How to Search Photo Library

For editorial and commercial users we provide a rich search capability.
Our climbing photography is stored with information describing its content using IPTC core metadata fields. You select values for the fields you want to search.

Title: every climbing photo carries a descriptive title (typically this includes names of climbers, routes and grades)
Location: specify either country or climbing area - (these items are not linked)
Crag: name a specifc crag (when country/area are specified crag names are restricted to these locations to help refine searches)
Format: describes either portrait or landscape orientation (by default both are included)
Keywords: to search for images containing only specified keywords

Keywords

A rich vocabulary of keywords is used to describe the content of images in more detail. This means you can specify exactly the images you want to find.

Offwidth Images is a specialist resource allowing us to use a rich set of fixed keywords that covers all our chosen content. This is called a controlled vocabulary, and is shown graphically on the search page. We do this using a Tag Cloud which is shown below.

abseil abstract aid climbing anchor approach arete back and foot belay belaying black & white blood blue sky body position body shape bouldering bridging chalking up chimney climbing clipping close up crack crashmat crimp cross loading culm dark sky dolerite drop knee dyno egyptian falling feet flagging flake frogging gear granite grimace gritstone heel hook helmet jamming karabiner killas slate landscape layback lead climbing ledge limestone mantle multi pitch offwidth outside flag overlap palming pendulum pinch placing gear protection quarry rack rescue rhyolite roof ropework sandstone sea cliff sea stack second shadow shaking out shoe shoes side pull slab slate sling sloper soloing sport climbing spotting squeaking stretch summit sunglasses taped tat technique thread tied-off top out trad climbing traverse tufa twisting warm up water waves woman

Here you can see and click on any of the keywords to begin refining your search. The size of each keyword in the cloud represents the number of images using it. So the largest keywords in the cloud will return the largest number of images. By showing you all these keywords you don't have to guess what to search for so you can find your desired content more easily.

Our controlled vocabularly includes keywords for the following content...

Type: e.g. Trad/Sport/Bouldering; Leading vs. Seconding
Rock: e.g. granite, gritstone, limestone
Feature: e.g. arete, chimney, slab, roof
Techniques: e.g. bridging, jamming, drop-knee
Acivity: e.g. belaying, chalking-up, falling, route finding, placing gear
Ojects: e.g. helmet, shoes, sunglasses, specific pieces of equipment
Weather: e.g. blue sky, dark sky
People: male, female
Emotions: e.g. fear, happiness