Hello,

The recent upward trend of threads at Shutterstock and here on the microstockgoup boards regarding an increase in rejections at Shutterstock is interesting.  For that reason I decided to put together a survey that will give us more information in regard to rejections at Shutterstock.  If you are also interested to see if there actually is a new trend in increased rejections please take some time to fill out the online Google spreadsheet form.

Reason For Survey ~ I am curious to see if the rejections at Shutterstock show regional trends?

The questionnaire is entirely anonymous. If you use the form frequently and answer the questions with a red * for each batch you submit that receives rejections; we will ALL have a better understanding of Shutterstock's recent rejections and maybe we can even gather some interesting geographic data during the process.

https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dHY5ZlNtWldxcXFxNGU1MFlQNUVMdFE6MA

At the link below you will find the mapped results so far.  The data is not updated on the fly, we entered the latest entries at 7:00 PM 04/28/2011 EST

If you click on the dots you see the following rejection responses that the users of the form were gracious enough to share with us.

Date That You Joined Shutterstock:
Most Prevalent Reason For The Rejections In The Batch:
Have You Experienced An Increase In Rejections At Shutterstock In The Last 6 Months:
If You Answered Yes Do You Feel The Increased Rejections Are Accurate:
Has Your Rejection Rate Increased This Year ~ If So Please Select The Most Relevant Answer:
For Those Of You Who Have Not Experienced An Increase In Rejections ~ Have You Experienced A Decrease In Rejections At Shutterstock In The Last 6 Months:

http://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?snapid=S185397zYiY

I'm in the "happy" field as well on average, but what I don't like are the 100% rejection or even the 100% acceptance which are happening lately. That can't be right.

What if a contributor wants to report that Shutterstock rejections are almost non-existent, or that the numbers have stayed the same or fallen or that they are so few and far between that there is no pattern to them? None of those situations are able to be reported on your spreadsheet.

Do you only want to hear from people who are reporting that rejections are rising and not from others even though the latter may actually be the majority? If that is the case then your 'survey' is only ever going to come to one conclusion.

FWIW you can put me down in the 'very happy' camp and I know from others that I am far from being alone in that regard. Sure, you can get the occasional 'rogue review' but that is only to be expected in what is a somewhat subjective process and may well be from a newly-trained inspector who is still gaining experience. Shutterstock are probably inspecting well over 100K images per week so there are bound to be some borderline cases that might be accepted by some inspectors and rejected by others.

I would be happy to add another form field, though you would fall under the Yes or No question "Have You Experienced An Increase In Rejections At Shutterstock In The Last 6 Months"

We actually decided to put these questions out because of a conversation between friends.  Some of us who are long time submitters are seeing a significant increase in rejections while and others of us seeing absolutely no change. We are wondering how many are seeing substantial increases and if so we question does your geographic location have anything to do with the increases.

Per your suggestion I added another question to the form

For Those Of You Who Have Not Experienced An Increase In Rejections ~ Have You Experienced A Decrease In Rejections At Shutterstock In The Last 6 Months

No My Rejection Rate Remains The Same

Yes My Rejections Have Decreased Slightly

Yes My Rejections Have Decreased Moderately

Yes My Rejections Have Decreased Substantially

Yes My Rejections Have Decreased Drastically

Sorry, I find your survey too confusing.  You want the date I joined Shutterstock (March 2005 or so) and then are asking for "Date of rejection" and "Number rejected in batch".  I'm afraid I don't understand.  You want me to list the date of every rejection I've had for 6 years, and the number of rejections in each batch of nearly 1k batches?!!  

This site has a very nice polling function.  You would probably get a lot more responses if you made a simple poll here to find out if people are experiencing a noticeable increase in rejections at Shutterstock.  

And FWIW, in such a poll I would have to say "no".   My acceptance rate hasn't budged from the high 90s (%).

Sorry for the confusion Lisa and thanks for the response.  No we are only interested in recent rejections.  So if you had a rejection this week you could use the form.  And if you have one next week and the following etc you could use the form.  This data could be correlated to geographic location.

The date you joined was added so that we can correlate the rejection information to your experience level. Rejection information from someone who joined last week will not be as relevant to an increase or decrease in rejections as it will be for someone who has been submitting for 4, 5, 6 or 7 years.

I don't plan on going in and filling in all the details but for what it's worth I haven't seen any change.  SS very rarely reject an image.

the most frustrating rejections continue to  be editorial - some reviewers insist every editorial MUST be newsworthy - but that's not how SS defines editorial

i sent in a set of urban graffiti recently as editorial - all rejected as not newsworthy - then resubmitted as ordinary & rejected as lacking a release!   that's precisely what editorial is supposed to allow - as witnessed by the many other editorial images

Thanks for explaining.  I will give it a shot.

Updated:  Just tried it and it will not accept my results because I didn't check a reason for the rejections.  If you have 100% acceptance of your latest batches, there is no option to bypass that question or put "none".  

Also, I don't want to include my zipcode.  My state should be good enough.  I shoot a lot of kids and don't publish my exact location.  

Lisa thanks for giving it a try.  I expected most people to use alias's for that reason.  A group of us were discussing why a few of us who have lesser content and skills still have very high acceptance rates while others with better content and skills have been getting batches rejected at almost 80 to 100% for months.  We are looking for answers.  Maybe there are none.  

I added the option "All Images were accepted in the batch", just for you.   You can leave the zip out or change it slightly but the info will not be as accurate in the end.  We are wondering if the increased rejections are regional. Just trying to make sense out of it all.

Thanks Gbalex.  You have been very accommodating in updating your survey.  Seem the least I can do is to take it

Here are the mapped results so far.  The data is not updated on the fly, we entered the latest entries at 7:00 PM 04/28/2011 EST

If you click on the dots you see the following rejection responses that the users of the form were gracious enough to share with us.

Date That You Joined Shutterstock:
Most Prevalent Reason For The Rejections In The Batch:
Have You Experienced An Increase In Rejections At Shutterstock In The Last 6 Months:
If You Answered Yes Do You Feel The Increased Rejections Are Accurate:
Has Your Rejection Rate Increased This Year ~ If So Please Select The Most Relevant Answer:
For Those Of You Who Have Not Experienced An Increase In Rejections ~ Have You Experienced A Decrease In Rejections At Shutterstock In The Last 6 Months:

http://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?snapid=S185397zYiY

Yeah, things have changed a little at SS. They seem to be accepting more of a certain type of files, and rejecting all of other types. For example, I can't seem to get them to accept any 'texture' photos anymore.

Yeah, things have changed a little at Shutterstock. They seem to be accepting more of a certain type of files, and rejecting all of other types. For example, I can't seem to get them to accept any 'texture' photos anymore.

I know a few photographers who are getting very high rejections numbers after years of acceptance rates of nearly 100%.  The rejections run the gamut from studio foodie and model fare all shot using profoto Pro-8 kits and premium super sharp primes with beautiful color and contrast such as the Zeiss Makro-Planar T* 100mm f/2 ZF.2 Lens.  They are getting rejections for lighting and focus.  Ramping up to f 8 - f16 while using mirror lockup on the food shots brought no rewards.

I'm in the "happy" field as well on average, but what I don't like are the 100% rejection or even the 100% acceptance which are happening lately. That can't be right.

Same for me. I would say from the day I joined Shutterstock (Illustrations mostly), I had only less than 1% rejection. I don't find them too hard on me.