MicrostockGroup

I've been filling out the Description and Keyword portions of IPTC, but I noticed there's about ohhh, a billion or more fields you can fill out as well.     Some of them even require knowledge of the proper codes to help define whether it's a scenic, portrait, etc type of photo.

I don't want to waste too much time on IPTC, so how much of it should I really bother to fill out?

Have you been accepted yet Lincoln?

Shutterstock usually review images within a few hours, so that's normal.

Take a look at your rejection mail again.  You have to get I think seven or eight accepted out of the ten.  You might find several of the images don't have any rejection explanation - that's because they didn't bother looking at them once you'd had the maximum failures.

Shutterstock have 71,000 contributing photographers and the lowest acceptance rate down at 40% or so.

Lincoln,

providing it was not a glitch and your photos were rejected for a reason that somehow didn't get conveyed, I wanted to comment on the rest of your reaction.

SS didn't flip you a bird, they didn't blow you off and there is nothing to be pissed off about. There was nothing personal tyoward you in their rejection. They simply work as a well-oiled machine. You submit images, they review them and reject or acept them according to their standards (and, to certain degree, to particular reviewer take on some borderline photos - but that is true for all agencies). Noone looks at them and says "hey, this is that Lincoln guy, lets whack him on a head". 2 hours response is normal for them, too.

It's the best moneymaker for most submitters. Taking it personally and refusing to deal with them anymore is detrimental to you only, not in the least to them. They also do not consider themselves being in a business of educating photographers - there are enough resouirses for that including their forums where your images will be analyzed and mistakes explained should you post them asking for help.

Rejection, and multiple rejection before getting in is rather norm for SS. many went through that, me included. Eventual acceptance was totally worth the effort in two aspects. First, I learned a lot while trying to improve my photos to match their standards. Second, in two month they made me more moneythan any of other agencies in five.

You are allowing your ego to govern your reaction in a situation that doesn't warrant ego intrusion. So, it's up to you now to go ahead and improve what you do or remain pissed off and with skills that are not up to par.

... Or the forums here.  Post three of your images (preferably with some 100% crops) and we can give you some feedback.

I know it's easy to say, but you shouldn't take the rejection personally, Lincoln - they merely evaluated the commercial value of the images you supplied as it pertains to their clientele; they weren't making any sort of judgement on your photographic abilities at all.

This place has a very good wealth of knowledge in all areas of stock photography - you should strongly consider leaf's advice.

yeah i wouldn't be surprised if agencies started doing this.  Rejections cost the company money as well - to make a more efficient system they should have the best submitting photographers possible.

- i guess this is what some companies have sort of started doing, by limiting your upload amount by your acceptance level.

do you think they are penalizing poor photographers in the search - for their whole portfolio, or just on a per image basis???  If they penalize the whole portfolio I should have two accounts.  One for images that i know are great and another account for mediocre images.

As there is no reason at all given I am pretty sure that it is a glitch! The most effective is writing friendly and without any capital letters a message in the forum>Bug/Glitches asking if that might have been a glitch/ mistake.

A "normal" rejection email gives always reasons for at least 3 of the 10 images. And, contrary to public opinion, all 10 get looked at. That has been stated over and over by ShutterStock admins in their forum. Hope that helps, SY

No, Lincoln, every agency will reject pictures on the grounds of not 'being commercial'.  After all, they are in the business of selling pictures......

Several things in this interview seem strange to me:

"Shutterstock now has 60,000 members who are all amateur photographers. " I seriously doubt that Jon would call Yuri, Andresr, Lev Dolgachov, Kirsty Pargeter etc etc etc "amateurs"

"I don't really have to do a lot of marketing because we are a subscription service." Huch???

There is a lot more stuff in this interview that doesn't sound right to me and I simply don't believe that Jon ever gave and/ or authorized it.

I am certainly not familiar with zero.newassignment but had a look around the site and it doesn't strike me as a source of information that I would trust, just my 2cents. SY