They take lots of pride in rejecting me 

I have 16 photos uploaded so far out of maybe 35 or more...and I have a few in pending too, so more rejections on the wayyyyyy...they are pretty harsh on me considering the ones they reject are accepted by almost all the other sites. 

Nonetheless, I know that it means that that I can use it to get better, but I thought I'd just comment on previous threads where I read that Dreamstime was letting up a bit.

Some of their rejections are truly annoying, but overall I'm satisfied, especially with their new price structure.  One thing they are very strict is about "similar images" and about images that they have many similar ones in their portfolio already.

Regards,
Adelaide
-----------
http://www.geocities.com/photocorner.geo/

I have started to grow very weary of Dreamstime.� I am getting to the point where I am beginning to think about pulling all of my photos from their site.

Dreamstime is EXTREMELY inconsistent in their reviews lately.

For example, I submitted the following four candles splashing into water a few weeks ago:





Well, the first two were rejected for "Lack of Concept", while the second two were accepted!� "Lack of Concept"!� Are they kidding?� If they can't understand what the concept is, then they must have a lack of imagination.

And all of the images were taken with the exact same settings on manual mode.

So now buyers only have half of the series that I submitted, which will lower the amount of choices that they have.� What if a buyer is trying to create a design for a first anniversary, first birthday or New Year celebration.� Well, they will be just plain out of luck because Dreamstime reviewers don't have a clue.� Buyers will have to go to one of the other five microstock sites that I submit to in order to get the photos.� So Dreamstime is stabbing themselves in the back.

I emailed support asking them to review the rejections and haven't received one reply in over three weeks.� I guess they don't care about their buyers having choices, nor do they care about breaking up a complete series of images.

Then there are photos of two general admission tickets that I submitted last week:

� �

Once again, the first one was accepted and the second one was rejected for "Poor lighting setup, poor contrast or incorrect exposure".� Well, the images were both scanned, so there was no lighting setup to speak of.� And as you can plainly see, the exposure and contrast are both fine on the Blue Ticket.� As a matter of fact, both images have been accepted at every other agency they have been submitted to.� So once again, I wrote support asking for an explanation and here is what I received:

"The image is to dark and the lower part of the image that contains lights could not be amplified by processing. You can adjust the levels and lit up the image."

What lights on the lower part of the image are they talking about?� Are they even looking at the same image?� I have written back twice asking for a further explanation but haven't received anything yet and doubt that I will.

So once again, Dreamstime has limited the choices for a potential buyer and will send them to another site if they can't find what they are looking for.  Not very good business sense if you ask me.

Dreamstime wants to act like they are one of the Big Two microsites, but they aren't.� Their sales have plumetted lately and their site has been down multiple times in the past few weeks.

And don't get me wrong.� I can take rejections just like the next person, but it is the inconsistency that is getting under my skin.� If I put up a series of images, then I expect them to either all be accepted or all rejected.� It makes no sense to accept half and reject half.

well in response to ichiro, a barbque could be poorly lit by the sun. Harsh shadows, over exposed highlights, too dark, too light.. and so on.  Just because it is lit by the sun doesn't mean it is good lighting.  The sun is probably harder to work with than a lighting setup.

Geopappas, yeah, that is pretty creazy.. they were obviuosly reviewed by two different people or one really lazy person.  I don't know how they should do it, but the sites need to figure out how to get more standarized reviewers.

Standardized reviews are key.  Not sure how they are going to do it

The answer is quite simple, really--but costs money, which is why the sites don't do it.  The answer is to have three reviewers examine each image.  The final decision is what at least two of the reviewers agree to.  The key is that reviewers must independently review each file, with no cross-talk among them.  This assures that no reviewer is unduly influencing any other reviewer.  And, it assures that a maverick reviewer won't trash good files.

This system would obviously cost the sites some money.  However, there are two very important points to consider:  (1) The overall quality of a site's image base would improve, with marginal images being weeded out; (2) The number of complaints from photographers would decrease, resulting in good PR for the site, and increased uploads.  I would argue that the site might be able to charge more per image or subscription, because overall image quality in the image database would improve.

Just my two cents worth.

Yup Getty is public.  Soon enough we'll have some info I hope (Getty bought iStock correct?) - I hope I'm not getting confused with something else

i believe jupiter images bought stockxpert and stock.xchng

leaf - that is the one I am thinking off.  weird that they would buy a free site based in Hungary and then try to change in into a pay site.  seems to be working.  i have seen some of the bigger players from SS hit their forums so expect lots more photos to turn up shortly.

I dont think stockbyte is a true micro site but does sales of CD of photos etc.  Maybe wrong.

If an image is borderline one reviewer might except it and one don't. And some might make mistakes.

I don't think that any of the images that I posted were borderline.  And to back up that claim is the fact that those images have been accepted at every other agency that I have submitted them to, including SS and IS (the two toughest reviewers in the business).

So, no, I don't feel sorry for people who can't do their job correctly.

If they don't know the difference between a good photo and a bad one, then they shouldn't be there in the first place.

Not only are they costing time and money for the photographers who are trying to submit good work, but they are also hurting the buyer that is looking for a good image and can't find one.

i think geopappas biggest reason to feel ill-done by is that 2 of the series was accepted and 2 were rejected. That is where the problem lies.  Wether a company wants to be extremely pickey or not I can live with.

I don't think anyone is totally rejected DT - we are merely stating are high discontent with their inconsistency.  Mistakes are okay but inconsistency is not as easily forgotten.

This "best-quality image/top quality/super-quality image" search is, in my opinion, a way to reject photos.  Photos with scratches and dust spots and bad lens flare and all that kind of stuff is bad and should be rejected.  With that said, I think that a market can be generated for marginally rejected photos by selling them through a discounted-style site for people who don't need the very best quality and they are just putting a .7 MP photo on a webpage somewhere or something like that. 

Again, I understand the desire for quality so I may be overruled fairly quickly which is alright as well.

My photos, which are not good for Dreamstime because they lacked concept, proper lighting and such,were good enough for 123RF and Fotolia and Shutterstock (the 2 that were accepted before they shafted me) and they are selling fairly well.

Cheers

Just an update on my Dreamstime photos...I've dipped to 25% again    Everyone took this last batch - albeit was StockXpert and Fotolia and Featurepics (which is useless, haven't gotten a single sale) but what can you do.  I get the same "poor lighting setup" message.  But then again, I get the for everything I put in most of the time, so I really don't know what to do about it.  Still stuck at 18 photos.  Although 123RF seems to be doing well for me so I'm happy about that.