Stock Photography – refusals

I made an experiment with two stock photography providers after choosing 30 pictures, non commercial pictures good an bad, uploaded them and waited for their approval and I had a quite interesting response from both companies.
Where one company rejected a picture the other accepted it and vice versa. Of course that there are some pictures rejected or accepted by both companies. One thing was funny because one said that one specific picture is out of focus and blurry and not good while it was accepted on the other site the same with one image that was considered to be a snapshot or with other that was considered a low interest or too artistic.

The refusal messages were like this:
- Low interest: Probably little demand/selling potential for this image. Try for more marketable shots.
- Not usable. Only submit vertical images in vertical format not flipped sideways.
- Needs More Keywords: Please add as many applicable keywords as you can so that your photo can be easily found by users, the submitted keywords are not sufficient.
- Snapshot composition: This image is more of a snapshot than a marketable stock image. Overall problems can include poor lighting, poor composition, non-interesting subject matter, etc.
- Poor optical performance due to low lens quality, such as lens fringing, chromatic aberrations, uneven sharpness in focus area.
- Poor composition/Cropped subject: Chopping off part of subject makes photo harder to use generally
- Your image does not meet our current standards because its composition and lighting are below the average for this subject. Note that when it comes to well covered or low demand subjects the overall quality and concept of the image is very crucial and our requirements are higher. Otherwise your image will not stand the competition and may never sell. A well planned and executed commercial image needs to have an attractive and engaging composition which at the same time does not limit the image's potential use by the customers. The lighting in commercial images is also very important. Your image needs to be well lit according to its concept but in all cases retain proper detail throughout the entire frame. It is highly recommended that you see the quality aspects of our best selling images and strive to achieve similar or better results.
- The image contains elements that might be protected by copyright/trademark (logos, brands, specific buildings etc.), can identify a property/product (letters, numbers), or could raise usage problems, therefore it doesn't qualify as a RF stock image. Analyze the photo closely and remove these elements if possible or try to obtain a property release.
- The image contains a large amount of noise artifacts. Please fix this issue using noise-removal software and resubmit.
- White balance parameter was not correctly assigned.
- Image is not RF stock oriented or its sales potential is too low at this stage. Please note that Stock photography is a commercial type of imagery, so, snapshots are not Stock. There are several vital requirements that an image must meet in order to be stock oriented. An image must serve a purpose, must have a concept, must have a good technical execution in terms of composition, exposure, light setting, optical performance. Creativity is a keyword for a successful stock image, as well.
It is also very important to understand that Art and Stock are two fundamentally different categories of imagery, that only meet when an artwork can adapt to a wide range of commercial usage.
- Artifact Problems: Noise/Grain/Chromatic or other artifacts due to low light, blue or purple fringing, high ISO, over-sharpening or post processing techniques. Please view image at 100% prior to submission.

So, as a conclusion … acceptance rate was around 30%.

If you want to sell your pictures and score better than me then you should take pictures having in mind the commercial aspect not the art aspect. A very good artistic picture is not stock as they say “It is also very important to understand that Art and Stock are two fundamentally different categories of imagery, that only meet when an artwork can adapt to a wide range of commercial usage”.
They also have an interesting option if you want to sell your picture only with them or not, if you let them have exclusive right to sell your picture then you should not use it with other company and they will offer you higher rates per sale. Other option is to sell the rights of the picture and when you have a buyer you will lose any rights over that picture. I will treat this subject later.

Overall the interaction with both companies, until now was quite smooth and clear with small differences in their acceptance but hey, then they will have the same content and where will be the difference?

To be continued