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On my screen the hand in the 5 is really pink.
And on the 4 the shadows are on our side, which seems to indicate the lighting was behind the eggs.
I completely agree with Danicek, they're underexposed.
I like a lot the eggs shot (despite the wrong WB, background should be a gradient of grey not of brown) but I learnt the hard way that in microstock "artistic" shots don't pay well.If I had to make a similar shot I'd firstly use tungsten WB from start (this is probably the cause of the overall "brownish" tint) so you have to mess less with the image later.
Then if you indeed use a tungsten light you better use something to "soften" it and avoid the harsh shadows of the eggs. Try oven paper in front of the lamp, it doesn't burn and works pretty well as a rudimental "soft box".Then I'd also put some white foam or some other reflector in front and above the eggs so to have a more diffuse light all around.
Most of my food shots have backlighting too and you can see that it's pretty used everywhere because it adds a tridimensional look to the images, especially to rounded objects. But it can't be the only source of light (unless it is an artistic shot, but they're good for flickr and not MS).
As what I see you use only one source of light, who make some of the subject underexposed.For the eggs you lightning is some kind of behind or too much on the side so the front is underexposed.
The last one just need that the dark background to be removed over white or black. And maybe look for the harsh reflections on some of the pictures.
As for bandwidth, use imageshack or flickr to showcase: they are free.
Apart from the hand (bad angle, shallow DOF, grossly deformed) the other shots look fine to me.
White balance might be a bit off, but that's easy to remedy by CTRL-M > auto. What I mostly do now is make shadows a bit more transparent by a soft-light white-filled layer at 20%, then compensate for lost vibrance. Stock apparently doesn't like heavy shadows like used in artsy shots, but I might be wrong.
Apart from the first flower (but there are so many already on Stock)
I would say your shots are a bit uninspired. Take the strawberries for instance. Well... they are strawberries like you can find at any market. They are not STRAWBERRIES! WOW.
Stock needs to be a bit bigger than life and overdone. Stock needs to draw attention immediately among the noise of competing visual stimuli.
But... this is very subjective and I don't know if it's even worth 2 cents.
Thanks for your responses folks! guess that it's really something wrong with my eyes, me or my monitor Quote from: ale1969 on February 02, 2008, 14:32I completely agree with Danicek, they're underexposed. Can you tell the way you determine when photo is right exposed or wrong? is it's subjective view based on experience or there is a way to trick with levels for example or other way? (Asking because I wish to check my rest photos before submission to save time me and reviewers).
There is however one very helpfull tool, histogram. By looking at it, you can determine underexposure, overexposure in most cases.
Years ago I had a faulty monitor and wasn't really aware of how bad it was It was too dark, brightness control was at its maximum. Thought not an issue for normal use (that's why I never bothered), I used to scan slides back then adjusting settings according to my monitor. I was shocked when I saw those images in another computer, because they looked so washed out!
Of course, a proper calibration tool would be great.