Actually, it would be more appropriate to call it a lack of metadata crisis, and it is—without any hyperbole—a deadly serious problem that is taking place in every corner of the professional photography landscape. It’s an unnerving nightmare that affects you and every other photographer. Unfortunately, few photographers seem to know about it. Luckily, there are very easy steps you can take to avoid being a metadata-less victim.

Obviously metadata is an extremely broad term, with all kinds of metadata for all types of uses. What I am referring to here is the most basic metadata that all photographers must add to their files: your name, your contact information and the copyright status of your image. (Ranking, keyword and processing instruction metadata are all cool, but not adding them results in workflow inefficiencies, not an industry-wide crisis.)

There are no clear statistics, but having interviewed a number of leading experts on this topic from all areas of the industry, I am convinced that less than 50% of professional photographers are adding basic, critical ownership metadata. I say this with conviction because all the people I asked said they thought that, when all types of photographers are averaged out, the number is actually far, far less than 50%. That’s really scary.

Why is it so scary? The simple answer is: Orphan Works legislation. When the so-called Orphan Works legislation becomes law (and it will become law), it will allow other people—both the well-intentioned-but-ignorant and intentional-evil-doers alike—to use and sell your images without your permission, and with very little monetary penalties even if you catch them after the fact, which won’t be so easy without that critical, easy-to-add metadata. (Imagine only getting paid a few bucks if one of your images was used in a national advertising campaign because the company could not locate you after performing “due diligence” to find you. That would suck.)

The ins and outs of this lack of basic metadata crisis get kind of tricky if you dig in deep. But you don’t need to dig in to deep. You simply need to:

• Add basic contact and copyright status metadata to every single one of your digital captures.

• Add this data as early in your digital workflow as possible.

• Understand that this can be done effortlessly, thoughtlessly, painlessly.

It’s painless to add basic contact metadata because powerful and cool applications like Photo Mechanic and Photoshop’s own Photo Downloader allow you to automatically add a metadata template that includes your standard, basic metadata, which hardly ever changes. This metadata embedding happens right during ingestion, as your files are zipping from your card reader to your hard drive. (You can also use these same applications to add gobs of important metadata, such as keywords and even processing instructions.)

Most of the experts I talked to worried that most photographers will tend to ignore this simple workflow advice. They say that a photographer’s specific type of image making—especially wedding, event, portrait and fine art photography—will trick them into thinking they are excluded you from needing to make this one of the most important part of their workflows. But the nature of digital images combined with the Internet ensures that every one of us must add basic metadata to every one of our files to protect our art and livelihoods.

I remain optimistic. I think that if you are not already convinced that there’s a true crisis going on, then a little further understanding of the issues will do the trick. My article, “Basic Metadata: Don’t Process Without It,” was published in both AfterCapture and Rangefinder magazines, and it received extremely promising feedback from readers who basically said: “If only I had known! This is so important—and easy.”

If you are not already ensuring that basic metadata is embedded in all your image files, read the article, join the metadata wave and help us nip this crisis in the bud.

Tags: Copyright, Metadata, Metadata Template, Orphan Works, “Basic Metadata: Don’t Process Without It”