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Got a rejection from LO last week.  It was just some bog standard shots of some eggs on a white background, feathered shadow underneath to ground them (as per my usual style).  They were a little noisy I guess, because I shot them on my old 350D on ISO200, but that wasn't why they were refused.

They were refused basically because they were bad isolations.  Stray pixels was the reason.

But then I looked at the portfolio of the "bouncer" who reviewed my photos, and found that they have a portfolio that has absolutely shocking isolations in!  We're talking obvious on camera flash, focus on the wrong parts sometimes, white balance issues and worst of all...  they had clearly been cut out using the pen tool, but they have left a tiny bit of shadow under the object!  But not a nice feathered shadow just to ground the object, a horrid, horrid black line basically that abruptly stops!

My shots, although not perfect, were a thousand times better than that, and yet they were rejected!  Double standards is not a good trait in a stock agency!

NB:  I'm not adding which reviewer it was, or what shots they were, that's not fair at all.  But suffice to say, between the patronizing note and the double standards, I'm not impressed!

They are a (relatively) new agency, and I get the impression that they have recently upped their quality control.  There was a time that they took anything and everything, I haven't sent in much this year, so I was quite surprised to get a couple rejections from LO - for example on photos accepted by DT, StockXpert and SS - so when you say "double standards" I believe that anything you may not think does not meet today's quality was submitted in the first couple years and would definitely not get in today.

LO wants to mark its territory as a mid-stock agency, so you would really expect the highest quality standards.   You always hear the photographers say "if it's technically fine, accept it and let the buyers decide".  It must be hard to draw their line.   They certainly have photos that the other agencies DO NOT have, which means they can perhaps steal customers from a place like Istock,  but also a customer from Istock is used to perfect isolations and may never return if they download those that you mentioned.

They are mid stock for those that have over 100 downloads and can set their own prices.  I have a few there at higher prices.

Why does everything I read put me off the site?

That surely is just confusing to buyers?

I am sorry, I simply cannot understand why some of our photographers cannot stand up for ourselves and are willing to find every excuses for stock photo agencies.

If your local government is running a deficit, can you, as a taxpayer, accept to have the same police officer who laid the charge against you to be the judge at your trial for your traffic offence?

Stock photo agencies should not hire the same person as reviewer and contributor. There are plenty of people and agencies around. If a person works for LO as a reviewer, this person can still contribute to other agencies. Reviewers get paid. If the reviewer's pay is small and unfair, you have the option not to be a reviewer but as a contributor. To have your cake and eat it is not ethical.

But this is not the reviewer's problem. Stock photo agencies should understand that a biased reviewer will deny the agency's opportunity to have the best photos online and make the most profit. This is common business sense too.

my comments were removed by me as in the final analysis,  they did nothing to advance the cause of this good forum or to maintain a good relationship with others here,  with whom I have developed friendship.     -   

    -tom 

If you think it's an invalid rejection, you should write support.  If a reviewer is doing something wrong according to their standards, they will (hopefully) instruct that person.

Although it may be a conflict to be both a contributor and an inspector, I think it's unfair to assume he/she will act unethically.  If this is the case here, it is probably not an isolated event  and reporting to the site will only make such behaviour clear.

Regards,
Adelaide

Are you sure about it  ? ?

Amen to that. The way that I look at it, if I myself don't like what a site is doing I close my account and move on. that's it

I never said it was an invalid rejection, it was fairly borderline with noise problems in my eyes.  But they rejected it for "stray pixels".  Well, there weren't any stray pixels because I shot it on a white background and didn't do anything to it in photoshop... so there was nothing to be stray!  They didn't reject it for the obvious problem, which I thought was strange.  Although saying that, it wasn't a problem on iStock and ShutterStock where they are anal about noise (I think I just see noise in all my old shots now, getting too used to the 5D!).

Was just pointing out, that the reviewer in question had extremely dubious pictures in their portfolio that frankly look worse than my mother can take.

+ 1 for this post!

The first thing to do would have been to write either write support at LO or to even take it to Bryan if you feel it is that serious of an issue. Complaining in such negative tones about a specific individual should not be done on a public forum like this. And to specifically slam the reviewer's art/talent in this forum in the manner in which you have is totally inappropriate if you ask me. This person has feelings too!

One of the great things about LO is that you do indeed know who the reviewer is - which is very rare in the industry. This makes the whole point of "biased reviewers" almost moot since you can go see their work. The other sites are hiding their reviewers so you can't even know if there's some bias or not!

Another unique thing about LO is the fact that you could have just written the reviewer back and asked for more explanation about the rejection - you can't get that with other sites since their reviewers are anonymous. All of the reviewers at LO are very open about giving you help and explaining why they rejected an image.

And, sometimes they do make mistakes - it isn't always just because their trying to put you down and supress your images. And maybe there indeed are "stray pixels" that you haven't seen. Often reviewers have found things in my images that i didn't see myself. That's why they're there.

It just seems the best course would have been for you to write either the reviewer or Bryan or support to find out more before coming here and dissing LO.

Mitch
Disclaimer: yes, i am the forum moderator for LO but i've also learned over the years that it is better to try to resolve an issue and get all the information before publicly making accusations. I'm not perfect, i've done that in the past too, but i'm saying that i've learned from my mistakes. It is far to easy to be negative on the internet since we aren't facing the person we're righting about as if we were talking face to face. I try to always post as if it were talking to that individual directly - makes things less confrontational.

You can't have stray pixels in an image that was shot on white and not isolated after the fact...

Perhaps the reviewer meant to say something else.  I guess that's the flaw of letting reviewers write personal comments, and why I prefer iStock etc because you always get a clear rejection, rather than someone using terms that perhaps are ambiguous (that's not to say the iStock reviews aren't ambiguous, but you always know what what the terminology means because it's standardized).

The thing is, on iStock you can see all the reviewers portfolios and they're all extremely fine photographers.  Why is lucky oliver using someone to review who doesn't appears to have a distinctly average grasp on photography?  I've had a few over there that have made me think "hmmm, that's a little bit weird", but not questioned it until I've dug a little deeper now.

hmmm...


Not exactly a nice thing to say. Maybe not "slanderous" but i would hope that it isn't something she'd say to the reviewers face - and by my way of thinking, then it shouldn't be stated here in this thread.

Edited to clarify