IPTC location fields, how do you use them for the UK?

[myotis]

Not sure if this is appropriate for this forum, but not sure where to ask.

The available IPTC location fields have city, state/province, and country, plus the country code available.

The UK is made up of three countries (Scotland, England and Wales) and one province (Northern Ireland) .  So if you take a town like St Andrews in Fife, the location hierarchy should be

St Andrews, Fife, Scotland, United Kingdom.

One entry too many for the IPTC fields, so I decided to ignore the UK bit and just fill in St Andrews (city), Fife (state) and Scotland (Country)

But if I allow the location fields to be filled in automatically (lightroom or by camera) using the GPS coordinates, I get St Andrews (city field), Scotland (state field), and UK (country field), missing out the county/state equivalent (Fife), which in terms of the UK is probably missing out the most critical bit of the location data.

Assuming this location info may at some time be searched by a third party (e.g.as a stock photograph), I'm not sure how to approach this.

Should I manually enter (or edit) the city and county into the same field  eg. "St Andrews, Fife", but then someone searching on the state/province field wouldn't find the "Fife" as it wouldn't be there.

Should I manually edit the fields and lose the benefit of auto complete from the GPS data, but then have Fife (state) and Scotland (country) in the fields where you would expect to find them. Or given its being done wrong by Lightroom and the iPhone, do people expect to find the country name in the state/province field. I feel at a bit of a loss as to how to deal with this.

Strangely, in spite of extensive searching of the internet, I haven't found any discussion on this, but its brought me to a halt in my weekend of finally getting around to start properly using PM and filling in some of the key IPTC fields.


On the assumption that some people here will have experience of filling in the location fields for UK locations, I would be very interested to hear how you dealt with this.

Thanks,

Graham



 

[Hayo Baan]

Hi Graham,

Ah, right, I know where you are coming from. Deciding on a standard for locations is something that you can take very far. The problem is that not all countries have the same notion of states or provinces, or have so very little or so very many of them to render them unusable. In the end it comes down to what you think is usable. There is no right or wrong here, I think.

On the one hand there is what is being filled in automatically and on the other what is convenient/appropriate for you. In this case you may want to go for the latter and use the state/province field for both the count(r)y (Scotland) and the department (Fife). Perhaps something like this Scotland / Fife will be suitable. Something similar is what I use for the small Dutch Waddensea islands.

[myotis]

Hello Hayo,

Thanks, or now that I think of it, "Scotland, UK"    in the country field would make the most sense, which would put both "countries" in the right field.

Cheers,

Graham

[Hayo Baan]

Thanks, or now that I think of it, "Scotland, UK"    in the country field would make the most sense, which would put both "countries" in the right field.

Ah, now you mention it, this does make sense! Hmm, that means revisiting my own images from Wales and Scotland, I think

[myotis]

Hayo,

Sorry to have given you some unexpected work

Cheers,

Graham

[nmf]

Personally I wouldn't enter the town and county in the same field but instead place them in their own fields. This is because I have come across some search engines that have difficulty with anything not specific. As for Scotland, nice place and I have many Scottish friends, I ignore it at that point and would enter Great Britain as the country.

However my caption starts as follows {DATE} - {TOWN}, {COUNTRY} - .... so for example you could put {Date} St.Andrews, Scotland ... and then in the Keywords I would put :

st.andrews, st andrews, fife, scotland, great britain as I would be viewing the image as having a relevance for all those terms.

The one area where I would suggest a different practice re the Country field is if the image is specifically Scottish, for example a Scotsman wearing a kilt eating a haggis as he tosses a caber on the golf course at St. Andrews. OK being a bit OTT but hopefully you will see the difference between any of those items in a picture and a picture of a car in a car park which just happens to be in Scotland.

The only other option I can see is to enter Scotland in Country and GBR in the country code box.

In general my aim though is to ensure the most relevant terms that anybody is likely to search for is in the Caption and Keyword boxes.

There may of course be something on the International Press Telecommunications Council website at http://www.iptc.org but having tried to find things on there in the past I warn you it can ironically be difficult and you may just be best off making a decision that suits your particular situation.

As I am not a picture researcher I can't say for sure but I would think more people would use the keyword function when searching than the location as, per my car example, they could end up with lots of images of cars in car parks rather than images that show off the glories of Scotland.

[myotis]

Thanks nmf,

Some good points,,which I will give some thought to.

From a personal point of view, I tend to want find images by county (state), e.g. Cornwall, or indeed Fife,  and the default auto fill for these using the GPS coordinates is England, rather than Cornwall, or Scotland instead of Fife.

But this can be done from the keywords as you suggest, so maybe its irrelevant, it just distresses my sense of "order".

Cheers,

Graham

[Tom Parkes 2]

So if you take a town like St Andrews in Fife, the location hierarchy should be

St Andrews, Fife, Scotland, United Kingdom.

At last, the real reason for Scotland seeking independence has emerged.