horror, romance, etc. It also may also define how you approach a scene. So it’s a nice thing to have in mind even if you have a mix of genres.

Do I have any of these at this point? Not really. I’m pretty set in terms of what I’m going to write. The [Snow on the Ground] song I did for NaNoWriMo pretty much showed me my Detective story had firmly become a horror story. Not stating there isn’t detectivish type things in it, but it no longer is the primary genre.

Broad research is, as its name implies, looking at a subject, event, or time period from a 10,000 ft view. You don’t care about what color Ulysses S. Grant’s horse was or if he rode into battle bear back. You are only interested in the fact he existed and that he leaded a massive volunteer army into multiple battles. This can also be the hardest research because you don’t always know how deep you should go. I recommend setting a time limit and sticking by it. In my case, I decided an hour was enough time to refresh my memory on the basics of where General Grant was and who his competition consisted of.

Next type is targeted research, this allows you take the deeper look at your material and gather interesting facts that you may want to integrate into your story. Like General Grant was also the eighteenth president of the United States or that his major rival on the battle field was Robert E. Lee. These points that will have to be addressed within your story and therefor you better get right. You wouldn’t want to be called a moron if you stated Grant captured Richmond, Virginia, in 1863, and it took him two more years before he gained control of Vicksburg, Mississippi.

However, during this phase you’ll tend to find that you could lose yourself in the research (or one would hope), and like with broad research I recommend that you set limits on how much time you spend.

I know most of you will want to blend the two of these together, and I’m not suggesting it’s a bad idea. Just I will warn you it may become a massive time sink with no real value. When you start writing you have a basic idea that will drive a high level discovery of your plot line. Deciding if the story is fiction or nonfiction is part of this idea, and this will define how far you can stray from the truth. In my case, I’ve decided to write an alternative history piece in which General Robert E. Lee has armed slaves to battle The North by promising the Negroes that they will gain new freedoms if they serve. With this in mind, I need to do broad research to decide what battles I may want to rewrite and what personal facts about Grant and Lee I may wish to change for the sake of my story.

After gathering that information, I could lay out a known time line of what really happen and start playing “what if” games by moving battles around, removing some, and adding new ones. After that basic alternative time line is complete then additional targeted research on what really happen during and after those battles are needed. You may also want to find out happened to soldiers, slaves, and civilians when cities were taken.

However, had you done all your research in one sitting you may find yourself with information overload as you try to force every “gold nugget” into your story. Instead by pacing and limiting your research you can give the story a chance to grow and show you where you need to study more.

The main thing is to keep writing and not get sidetracked.

BTW, I have no interest in the Civil War, and the novel for National Novel Writing Month I’m working on isn’t even set on Earth. I’ll write more about what I plan on doing for November next week when I have a clearer picture of the world my story is placed in.

That being said I may look at a story based on him in the future. However, I just don’t see enough of a plot arc to be inspired to write about him at this moment. I suspect it will take a while to flesh him out in the way that I think is best.

Anyways, the public forums is where I suspect to see commentaries since I don’t offer such ability
on my site (yet).