Zymm rejections

madelaide

Premium Member

« on: March 12, 2008, 18:54 »

I've recently had many submissions reviewed, emptying my queue. I was surprised however with the large amount of rejections. I haven't checked everything yet (I should download the excel file, it's much easier than looking online), but it seems the main problem were "similars".

I can accept that in some cases, but when one image is horizontal and the other is vertical, I believe they should be acceptable variations. Also a series that has the same composition but different currencies in each image. Anyone having these problems?

I don't normally have more than 4 images in a series, varying angle of view and rotation. Is that too much?

It's really a pity, as sales in Zymm give us a good return.

Regards,
Adelaide


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Pixart

« Reply #1 on: March 12, 2008, 19:28 »

Keith, it would be interesting to hear your opinion on this.

I can totally understand an agency's reasons for rejecting too many of the same, but designers value having at least 1 vertical and a horizontal option of each shot. Especially for magazine layouts, photo editors very quickly fill their holes, and if the perfect vertical photo that they have found does not perfectly fit the horizontal hole in their layout, you have lost a sale. It is also very hard for many to visualize a horizontal photo on a vertical magazine cover, or a tall product.

I blogged about it here One designer did reply: (in part) I've seen so many gorgeous images on stock sites I just can't use, either because the shot axis is wrong or the cropping makes me insane.

And, I also encourage you to read this photo editor blog called "Fill In The Blank Stock". (You must read this entry!)


« Last Edit: March 12, 2008, 19:31 by Pixart »	Ignore \| Logged

null

« Reply #2 on: March 13, 2008, 00:08 »

Quote from: Pixart on March 12, 2008, 19:28

(in part) I've seen so many gorgeous images on stock sites I just can't use, either because the shot axis is wrong or the cropping makes me insane.

Off-topic. Didn't realize the MS Junction was yours. Added it here anyways ;-) - you need a feed button for RSS. The first thing in the morning is to hover over all my feed buttons in Firefox.


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zymmetricaldotcom

« Reply #3 on: March 13, 2008, 07:36 »

We recently added the Editors names with the button to PM them directly with any concerns or inquiries about rejections/approvals, this would be the best method to ask about specific submissions. Be sure to include the Submission ID #'s to make things easier for the Editor to look it up.

I personally am not doing so many reviews these days as we have brought on more pros to handle this, and I am falling back into my proper role as CEO/systems engineer. Dealing directly with Editors is the quickest and most accurate way to get editorial-type questions resolved.

thanks


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peep

« Reply #4 on: March 13, 2008, 10:05 »

And how long does it usually take you to review the pictures? About two weeks? More? Less? I have a few waiting there for rather a long time...


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madelaide

Premium Member

« Reply #5 on: March 13, 2008, 12:16 »

Quote from: zymmetricaldotcom on March 13, 2008, 07:36

We recently added the Editors names with the button to PM them directly with any concerns or inquiries about rejections/approvals, this would be the best method to ask about specific submissions.

I did that and the inspector replied me saying she has fowarded my inquiry to the admin... what is ok to me. Of course in some cases the inspector can decide (technical aspects, mainly), but when it comes to site policies (like the vertical vs horizontal, number of similar images and acceptable variations, subject), I do believe that the site admin should give the orientation. It can not be a decision solely left to the inspector's opinion.

Regards,
Adelaide


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ZymmMan

« Reply #6 on: March 13, 2008, 13:39 »

Dear madelaide,

thank you for your inquiry. As you well know, editing is not a science and we appreciate any feedback you might have. As Chief Editor of Zymmetrical, I have instructed editors to be vigilant for too many repetitive images in order to avoid image buyers having to go thought too numerous similar images. We offer them a service, which is to display the best images, not all of them.We value quality over quantity.
There is no policy regarding verticals or horizontals. Actually, verticals are most welcome as it is the most used orientation on the web but also on print. So, if we had to choose between two images, the vertical would have the priority.
Editing members submission is a fine balance between quality, composition, subject and other technical parameters. However, we have to be respectful of buyers time by not flooding them with too much choice. It doesn't help anyone.
Finally, as a midstock agency where our prices a higher than microstock, we need to stay aware that we are being highly judge on quality and relevancy of content. For that we use our past experience in image sales ( I have personally have done it for more than 17 years) but also more technological information from our site and its traffic.
I would hate to instruct our editors to follow very tight standards as I do not believe that I have the perfect eye. No one does. It is always open to controversy, it will always be since you are dealing with taste and opinions and one could go on and on how this image is better than the other one.
We have to agree to disagree. Hopefully not too often.

Best

Paul M


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sharpshot

« Reply #7 on: March 13, 2008, 14:04 »

171 approved, 11 rejected but I think some of those were when I had problems with the FTP and the files didn't upload properly. That seems fine to me.

My only problem with them so far is my earnings stuck on $0.00. I hope that changes soon


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madelaide

Premium Member

« Reply #8 on: March 13, 2008, 17:31 »

Quote from: ZymmMan on March 13, 2008, 13:39

(...) As Chief Editor of Zymmetrical, I have instructed editors to be vigilant for too many repetitive images in order to avoid image buyers having to go thought too numerous similar images. (...) There is no policy regarding verticals or horizontals. (...)

Paul,

I am ok with the similar images rejection when they are indeed similar (some of mine were, same setup shot from different angles), I only did not understand why a horizontal was accepted and a vertical wasn't (or vice-versa) for similarity. If the rejected one has a technical issue, it's another thing and not "too many similars".

The situation I have contacted the inspector however (my only contact so far) was indeed another issue: three vertical images, similar in composition, but showing different currencies (USD, EUR and BR). Therefore I did not understand (and in this case indeed I disagree) with the "too many similars", because someone who is looking for a financial images with euros will not (generally) want one with dollars instead. Apparently the inspector was not sure she should revert the rejection, therefore she sent my msg to the admins (you or someone else, I don't know).

Thanks for your reply.

Regards,
Adelaide


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nata_rass

« Reply #9 on: May 25, 2008, 03:57 »

Well, I guess, Zymmetrical inspectors decided just reject images without any explanations. It may be fine to thin out a pending queue, but it's completely disrespectful to contributors Angry


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ZymmMan

« Reply #10 on: May 25, 2008, 06:20 »

nata_rass,

Not sure what you are referring too. We have an absolute strict policy never, ever to reject ANY image without a detail explanation. If you have had any of your images treated that way, let me know and I will get the responsible editor out of our team. I and everyone at Zymmetrical agree. It is disrespectful and impolite and should never happen.

Please email me at pmelcher(@)zymmetrical.com with more details and information so I can solve this issue promptly.

best

Paul M


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zymmetricaldotcom

« Reply #11 on: May 25, 2008, 09:30 »

I have investigated further and determined that due to a slightly ambiguous element of our Editor admin page layout, one our new Editors was indeed entering comments but they were not being recorded. We will ensure that this batch that is missing comments is re-reviewed.

Our policy is as Paul states, every reject gets an explanation, it's only fair.


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CvanDijk

« Reply #12 on: August 25, 2008, 04:02 »

I also had a lot of rejections with my first batch. So I asked them now to close my account. I think it's better for me to concentrate on the big six, who have accepted a lot of the rejected photos by zymmetrical. It felt like a waste of my time, specially for a site still with the low earners


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Fran

« Reply #13 on: August 25, 2008, 04:12 »

Quote from: zymmetrical on May 25, 2008, 09:30

Our policy is as Paul states, every reject gets an explanation, it's only fair.

It's also very useful for people like me who are just starting up. Thanks.


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zymmetricaldotcom

« Reply #14 on: August 25, 2008, 04:34 »

Hi Claudia,

May I ask, do you feel those rejections were unfounded? As in, the exact reasons stated by the Reviewer are not accurate, or are you just going by that another agency accepted them?

"This photo was accepted/sells on some other business on the internet" - we get this a lot, however you should realize that we are not clearing out photos on subscriptions/$1/<insert weekly marketing scheme here>, where buyers aren't going to have a stroke if the photos have minor technical flaws, lighting is not perfect etc.

We sell from $3 - $100, with the average price of photos at this moment being $23. We owe it to our customers to have higher editorial standards, I hope you can appreciate that. Grin

Quote from: CvanDijk on August 25, 2008, 04:02


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kgtoh

« Reply #15 on: August 25, 2008, 05:11 »

Hi Keith

I uploaded a batch of a few hundred, and they were all rejected for " The composition and lighting of this image limit its stock value." or similar.
Now, these are not the best of my work (I was planning on uploading chronologically to get my whole port up in an organized manner), however these are photos that have been accepted and are selling moderately well on other stock sites.

This is in no way a rant. You can set any quality standard you wish, and a photo selling on another stock site doesn't mean anything.

I just wanted to check if I just encountered an overenthusiastic reviewer, of if your standards are really that high, in which case there's no need to waste time uploading further.

My account on zymettrical is kgtoh.

Thanks.

Edit: Just read the part about "We sell from $3 - $100, so higher standards". Some of these photos are on the Macros, which sell considerably higher than $3 - $100.


« Last Edit: August 25, 2008, 05:13 by kgtoh »	Ignore \| Logged

zymmetricaldotcom

« Reply #16 on: August 25, 2008, 05:30 »

Kgtoh,

Well, does the composition and lighting of the images limit their stock value?

Rather than try and continue pleading for understanding of our market position, or just saying our Reviewers are not off their rockers, I would love to see some discussion of specific examples here. We are here to make a go of this, not reject photos that could earn us both some money.

Can you link up some thumbs of ones you feel are perhaps not right in their reject reason? I don't want to take up your time if you don't want to explore this further, but just remember we pay for each of those rejects in money, and even more money if they are actually potentially sellable by us, so this issue is extremely important to me and I will discuss it until people are satisfied.

**Got your edit. Sure that's a good point about the macros, however as a parallel, I have seen a photo, from a Getty/Corbis top-level guy, that has been downloaded on a certain ISite, 697 times. We rejected it - the dust spots on it were atrocious. So.. just going by who else sells, no chance. Every photo gets looked at, and a fair shake, is our idea. Not implying that those ones you have on the macros have such an obvious flaw.. but the point is we are our own agency and of course we have a different direction of content acquisition than others. It would be a pretty dull experience if our inventory matches someone elses, IMO.


« Last Edit: August 25, 2008, 05:43 by zymmetrical »	Logged

kgtoh

« Reply #17 on: August 25, 2008, 06:39 »

Keith

I was looking through my rejections, and most were actually for
"This is a nice image, but because there are typically so many images in this category, each one must be exemplary to be marketable as midstock."

My mistake
(although I did get a bunch of lighting/compositions one)

Here's a rejection:
http://www.dreamstime.com/airport-lounge-image3260281
rejected for
"The lighting of this image limits its stock value"
This shot was taken at night, using available artificial lighting for a more realistic feel. Sold a bunch of times at various micros, once on Alamy, so I certainly feel it's commercially viable.

I really don't have the time or the inclination to try to justify individual photos.
I am not questioning your marketing position, just whether it's worth it to upload the rest of my portfolio. Having an entire batch rejected indicates your standards are too high for me (I'm not saying I'm the best photographer in the world, mind you), so it's just wasting my time and your reviewers' time.


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CvanDijk

« Reply #18 on: August 25, 2008, 06:48 »

I feel the same as kgtoh, asking myself if it's worth uploading, but I took the time to sent you the id's. I didn't expected you to accept all my photos. But I uploaded 50 photos, of which 47 where reviewd and 43 are rejected. so for me it's a waste of time.
23 of those had "This is a nice image, but because there are typically so many images in this category, each one must be exemplary to be marketable as midstock." The rest for bad lighting, quality or composition.

So my photos don't meet your standards and it's better for me to upload those bad photos to other sites. Grin


« Last Edit: August 25, 2008, 06:49 by CvanDijk »	Ignore \| Logged

lobby

« Reply #19 on: August 25, 2008, 08:13 »

same here

487 rejections of 550 Huh

imagine if they mage to go up in sales too

they would reject 549 / 550

PS: average rejection for this images among all sites is 150-200/550!!!!


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zymmetricaldotcom

« Reply #20 on: August 25, 2008, 08:22 »

Thanks for the info.

Kgtoh - I appreciate the specific example. For me, yes the airport lounge photo does look indeed exactly how it should giving the kind of lighting present in such a room. From my experience however, best-selling interior shots use lighting that compliments the theme at hand. Do you agree that this shot may be more useful if there was a bit more tonal range, I personally think, to sit in such a brightly lit room would be unpleasant. An airport first-class lounge is supposed to look mellow and relaxing; the light ambiance in that shot in particular looks very harsh and clinical to me.

I know you do not want to justify individual photos, but this is our job: to look at individual photos and sell them. Your existing $ earnings must be tabulated against actual time/bandwidth to decide whether we are right for you. We are simply not at full operational level yet so I think a practical approach is to wait before making a decision on continued participation.

Claudia - You look at 43 out of 47 rejected as a glass half-empty, we look at it as a glass half-full- you have 4 photos online now, which we try to make work harder to sell themselves than what you may be used to. Yes that batch is much lower than our normal acceptance rates. I really can't see a practical point in deciding general agency participation based on how many photos they approve of yours? Yes it takes time to select and upload. Yes it takes time to describe files. Logging in to check up on statuses, yes. Most importantly; the files are -your- productions which you've put a lot of work into creating. We understand this in detail. Why throw out the time already invested in doing that before you've even had some files online for a while, is my question.


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dnavarrojr

« Reply #21 on: August 25, 2008, 08:24 »

Perhaps Keith or Paul can explain the logic for refusing images just because there are a bunch in a given category because I don't understand it...

If an image meets all of your technical standards and guidelines, why reject it at all?

Isn't the goal to get as many choices in front of buyers as possible? Isn't it likely that a category with no new (or very few) submissions will get stagnant in time? Aren't designers hungry for new and different images all the time? Even if that difference is only slight?

I remember reading about a behavioral study done by Penn State a number of years back where they took 360 pictures of the same object, one for each degree in a circle around the object. Over 2500 students participated in they study.

Over 360 images, they found a fairly even distribution over the 2500+ students. Although the difference between most images was slight, students still chose a different image for various reasons than the one next to it.

What was very interesting was the experiment was in two parts. The first part students were just asked to pick their favorite. 71% of the picks were in the first 60 images shown (they got tired or bored of looking). In the second part, students were required to review all of the images before making their selection and 79% of them changed their selection to images later in the batch (even a few who chose the very last image).

For the first part of the experiment, almost all of the 29% who selected later images were art or artistic related majors and took the time to find what they felt was the right image.

If I can find the link to the article again, I'll post it.


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peep

« Reply #22 on: August 25, 2008, 08:30 »

Well, it is not so bad in my case - but I think it is only because I uploaded my images much earlier - they were slightly less picky that time. I have no "This is a nice image ..." rejection e.g. They accepted about 65 and rejected about 25 images of mine. All of them were accepted elsewhere.
But just the same - I think I will upload my bad photos to other agencies which are able to sell them. How do you close your account? Do you have to write to the admin? Or is there an easier way?


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ZymmMan

« Reply #23 on: August 25, 2008, 08:32 »

Rejections, rejections, rejections...

An ongoing topic here, in this forum. let me explain our policy in details so it will make more sense to all :
Our editors are not machine. They carefully inspect every image at 100% of their size for any default and imperfections. You would be amazed on how many images we get with dust on them. If your were purchasing an image, regardless of the price, I do not think you would be happy if you had also to clean it up before usage.
Because we are not in a race to be the first to license 4 gazillion images, we spend quality time with all the submitted images.
Every rejection has an explanation. Instead of posting how many rejections you had, try reading the reasons and tell us if you disagree with them and why. We are open to dialogue, as you can see. We more than appreciate feedback and we know that editing is not an exact science. as Chief Editor, I am always available for comments on our editing team.
We reject with a purpose : it is not the photographer that we reject, it is the image. We add comments that hopefully will make the images more marketable. All our editors know how much work and passion you have put in your images and respect it tremendously. Some of you complain about the long editing time..Well, part of it is due to a thorough editing team that can sometimes spend a lot of time on an image, discussing it with other editor.
We know our clients : we have a lot of valuable data and feedback from our image buyers. Our editors are aware of it. Their editing is made to get you the highest ratio of image uploaded/images sold.
Quality brings quality : the higher the bar, the highest respect you get, the highest price per image you receive.
Finally, let's not focus on the rejection numbers but what explanation you receive for them. The answer to all of your questions about our editing policy is in them. If you still continue to have doubts, let me know and together, we will solve it .

hope that helps

PM


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leaf

Premium Member

« Reply #24 on: August 25, 2008, 08:39 »

Good advice ZymnnMan...

I think if we have a complaint about a rejection it would serve well for all of us to see an individual image with an individual rejection. That way we can discuss what we think about it, and Zymmetrical can defend their position and hopefully we will all become better photographers because of it.

-just be prepared to have a full critique of your photo if you bring it into the public spotlight.


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