Author Topic: The most stupid rejection.... (Read 1087 times)

a1bercik · « **on:** April 27, 2012, 16:15 »

Wow. Shutterstock guys had really good day.
Editorial image rejected just because the date was not in US standards (month first).

- 11 MARCH 2012

"Please follow EXACTLY the caption (title) guidelines for editorial (including CAPITAL LETTERS): please read link provided First: LOCATION Second: DATE Third: Description with date and location at the end of title."

luissantos84 · « **Reply #1 on:** April 27, 2012, 16:17 »

so what? thats their rules

helix7 · « **Reply #2 on:** April 27, 2012, 16:33 »

Their house, their rules.

disorderly · « **Reply #3 on:** April 27, 2012, 16:39 »

Makes sense to me. They want customers to see a date and know that they interpreted it correctly. Standardization's the right answer, whether they chose US or European format as the standard.

a1bercik · « **Reply #4 on:** April 28, 2012, 02:11 »

I'm sorry. How do you interpret APRIL? 11 APRIL?
'Our rules' is more important than common sense? C'mon.

Pav

Microstock Posts · « **Reply #5 on:** April 28, 2012, 06:12 »

It's a pedantic rejection reason. ss reviewers have changed my descriptions upon acceptance, changing the date in this is a half a second job for them, not that it needs to be changed. Call me unconventional, but I think reviewers should spend more time on reviewing images and getting it right.

ShadySue · « **Reply #6 on:** April 28, 2012, 07:18 »

Quote from: Microstock Posts on April 28, 2012, 06:12

It's a pedantic rejection reason. ss reviewers have changed my descriptions upon acceptance, changing the date in this is a half a second job for them, not that it needs to be changed. Call me unconventional, but I think reviewers should spend more time on reviewing images and getting it right.

It could be counter-argued the the contributors should take more care and get it right.
Rules are rules. I'm packaging up our club's entry for the national inter-club comp and the title must be no more than 12 digits, and I'm trying to decide if 'Purple Emperor' should be shortened to 'PEmperor' or just 'Butterfly', and have no idea what to title the entry called 'Clockwork Orange', and am currently running with ClockworkO.
Ours not to reason why.

Mantis · « **Reply #7 on:** April 28, 2012, 08:05 »

Quote from: luissantos84 on April 27, 2012, 16:17

so what? thats their rules

+1 Same at IS. They rejected my editorials there several times until I finally had an "ah ha" moment and figured it out. Learn it, retain it, and enjoy the ride.

WarrenPrice · « **Reply #8 on:** April 28, 2012, 10:34 »

Quote from: Mantis on April 28, 2012, 08:05

Quote from: luissantos84 on April 27, 2012, 16:17
so what? thats their rules

+1 Same at IS. They rejected my editorials there several times until I finally had an "ah ha" moment and figured it out. Learn it, retain it, and enjoy the ride.

YEP most people (probably all) who ever worked for or as stringer for any media is aware of STYLE MANUALS. You do it their way or Stay Away.

cascoly · « **Reply #9 on:** April 28, 2012, 13:20 »

Quote from: WarrenPrice on April 28, 2012, 10:34

Quote from: Mantis on April 28, 2012, 08:05
Quote from: luissantos84 on April 27, 2012, 16:17
so what? thats their rules

+1 Same at IS. They rejected my editorials there several times until I finally had an "ah ha" moment and figured it out. Learn it, retain it, and enjoy the ride.

YEP most people (probably all) who ever worked for or as stringer for any media is aware of STYLE MANUALS. You do it their way or Stay Away.

editorial images need to be objective and exact, with accurate date and location, but order and punctuation are irrelevant. captions and tags should be designed so that users can find what they need - these extra rules do NOTHING to assit users that way.

yes, we have to do it their way - but it is ridiculous - what USER is going to care if the date is 11 MAR or MAR 11? and whether there's a dash or a colon? and wherether the date is repeated before or after the location? in examples that SS gives they even suggest captions that would require the photographer to guess at what's happening in the image, even though that is an editorial no-no

i've noticed several times this week that the NY Times, eg, used 3 images across a page rather than creating a montage, on their news pages, while they commonly use montaged panoramas in their travel & arts pages. and their captions vary by use

again, the anal captioning requirements just make more work for contributors while offering little to the user - the date, in particular becomes less and less meaningful overtime for all but the most critical newsworthy events - again, the NY times will show an image of a protest captioned by year only, rarely with an exact date

BaldricksTrousers · « **Reply #10 on:** April 28, 2012, 14:07 »

Maybe it's changed, but at one time their own examples of "correct" house style contained three different date formats in different places. With their insistence on making redundant repetitions of the dateline info in the caption and the extremely tight character count they allow the rules become absurd. Add to that the requirement for "newsworthiness" when a news pic will be out of date before it is reviewed.

After repeated style rejections I just gave up sending editorial there - and I'm now glad I did because Alamy is a better place for it.

With the character count I pity anyone reporting from Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, Anglesey, Wales. It must be hard to get the who, what, when and why in.

velocicarpo · « **Reply #11 on:** April 28, 2012, 14:31 »

THEIR rules show THEIR stupidity ;-)
All they do is losing valuable editorial content. i don`t know how much editorial shots they already rejected from me which sell VERY well at other sites.

CD123 · « **Reply #12 on:** April 28, 2012, 16:59 »

There are millions of really stupid reasons for good images being rejected. By not sticking to a site's basic format rules you are just decreasing the chases of your images getting approved even further. It is not that hard to list these rules by site for specific types of images you intend to submit more of in future (then you only have to make the mistake once).

Think the caption should be "The most stupid way I got my image rejected...."

cascoly · « **Reply #13 on:** April 29, 2012, 12:57 »

Quote from: CD123 on April 28, 2012, 16:59

There are millions of really stupid reasons for good images being rejected. By not sticking to a site's basic format rules you are just decreasing the chases of your images getting approved even further. It is not that hard to list these rules by site for specific types of images you intend to submit more of in future (then you only have to make the mistake once).

Think the caption should be "The most stupid way I got my image rejected...."

if SS had a reasonable understanding of what editorial is, you'd be absolutely right - but silly caption rules are just that - silly. but even when we play by their silly rules, and do the extra work to write 'proper' captions, images are still rejected en masse because they dont understand that editorial is not a synonym for newsworthy.

what's even sillier is that for all their insistence on these rules, they've never bothered to go back to the thousands of editorial images in their files that were approved before the rules changed and have captions that dont even come close to fitting the new rules. just showing that buyers dont really care about the words or their order, but what's in the image itself