A few weeks ago, Susan mentioned that she was going to submit some photographs to ShutterStock. ShutterStock is a website where people can purchase stock photography to use for their websites. You, as the photographer, get 50% of the purchase price. Before being accepted, you must submit 10 photos to ShutterStock and 7 of them must be accepted. For fun this week I decided to dig through some of my old photos, submit them to ShutterStock, and see if I could get accepted. Let’s see how it went!
Shot at the Surrey Hills Park.
This picture was rejected for the following reasons:
– Image contains excessive noise, grain, artifacts, and/or is poorly rasterized.
– Subject is blurry, too soft, or out of focus when viewed at full resolution.
– Image is poorly composed and/or poorly cropped.
Yikes. Let’s try a different picture of fruit!
Shot at Pike’s Place in Seattle.
This picture was rejected for the following reasons:
– Image contains excessive noise, grain, artifacts, and/or is poorly rasterized.
– Image has exposure issues, unfavorable lighting conditions, and/or incorrect white balance.
– Subject is blurry, too soft, or out of focus when viewed at full resolution.
– Image is poorly composed and/or poorly cropped.
That’s worse than the first one! Maybe I’ll move on to boats!
Shot in Seattle.
This picture was rejected for the following reasons:
– Image contains excessive noise, grain, artifacts, and/or is poorly rasterized.
– Image has exposure issues, unfavorable lighting conditions, and/or incorrect white balance.
– Subject is blurry, too soft, or out of focus when viewed at full resolution.
– Image contains color fringing and/or inappropriate lens flares.
Maybe a bigger boat?
Shot in Alaska.
– Image contains excessive noise, grain, artifacts, and/or is poorly rasterized.
– Image has exposure issues, unfavorable lighting conditions, and/or incorrect white balance.
– Image contains color fringing and/or inappropriate lens flares.
No luck with water. Maybe concrete?
Shot in OKC.
– Image contains excessive noise, grain, artifacts, and/or is poorly rasterized.
– Image has exposure issues, unfavorable lighting conditions, and/or incorrect white balance.
– Subject is blurry, too soft, or out of focus when viewed at full resolution.
– Image potentially infringes on intellectual property rights.
Intellectual property rights? What the heck?
Shot in St. Louis.
– Image contains excessive noise, grain, artifacts, and/or is poorly rasterized.
– Image has exposure issues, unfavorable lighting conditions, and/or incorrect white balance.
– Subject is blurry, too soft, or out of focus when viewed at full resolution.
– Please provide a property release signed by the artist for any scanned/photographed artwork.
Yes, indeed. If anyone knows who the artist of this graffiti near the St. Louis Arch is, please have him contact me.
While you’re at it, I’m also going to need property release forms from every building in this picture.
Here are the final 3 pictures I submitted:
In all, all 10 were rejected:
– 10 for “noise”
– 9 for “poor lighting”
– 8 for “focus”
– 4 for “lighting problems” (which is different than poor lighting)
– 2 for “composition”
– 1 for “dust and scratches”
– 1 for “trademark”
– 1 for not including a property release signed by a graffiti artist.
I believe my dreams of becoming a member of ShutterStock just came to a crashing halt.
To be frank, most pictures taken with anything less than a semi-pro camera will be rejected by this sort of service over the kind of detail than the average naked eye won’t notice. It’s a bit like when audiophiles go nuts discussing the fine intricacies differentiating this and that model of headphones, whereas for the average joe, only the most extreme cases (ie. cheapo sets vs high quality ones) will be different enough to make a difference in the listening experience.
At least, tell yourself that if your pics were submitted to most local contests, they’d stand a chance of winning a price… especially the kids’ pics.
Rob maybe you should try the scoopshot app. They have assignments that you can submit photos from your mobile device. I downloaded it weeks ago and finally just uploaded a couple photos today to see if they might sell.