I would love to see people post their rejections!
We can all learn from those.

Why don't people show the links to their ports?
Afraid of all the trolls that hang out in every forum.
I don't care for all the whine posts and don't read them. What I care about is images that sell and those that don't.
Trolls be damned.
So here is the link to my port.
It's a work in progress and always has been.
I'm not interested in bragging or showing off. I'm interested in what sells.
So here is my troll bait link.
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/Grossinger?sort=newest
I don't really need comments on my port, it is what it is.
If you want to criticize my port you had better post the link to your port or be known for the troll you are.
 

What are you trying to accomplish, Joe? Do you really think that people here post masses of images that sell well, so that other contributors then copy these images? I think that will not work.

I'm trying to encourage more useful and positive conversations.
BTW, I have always liked and admired your port. I like the clean lines of your
architecture shots.
That being said, I have no idea how many of your images sell and for how much.
Your port is just one of thousands that is really excellent and I'm sure you get a nice income from it.
Still, that does not mean I want to copy your images.
There is a huge difference between inspiration and copy.
Looking at my port people have no idea what sells and what does not sell.
I'm not afraid of copy cats because I don't disclose what images sell and which don't.
Yeah, I do talk about sellers and losers on general terms and sometimes I get specific, like
with the case of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. No way anyone can copy that work because it's history.
People should go out and photograph controversial people. Those pictures sell.
Don't bother with politicians that are never in the news. Nobody cares.
Thanks for sharing your port.

I would love to see people post their rejections!
We can all learn from those.

Why don't people show the links to their ports?

We used to do that a lot 10 or 12 years ago, but nowadays I think most people don't care enough to bother.

Thank you for your words of appreciation, Joe!

The problem is not you. But if you look back to the time, when for example at Fotolia the number of views and downloads of each image was still displayed, you unfortunately have to realize that too many contributors did not think like you. And the worst thing was that the algorithm favored newer images and thus placed the copies before the original in the search.

That is also my concern. Then Shutterstock added a similar feature like that you describe from Fotolia. Not my concern, as I am no longer a member of the Shuterstock clan. But I think you got Joe's original question wrong. Joe asked for our rejections. I can see a pont in that, bt I can't see a point in those posts where someone asks in anger "Why were all my photos rejected!" - without showing us the photos or telling the reason given along with the rejection.

Whenever people would complain about rejections and post images others would point out the millions of things wrong with the images (sometimes quite correctly, others not so much). I remember someone posted a few of their best sellers as images that were rejected and people pointed out everything that was wrong with them. Certainly some of my best sellers with one agency have been rejected by other agencies for various reasons.

sorting by popular used to be a pretty good proxy for sales on SS, then they completely changed it so that images with almost no downloads were ahead of images with many.

Quote from: UPLOAD-UPLOAD-UPLOAD on September 10, 2022, 15:53

Why don't people show the links to their ports?

This is a super super competitive business.
If you find a new subject, a new style, a new image source, or something else that sell well in any way...
It's quite obvious that no one want to reveal his way and share a portfolio, no surprise at all.
By the way, in general, it's very easy to search for most sold images, just do very large search on any agencies database and you will have a clear landscape of subjects, theme, styles

Well, looking at my port unless you are a real stock expert you can't tell the winners from the stinkers.
Even Shutterstock's rating is really goofy. I have images rated as high usage but are actually disappointing. My image of the two starships down in Boca Chica is a good example.
Very little competition and also very little interest. It's a static image - no smoke and fire
It's rated by SS as high usage, a super star. The image has been in my port for a year now, has been downloaded 38 times and I've made $20.25.
I don't think anyone is going to run down to Boca Chica to get some shots for that kind of money.
A person seeing the high usage and super star rating might think this is a gold mine.
Far from it. I'm not complaining about Shutterstock. I actually love that agency but their current love affair with AI does create some irritation at times.
$20.25 for a year comes to about $1.68 a month. Not all that great.
I'm not complaining, I'm just pointing out that looking at my port you can't really tell where the real money comes from.
Beginners can look at my port and get an idea of what to upload. Maybe.
Posting pictures of your rejections can be helpful to the person that posted it and to a lot of people that look at it.
I'm going to upload a bunch of pictures this week, if I get any rejections I'll post some.
I don't get a lot of them. I'm a lot more careful with focus, noise and composition then I was even a year ago. I don't do a lot of action shots and I stopped crawling around in swamps to get a good shot of a gator. I don't do that anymore.
Getting back to subjects. Before I go shoot a subject if I'm not familiar with it I search on Shutterstock to see how many uploads there are. Usually you end up seeing anywhere from 100,000 to a few million uploads. Even if someone copies your work the impact would be minimal. There are just too many images with the agencies. That's why you get a dime a lot of times. The numbers are so overwhelming that it's really hard to stand out. So I don't worry about copy cats. I treat stock as a commercial enterprise dealing in commodities.
Do a search on "woman walking a dog" and you get about 114,000 hits. Kinda low actually. I might have my wive walk our dog so I can make some pictures. Better yet, "man walking a dog" only has 79,100 hits.
Hell, I'm going to have my wife photograph me. These are good, under used subjects.
So anyway, you get the idea.
This forum, like all forums is full of whiners and complainers. That's one reason you don't see me much on forums. I  like positive, upbeat posts, not a bunch of crying and I stay busy taking pictures and uploading or researching. I get no information from whiners and criers. So I'm not a frequent poster.
Cheers

If you are not doing stock, why are you here?

I would love to see people post their rejections!
We can all learn from those.

OK since you asked and I'll avoid the rest of the message. I think "no one cares" but for fun?



Focus: The main subject is out of focus or is not in focus due to camera shake, motion blur, overuse of noise reduction, or technical limitations of the equipment used (e.g. autofocus searching, camera sensor quality, etc).

I think it's the corn and yes I used a 10MP Fuji camera, so it could be small sensor. Denoised, downsized, uploaded again. Next... 3D