Author Topic: Is it clearly defined by each agency what type of photos they want? (Read 4787 times)

melastmohican · « **on:** June 05, 2009, 14:19 »

I guess most want business-related photos cause it sells but do they publish criteria list reviewers use for those "well covered" or "not a stock" rejections?

Perry · « **Reply #1 on:** June 05, 2009, 14:39 »

Shutter stock doesn't want anything too realistic looking, they like ultraclean images.

Fotolia doesn't seem to want background textures.

(There are of course a lot of exceptions)

massman · « **Reply #2 on:** June 05, 2009, 14:45 »

I have no idea. I doubt very much if most agencies even know what they want, why they remain silent about what they want/need I really don't know.

John from Cutcaster informs contributors of buyers needs now and again and I believe DT did/do something similar.

One thing is for certain, I have never received an email from any agency saying they could do with a few more 'xyz' images or such and such category needs filling. On the other hand, knowing what to supply as a contributor is half the business. Having DL stats just encourages copy cats, but that's a different topic.

Even when agencies provide 'DO NOT WANT' lists they still accept stuff on the list, and some of the top reported keywords used in searches (such as flowers) appears on the 'NO THANKS' but buyers are still asking for.

You would think sometimes that agencies and contributors are competitors not partners.

etienjones · « **Reply #3 on:** June 05, 2009, 15:59 »

I can' detect any meaningful rhyme or reason for acceptances . . . . .

I think the spaghetti technique works the best . . . throw it up on the wall and if it sticks its ok.

willie · « **Reply #4 on:** June 05, 2009, 16:34 »

I don't think it 's cut out in black and white (no pun intended). At one time I would have told you "just look at the historical best sellers and work from there". But nowadays with the competition getting stiffer and rejections getting obviously commonplace, I would say "copy the best sellers and you'll surely get a rejection".

willie · « **Reply #5 on:** June 05, 2009, 16:37 »

The only sure thing is to do what you have not done before. I think the barrage of rejections and increase of more dissatisfaction among contributors tell us that the sites are looking for new ideas. Not surprising, as the leaner they get, the meaner they are. Either that or more reviewers are reaching menopause , both male and female ones to be political correct, lol.
In the end, I think the best advice is , "just submit and hell with it. don't even look to see what gets approved, just shoot and submit". No point in trying to worry if it's chemical imbalance or just reviewers having a bad time at home the night before, lol.

RT · « **Reply #6 on:** June 05, 2009, 18:13 »

I think one of the reasons some sites don't post information like this on their site or in newsletters is that the competition will just copy, re-word and send it out themselves, which kind of defeats the idea from an agency point of view.

For instance I've just received the latest Getty Content needs email with attached document, they are very good and informative, however I guarantee you that within a week or so some other smaller agencies and some microstock start ups that I'll not mention will post the same request under their own name. It happens every time.

Karimala · « **Reply #7 on:** June 05, 2009, 19:18 »

I just found out one of the sites will accept half of the images in a batch depicting a woman with tattoos, and then reject the other half for not including a property release from the tattoo artist.

This is one of the sites that reviews whole batches instead of individual images, and which has accepted at least 50 of my previous images of the same model without a problem. So...evidently even the reviewers themselves don't know what the sites want or need even when it comes to a single batch! LOL

Agree that Fotolia has pretty much put an end to backgrounds. I also recently encountered a reviewer there who had a thing against women in lingerie and nudes, and made blanket rejections on all such images for a couple of weeks for "type of image." Not sure if that person is still there, because the past few weeks I haven't had a problem.

SS usually doesn't like anything that is remotely creative, whether it's an unusual composition or a different style of lighting or a colored filter used on the lens (however, a few of their reviewers do let creativity through, but sadly it's not often). IS, on the other hand, loves creativity and I find they accept the shots SS won't, even when there is a glaring technical issue, such as a problem with focus.

The rest of the sites just accept whatever.

louoates · « **Reply #8 on:** June 05, 2009, 20:21 »

No rhyme or reason with what they want. They seem to know what they want when they see it. Very haphazard across the board in my experience. Highly subjective, dependent upon that particular reviewer on that particular mood swing. If anyone wants a gold plated reason never to be exclusive this topic serves its purpose well.

Jonathan Ross · « **Reply #9 on:** June 06, 2009, 11:32 »

I don't see many briefs for photographers on what to shoot in Micro but I do know in Macro I get very extensive briefs about what to focus on in the coming months and year. I just received a 24 page PDF from Blend Images the other day that explained in great detail what to think about in 09 I get these from all my Macro distributors. I just got another from Getty the other day, not as big but still had some info. These reports take a lot of time and effort as well as money to produce. They are only as good as the people putting them together understand the market.

Best,
Jonathan

Adeptris · « **Reply #10 on:** June 07, 2009, 03:58 »

This is a big problem on two side, the agencies are driven by the Customers and think they get feedback of what a Customer wants through 'lightbox requests', and from the search data of the many Customers that do thier own search, however the Customers will likely know what style of images they can source from which websites, so if they are looking for one category of images will go to one website and another for other images.

The thinking could be 'this site does not supply backgrounds, landscapes, travel, nature, street photography etc:', so buyers are not going to search or get good search returns at these websites, and the inspectors are going to reject these categories of images as not required based on searches, and photographers will be confused as to why one site rejects and another will accept.

There is a huge cost to the Photographer, Stocksite and the Environment with this policy, the Photographer preparing and uploading just to be rejected on some sites, the Stocksite is paying the inspectors to inspect images they do not want, and the environment for all the fossil fuels used to create the power for the uploading, Inspecting, rejecting and preparing.

There is also a large financial penalty being paid by the Photographers that have sales at these websites, as thier sales are the revenue that pays for everything, but if the websites let Photographers and Customers know what style of images they supplied by a simple website list or email then they could cut costs all around, and do thier bit for carbon reduction.

David

louoates · « **Reply #11 on:** June 07, 2009, 10:35 »

Carbon reduction??? That was a joke, right?

Jonathan Ross · « **Reply #12 on:** June 07, 2009, 10:37 »

Hi David,

I would imagine over time that Micro will follow the way of Macro and start to have specialty collections. Like Getty is known for lifestyle and Corbis have better content of environments and locations. Third party companies might join forces with bigger Micro agencies to supply just Lifestyle from a group of shooters, maybe vectors only. There might be smaller niche collections that stand alone in the Micro market. Lots of change to come but I don't think a great deal of it will be revolutionizing anything. Just making it easier for the buyer and agencies to connect.

Best,
Jonathan

Adeptris · « **Reply #13 on:** June 07, 2009, 11:07 »

Quote from: louoates on June 07, 2009, 10:35

Carbon reduction??? That was a joke, right?

No not at all, lets look at some environmental considerations and our carbon footprint, our images are stored on many stock imaging sites servers and these have no consideration for data-storage efficiency, this could be reduced by limiting the Data duplication by stocksites using a single-instance storage system, this would reduce storage needs by eliminating redundant images and many servers.

If they get together and standardize image requirements and metadata then only one unique instance of the image could actually be retained on a shared storage media until the point of sale.

The full image uploads to many sites replaced with thumbnails and a pointer to the original copy on the shared servers.

For example, a photographer with 100 image instances of 4mb and contributing these to the big 6 stock imaging sites, at present requiring 400MB storage space per server, With data duplication this becomes 6 x 400mb, 2.4GB which will use fossil fuel to store these on the stocksites many servers, if we could get to a point of shared servers then only one instance of the images would be stored online, and each subsequent thumbnail instance and data packet is just referenced back to this single saved copy. In this example a 2.4GB storage demand can be reduced to only 400MB.

There is no real reason why we could not upload once and send the stocksites the image data and thumbnail only, if this does not suit thier needs then we have saved a lot of power and time in uploading, if they want a closer look then they view online without making a copy of the full size image, they add the thumbnail and data to thier library and only copy the image across when they have a sale, so one image can be on many sites with a small carbon footprint.

This model is something I am looking at, and do think it could work well with a change of thinking, why should any site have copies of your assets without a sale, and why should you upload images that the stocksite does not want for thier library?

David

Dreamframer · « **Reply #14 on:** June 07, 2009, 17:57 »

I usually can predict who's gonna accept which image from my uploaded batch. Of course, my predictions are not 100% correct, but in most cases I realize I was right.

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Author Topic: Is it clearly defined by each agency what type of photos they want? (Read 4787 times)

melastmohican

Perry

massman

etienjones

willie

willie

RT

Karimala

louoates

Jonathan Ross

Adeptris

louoates

Jonathan Ross

Adeptris

Dreamframer

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