Rainy Day on the Motorway

Caption:

A rainy day on the motorway from London to the West Country in England

Description:

It’s an everyday scene from a motorists point of view – A rainy day on the motorway.

But rain on the motorway has a number of repercussions from delay to serious accidents.

If you want to use this photo of a rainy day on the motorway, go to Alamy.
Photo Comments:

I quite often travel by bus.

When the rain started I was thinking in traveller rather than photographer mode.

This emphases how important it is to have the right mindset – it would have been quite easy to simply sit back, ignore the rainy day, listen to an audio book on my mp3 player and let the miles roll by.

Still, I was sitting behind the driver and quickly realised that I could get a view of the rainy day on the motorway. I used my Canon 5D Mark 11 with a fastish shutter speed to counteract the movement of the bus and took a number of pictures.

Some of the time I used manual focus as it’s not always reliable to autofocus through glass.

I wanted to emphasise the traffic on the road but not rule out some of the rain splashing on the windscreen.

I took a few shots of this rainy day but this was one of my keepers.

As this is a stock photo I had to provide keywords.

These are the ones I came up with for the Alamy system:

Essential keywords:

Cars; Motorway; Rain; Street Sign; Vehicles

Main keywords:

Air Pollution; Asphalt; Autobahn; Automobiles; Blurred; Car; Emissions; Energy; Environment; Exhaust; Expressway; Fossil Fuel; Freeway; Fuel; Fumes; rainy day; Highways; Lamp Posts; Lampposts; Lorries; Lorry; Macadam; Movement; Pollution; Raining; Rainy; Rear Light; Road; Road Transport; Speed; Street Lamps;

Comprehensive keywords:

Street Lighting; Streetlamps; Auto; Automobile; Automotive; Blur; Blurry; Building Material; Building Materials; Car Manufacture; Car Manufacturing; Emission; England; Exhausts; Expressways; Fast; Fossil Fuels; Freeways; Fuels; Fume; Highway; Lamp Post; Lamppost; Lane; Lanes; London; Motion; Motorcycle Part; Motorcycle Parts; Motorways; Move; Moving; Natural Resource; Natural Resources; Oil; Polluted; Quick; Rear Lights; Resource; Resources; Roads; Speedy; Street; Street Lamp; Street Life; Street Light; Street Lights; Street Scene; Street Scenes; Street Signs; Streetlamp; Streetlife; Streetlight; Streetlights; Streets; Tail Light; Tail Lights; Tarmac; Tire; Tires; Traffic; Transport; Transportation; Tyre; Tyres; Urban; Vehicle; Weather; Wheel; Wheels; Wing Mirror; Wing Mirrors

So here’s the problem:

As photographers we think pictorially but picture buyers have to find the pictures they want using words.

So good keywording is important.

What is good keywording?

How can we provide good keywords?

Like many stock photographers I bemoan the fact that taking photographs, especially great photographs, is such a small part of the workflow.

Any thoughts on keywording.

I’ll give some of mine later