Hi all,
the following 3 photos where rejected by istock and shutterstock for poor lighting:





Please help me understand what I could have done better.
critique regarding other issues is also very welcome.
thanks

itay

Alright before we go any further (focus, composition, subject matter, etc) you need to get the lighting fixed.

You are making it very easy for reviewers to reject them for bad lighting/hard shadows
So soften the lighting, even if you have to use a thin piece of white cloth to dim the light or use white paper as a reflector to light up the shadow area, but fix that first.
I also suggest before submitting to any agency you already know what quality to provide.

So ask first, SS critique forum is also a 'good' place for guidelines, then submit.

Good luck and welcome to MSG!

Are you actually seeing the images? In firefox I see nothing in the OP but the text, in Safari I get little image missing icons. I had to view source and copy and paste the links into the browser to see the images.

+ and what is it?

Okra.
@OP: Take a look at the Okra pics already on iSt and SS. It's hard (around here anyway) to get really good looking Okra, but there's no point in submitting anything else.)
http://www.istockphoto.com/search/text/Okra/source/basic#1d063118
http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?searchterm=Okra&search_group=&lang=en&search_source=search_form
That's your competition.

BTW, the iStock search took almost a minute. 

Thank you everybody, all of your comments were very helpful.
BTW what is the reason I can't post links?

thanks again
itay

I had similar problems with lightning. If you use a flash, you should not put it directly towards the objects. Use a softbox or reflector, so that you can get indirect light.

Your images look like you did flash directly, so you get all light regions too bright (loosing details) and you also get hard shadows.

I'm using a walimex pro vt-300 studio flash with an umbrella reflector, and I still get images rejected because of lighting. Sometimes you may need a second light source to light up the shadows. In most cases you just can place a simple reflector on the side, to light up these, if you don't want to use a second flash.