I am pretty new to stock, and I wanna ask u couple of questions.

Its almost a month since I got accepted to istock, SS, alamy and all the smaller stock agencies. Everywhere it works more or less ok. SS are actually awesome. They sell a lot of my photos and they review everything within hours.

I got a problem with iStock and I start to think its gonna be a hard one. They keep rejecting my photos, but not for low commercial value, noise etc. They keep finding wrong keywords, problems with releases they previously accepted etc. I can understand all of that BUT:

1. they reject releases they accepted earlier
2. After they reject some keywords, I upload again without those and they find some more (14 - 15 keywords). For example - model in bedroom - they reject "interior" etc.
3. After they reject a photo for keywords, I upload it again corrected, they reject it for release etc.
4. I got a release with ID of the model and they reject it for "no date of birth" - COME ON, u got a  ID with a DOB in print letters - can u get it any better?
5. No date of shot (yuri's release). Date is written in 3 spots - photographer, witness and model - 3 x date of shot, still - no date of shot
6. Reject reason - the place of shot should be on the release - I might be wrong here but iStock release doesnt have "Place of Shot" field either...

I keep on updating my release form with all the new fields they want, but how long will it take... Also - sometimes it makes no sense at all

I start to think its gonna be really hard to overcome. I got 99% photos accepted into SS, Alamy, fotolia, dreamstime etc. iStock starts to be "unuploadable", and not cause of the photos but cause of some different things I cannot understand.

Lately situation got so frustrating that they rejected 1 of my photos that was previously accepted... I got "DEACTIVATION NOTICE" Of course - cause of a release (that is still attached to 1 or 2 of accepted photos).

And now - my question to u guys - do u have a way to get across all that problems? I mean - there is so many contributors, there must be a way to upload the photos to iStock

Also - I dont wanna start a new subject, but does anybody have a release that is not iStock release and is accepted by all the agencies ? (I use Yuri's release with some extra fields for iStock).

Thanks!

You can take an istock release and just remove the istock name and logo. That should give you a generic release. many photographers use the istock release but add their studio name on top.

They are pretty strict with keywords. have you tried discussing some rejections in the keywordforum? or maybe just read there to get a feeling how they want an image keyworded. You don�t need many keywords anyway, I usually add less than 15 keywords and very often less than 10.

I had an istock release and it was fine, but some of other agencies rejected it (something about some teritorial laws). I know u got to change one or 2 things so every agency would accept iStock release.

I am 50% sure it was depositphotos. I can check that later.

Cobalt: I got it installed - I will check it. Now I use Stock Submitter

ignore the advice to use the iStock release  if you are submitting to other sites as well. Other sites will not accept the multiple jurisdictions in the Getty and iStock releases. You don't want to have site-by-site releases; you'll go mad.

I made a variant that pulls from the Getty release and Yuri's. It has been accepted everywhere, but since I dropped exclusivity I haven't uploaded much to iStock, so I haven't used it yet there (so I think it's fine, but haven't had a chance to test it yet).

However, you do need to follow iStock's rules, which are more restrictive that most sites, about a new release for each shoot.  Sometimes people following the rules run into  rejections and have to resubmit because an inspector incorrectly is too strict (typing information into the form ahead of time for example) but that should be rare. Details matter though - such as the dates on which the model and witnesses sign must match - they can be different from the shoot date if signatures are obtained after the fact (like they might be if you got a new release signed later because some agency wouldn't accept what you got signed earlier

You must have a shoot description or they'll reject it (except for self-portraits where a catch all is allowed). The description needs to be reasonably specific - "mother and child in nursery and playing in the sandbox" would probably do, but "mother and baby" wouldn't.

Each agency's rules may or may not make sense, but they set them, and arguing that they're nonsense won't generally get a contributor anywhere. Once you get the hang of meeting iStock's requirements, it should be pretty straightforward after that.

You must have a shoot description or they'll reject it (except for self-portraits where a catch all is allowed). [/quote]

I have a question about self-portrait. Does it mean that you can use the same release forever? Also does a self-portrait release have to be witnesses? Thanks.

I am pretty sure I had a self portrait release rejected for no witness, but it might not have been IS.

 - thanks for all the good advices. U flooded me with wisdom

Special thanks to luissantos84 for a helpful prv msg!

I always sign separate release for each shot, as I want to be covered myself.

The point of this post is to get accepted to iStock and I think ur advieces might do the trick. We'll see soon

Thank u guys !

what a bunch of dilettants istock is. btw they should just pay to licence shutterstock's submission applet, these braindead loosers will never-ever get it right on their own.

The model release needs to be right to protect yourself/ model/agent.Thanks for your amusing comment though !