Author Topic: Istock's nitpicking on editorial captions (Read 15590 times)

Danybot · « **on:** March 14, 2011, 22:03 »

Recently, I decided to try a few editorial submissions. One was rejected because the date I put in the caption was two days different than what was in the exif. It was just a background photo, and hardly newsworthy. (And how do they even know if I have the date set correctly in my camera.) Another one was rejected because I put the date first, instead of the name of the city.

Their regular rejections are bad enough, for nearly imperceptible noise, but their editorial rejections for details in captions are beyond belief. Oh, and they don't let you edit the caption once it's in the queue, in case you notice there's something wrong with it.

Not only are they treating their contributors like dirt, but they are wasting their own resources by having their reviewers look at the same thing over and over again. However, I will spare them the trouble, since I'm not resubmitting anything to them for the pleasure of getting 19 or 26 cents per download.

melastmohican · « **Reply #1 on:** March 14, 2011, 22:32 »

Is queue for editorials same as normal one? If I have to wait 2 weeks and submit in 20 images batches it will not be newsworthy anymore when I am done :-)

Danybot · « **Reply #2 on:** March 14, 2011, 22:44 »

Right now, it appears to be even longer than for regular images. It appears to be about 3 weeks or more.

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #3 on:** March 14, 2011, 22:54 »

Quote from: melastmohican on March 14, 2011, 22:32

Is queue for editorials same as normal one? If I have to wait 2 weeks and submit in 20 images batches it will not be newsworthy anymore when I am done :-)

They specifically don't want newsworthy photos, so no worries on that account

As far as the rules, they're pretty easy to follow. Some of their initial instructions were wrong, but that's largely sorted out now.

If you use Deep Meta it will read the EXIF date and fill in the caption format for you (you just need to enter City and Country and the caption text). I know you said you won't submit again, but I thought I'd note this for anyone else reading this. There are some examples in the editorial forum here and rules summary here.

Lots of people have asked for permission to edit the caption in the queue; I think in time they'll relax about this as it really doesn't make sense, but for the moment no luck.

KB · « **Reply #4 on:** March 14, 2011, 23:34 »

Quote from: jsnover on March 14, 2011, 22:54

There are some examples in the editorial forum here and rules summary here.

You know, you'd think since they are so incredibly picky about it, they'd at least make sure they've got it right in their examples, wouldn't you?

From the Rules thread:
Location data - date data: caption descriptive content data

(Location data might be "City, County" or "City, State, Country" etc. Date data might be 'month date year" or "date month year" or in rare circumstances where the specific date isn't known just "month year".

1. Does "City, County" really mean city, county? Or more likely that's a typo meant to read "City, Country"?

2. The last example in the example link Jo Ann provided has this caption:
Las Vegas, Nevada - January 4, 2011: New ...

I don't see a county or a country mentioned there.

3. The example above the last one has this caption:
Ouidah, Benin, 8th September 2007: Voodoo ...

Where's the '-'? Is that too picky? Do you think there haven't been rejections for a missing '-'? (In case it isn't clear, 'you' is certainly not meant to refer to Jo Ann!) I know there have been.

4. The example above the previous example has this caption:
Ithaca, New York, USA - October, 23 2010: Cornell ...

This time it's a mis-placed comma. So, 3 examples in a row, and 3 errors in a row.

So I repeat, if they can't get it right, how do they expect everyone else to?

grp_photo · « **Reply #5 on:** March 15, 2011, 04:23 »

It's your mistake in the first place! Editorial and Microstock don't fit together IMHO!

BaldricksTrousers · « **Reply #6 on:** March 15, 2011, 04:38 »

Quote from: grp_photo on March 15, 2011, 04:23

It's your mistake in the first place! Editorial and Microstock don't fit together IMHO!

They do if it is just generic travel shots or isolated objects, which is the sort of stuff iStock is after (and where the exact date is hardly a key issue). Editorial news is a different matter, since you won't get a fair return before the picture becomes dated.

Perry · « **Reply #7 on:** March 15, 2011, 08:13 »

I tried to submit them 10 editorial images (accepted by SS and some other sites) and tried to check the captions.

Result: 9 rejected for captions and 1 image moved to pendinc executive cue...

I won't be trying to jump trough their hoops if they don't change their policies.

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #8 on:** March 15, 2011, 16:05 »

You won't get any argument from me that IS is truly hopeless at communications, including updating wiki's, setting out the rules for new procedures, etc.

However, I've uploaded a bunch of editorial images over the last week or so and to date, none of the captions has caused a rejection. I'm using Deep Meta, I'm just entering city, state, country (leaving out state where not applicable) and it seems pretty straightforward using that workflow.

jen · « **Reply #9 on:** March 16, 2011, 10:39 »

Quote from: jsnover on March 15, 2011, 16:05

You won't get any argument from me that IS is truly hopeless at communications, including updating wiki's, setting out the rules for new procedures, etc.

However, I've uploaded a bunch of editorial images over the last week or so and to date, none of the captions has caused a rejection. I'm using Deep Meta, I'm just entering city, state, country (leaving out state where not applicable) and it seems pretty straightforward using that workflow.

I agree with this.

I'm not sure I've had any caption rejections (other than one from the very first day of uploading when there was confusion about whether or not to include a date, and a few that were overturned). I totally understand all of the frustration and the instructions definitely needed to be (and still need to be) clearer. And it bugs me that a lot of the examples aren't perfectly correct (I'm really picky). And I think they should have made it an automated form so there's less room for error. AND it should be editable before inspection! But it's honestly not that hard to get it right and complaining about things like "I put in the wrong date and they rejected it for having the wrong date! That's stupid!" is just silly IMHO.

oxman · « **Reply #10 on:** March 16, 2011, 11:38 »

I have been considering submitting Editorial. Not sure if it is a new great opportunity or just a hassle. Guess I will need to dive in and find out. Seems like lots of folks are jumping on it. Lotta Coke cans showing up.

ox

Danybot · « **Reply #11 on:** March 17, 2011, 20:18 »

Quote from: jsnover on March 15, 2011, 16:05

But it's honestly not that hard to get it right and complaining about things like "I put in the wrong date and they rejected it for having the wrong date! That's stupid!" is just silly IMHO.

Put that way, you make it sound like my complaint is trivial, but you are ignoring the context. I make a tiny mistake in the date that is not material to anything. The actual date from the exif is already there in another box. If the date being off in the caption bothers the examiner, why doesn't he just correct it instead of rejecting it. And they don't just let the submitter correct it. No, because there is one digit wrong in the date, I have to waste time uploading a 5mb file all over again, and filling in a bunch of other information that doesn't get carried over on resubmits. And then, if I have resubmitted the file with the caption corrected, there's at least a 50% chance they will reject it because of "a little more about compression." Their rejection messages make me want to puke. As I said, they treat contributors like dirt.

And yes, I do know how to submit successfully to Istock, as I have several hundred images on-line with them. However, they are getting worse and worse, and I would much rather submit to some of the other places like Dreamstime and Bigstock that are more reasonable, even if they don't have quite the marketing power of Getty Images.

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #12 on:** March 17, 2011, 23:05 »

That quote wasn't actually from me, but from Jen.

As far as tiny mistakes, they do the same with keyword rejections for independents. I won't argue that they try on purpose to make certain things difficult to encourage (as they see it) submitters to be very careful.

However, rejections are a part of uploading. You either make your peace with them, warts and all, or move on and stop uploading there. Getting mad about it doesn't help your blood pressure and IS has shown itself virtually impervious to contributor complaints in this area, so it makes no sense to hope they will change.

Unpleasant perhaps, but that's just how it is

RacePhoto · « **Reply #13 on:** March 18, 2011, 00:50 »

And one more for the collection of "HUH"?

I uploaded an editorial image, and then went to edit the caption, because I see that i probably have the format wrong. (thanks for the links and help) Here's what I see on the image, which has not been reviewed and has been sitting for two weeks.

"This caption field is locked once an inspector approves your file."

Wrong. It's locked right now, can't edit the caption, so I'll let it fly and see what happens.

Quote from: KB on March 14, 2011, 23:34

Quote from: jsnover on March 14, 2011, 22:54
There are some examples in the editorial forum here and rules summary here.

You know, you'd think since they are so incredibly picky about it, they'd at least make sure they've got it right in their examples, wouldn't you?

From the Rules thread:
Location data - date data: caption descriptive content data

(Location data might be "City, County" or "City, State, Country" etc. Date data might be 'month date year" or "date month year" or in rare circumstances where the specific date isn't known just "month year".

1. Does "City, County" really mean city, county? Or more likely that's a typo meant to read "City, Country"?

2. The last example in the example link Jo Ann provided has this caption:
Las Vegas, Nevada - January 4, 2011: New ...

I don't see a county or a country mentioned there.

3. The example above the last one has this caption:
Ouidah, Benin, 8th September 2007: Voodoo ...

Where's the '-'? Is that too picky? Do you think there haven't been rejections for a missing '-'? (In case it isn't clear, 'you' is certainly not meant to refer to Jo Ann!) I know there have been.

4. The example above the previous example has this caption:
Ithaca, New York, USA - October, 23 2010: Cornell ...

This time it's a mis-placed comma. So, 3 examples in a row, and 3 errors in a row.

So I repeat, if they can't get it right, how do they expect everyone else to?

ShadySue · « **Reply #14 on:** March 18, 2011, 06:32 »

Quote from: jsnover on March 17, 2011, 23:05

That quote wasn't actually from me, but from Jen.

As far as tiny mistakes, they do the same with keyword rejections for independents. I won't argue that they try on purpose to make certain things difficult to encourage (as they see it) submitters to be very careful.

However, rejections are a part of uploading. You either make your peace with them, warts and all, or move on and stop uploading there. Getting mad about it doesn't help your blood pressure and IS has shown itself virtually impervious to contributor complaints in this area, so it makes no sense to hope they will change.

Unpleasant perhaps, but that's just how it is

Sadly, true.
And total inconsistency makes it that much more difficult.
(I probably posted this in another thread. New readers start here)
I got loads of rejections because my date "should have been month-date-year". My first couple of appeals were overturned, but since than, hard cheddar. One I got a month-date-year rejection, and they told me it was because I had put London, England, UK, and England and the UK are the same. After I'd counted to ten, I pointed out that a) that wasn't the rejection b) England is not synonymous with 'UK' and c) I'd already had lots accepted as Glasgow, Scotland, UK and Edinburgh, Scotland, UK and one accepted as London, England, UK. No dice, had to resubmit.
The next time I got a 'should have been month-date-year' rejection, I again queried it and was told it was because I didn't have a comma between the month and the year. Again, not what the rejection said. I pointed out that I have over 140 acceptances without the comma, and that I had followed an official exemplar date format, I got a snippy note back that I should follow normal English language convention for dates. While it was true that we were taught to put a comma between the month and the year in Primary School, that was back in the days when you put your home address on a letter over at the right hand side, indenting every line, as you did with addresses on envelopes, with a comma after each line. Sometime before 1970 (I can be very, very precise about that, because that's the year I started Secretarial Studies at High School) that had gone completely. Fully left-justified letters/envelopes, no commas in the date (or address).
Icing on the cake: I had an editorial image 'pending executive' for weeks. It was accepted sans comma.
My acceptance rate has dropped over 2% since editorial started, mostly for caption problems (and some for my usual 'flat light').
Trouble is you can only Scout outright rejected images (sidenote: I doubt if I've Scouted ten images over 4+ years, and now I have my 3 Scout tickets in for this month) so you have no other right of appeal.
JoAnn's right - you just have to play their game, no matter how stupid. I'm just trying to remember to stick in that stupid comma, though as I'm fighting years of muscle memory, and you can't edit captions after submission (that pat answer about how 'just like you have to get the photo right at submission you have to get the caption right' is codswallop, of course. They could easily lock the caption at inspection) I've had to cancel and resubmit a lot of pending files.
( A propos of nothing, I see the queue shot up c1500 overnight,)

ProArtwork · « **Reply #15 on:** March 18, 2011, 06:42 »

Mistake is a mistake tiny or not. Captions are very important. It may take a while to have a hang of it, just like anything else when they are new to us. The more information the caption has the better.

ShadySue · « **Reply #16 on:** March 18, 2011, 07:00 »

Isn't it odd that it's still the description, not the caption which shows when you hover over an editorial image? Someone posted about this in the editorial thread and got no replies that I noticed.
So essentially, you have to insert mostly the same (expanded, contracted or slightly tweaked) information three times: title (for Google), Caption (for when it's wanted) and description (for hovering over).
All this, and they won't allow buyers who really need the accuracy (caption and unedited image) to filter on editorial alone, and it seems that editorial files are right in the middle of any search.
Usual iStock lack of joined-up thinking.

jen · « **Reply #17 on:** March 18, 2011, 10:16 »

Quote from: Danybot on March 17, 2011, 20:18

Quote from: jen on March 15, 2011, 16:05
But it's honestly not that hard to get it right and complaining about things like "I put in the wrong date and they rejected it for having the wrong date! That's stupid!" is just silly IMHO.

Put that way, you make it sound like my complaint is trivial, but you are ignoring the context. I make a tiny mistake in the date that is not material to anything. The actual date from the exif is already there in another box. If the date being off in the caption bothers the examiner, why doesn't he just correct it instead of rejecting it. And they don't just let the submitter correct it. No, because there is one digit wrong in the date, I have to waste time uploading a 5mb file all over again, and filling in a bunch of other information that doesn't get carried over on resubmits. And then, if I have resubmitted the file with the caption corrected, there's at least a 50% chance they will reject it because of "a little more about compression." Their rejection messages make me want to puke. As I said, they treat contributors like dirt.

And yes, I do know how to submit successfully to Istock, as I have several hundred images on-line with them. However, they are getting worse and worse, and I would much rather submit to some of the other places like Dreamstime and Bigstock that are more reasonable, even if they don't have quite the marketing power of Getty Images.

You didn't include my previous statement where I agree that the process needs work.

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #18 on:** March 21, 2011, 16:53 »

Quote from: ShadySue on March 18, 2011, 07:00

...Usual iStock lack of joined-up thinking.

That one really tickled my funny bone

ShadySue · « **Reply #19 on:** March 21, 2011, 17:34 »

Had another strange one today.
Rejected for different date in EXIF and in caption.
Oh, ditsy me, I thought.
So I resubmitted, and the date in that auto-populated 'date created' field was the same as the date I'd put in the caption. Checked the rejection notice again, and it said that the EXIF was different. (I just take the date from the 'date created' into the caption). Checked the file EXIF in Bridge, and right enough it was one day different.
AFAIK, that hasn't happened before. I had another rejection a couple of weeks ago, which was a no resubmit. The inspector also pointed out I had different dates, but I put that down to my carelessness and didn't check.
How on earth can that happen?
So I changed the 'date created' field and the caption to be the same as the actual EXIF data, and put a note in for the inspector.
That comma is still killing me. Although I was trying hard to remember, I had another 'comma' rejection today. After I resubmitted it I checked my queue and found 8 out of 38 where I'd forgotten the bl**dy comma, and (as we can't change captions) I had to cancel and upload them again, in case I got the inspector with the comma obsession (the others don't seem to mind).

Mantis · « **Reply #20 on:** March 21, 2011, 18:57 »

I submitted one as a test yesterday. If that works them I will upload more. It's a bit more time consuming to prepare editorial because of the specificity required.

RacePhoto · « **Reply #21 on:** March 21, 2011, 20:13 »

Can you explain this comma thing with examples of wrong and correct? I'm totally confused and wondering why they will reject an image for a comma? I won't upload anything until I see what they are doing to yours, because I'm sure I'll get something wrong. I looked at the examples and they are all different. SNAFU

Quote from: ShadySue on March 21, 2011, 17:34

Had another strange one today.
Rejected for different date in EXIF and in caption.
Oh, ditsy me, I thought.
So I resubmitted, and the date in that auto-populated 'date created' field was the same as the date I'd put in the caption. Checked the rejection notice again, and it said that the EXIF was different. (I just take the date from the 'date created' into the caption). Checked the file EXIF in Bridge, and right enough it was one day different.
AFAIK, that hasn't happened before. I had another rejection a couple of weeks ago, which was a no resubmit. The inspector also pointed out I had different dates, but I put that down to my carelessness and didn't check.
How on earth can that happen?
So I changed the 'date created' field and the caption to be the same as the actual EXIF data, and put a note in for the inspector.
That comma is still killing me. Although I was trying hard to remember, I had another 'comma' rejection today. After I resubmitted it I checked my queue and found 8 out of 38 where I'd forgotten the bl**dy comma, and (as we can't change captions) I had to cancel and upload them again, in case I got the inspector with the comma obsession (the others don't seem to mind).

ShadySue · « **Reply #22 on:** March 21, 2011, 20:53 »

Quote from: RacePhoto on March 21, 2011, 20:13

Can you explain this comma thing with examples of wrong and correct? I'm totally confused and wondering why they will reject an image for a comma? I won't upload anything until I see what they are doing to yours, because I'm sure I'll get something wrong. I looked at the examples and they are all different. SNAFU

It's totally arbitrary.
Here's the official sticky thread with the examples:
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=300292&page=1
From this, the officially sanctioned date formats would seem to be:
February 2, 2011; January 13, 2009; & some more in this format (comma between date and year)
January 22nd 2011; no comma
October, 23 2010 Note, totally bizarre positioning of comma.
8th September 2007 - no comma

And in this thread:
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=310782&page=1
The same inspector gives as an example:
Alicante, Spain, 21st April 2009 (a comma, not a hyphen between Spain and the date, no comma between April and 2009)
Zat valley, High Atlas Mountains, Morocco - 26th January 2011 (no comma between the month and the date)

I've had over 140 acceptances with the date given the way I would normally give it:
1st January2011.
However I've also had several rejections, telling me to "put the date in the format month, date, year", and when I've questioned it, I've been told, by the admin who gave all the examples above, that I MUST put a comma between the month and the year.
I truly don't understand why I'm getting rejections for following an official format given by the editorial lead.

Example of rejected date - West Kilbride, Scotland, UK - 31st July 2010
Rejection reason: "++Please write the date in the required format Month/Day/Year. Thank you!++"
H*ck - where did these forward slashes come from? ^ ^

RacePhoto · « **Reply #23 on:** March 21, 2011, 21:22 »

Quote from: ShadySue on March 21, 2011, 20:53

Quote from: RacePhoto on March 21, 2011, 20:13
Can you explain this comma thing with examples of wrong and correct? I'm totally confused and wondering why they will reject an image for a comma? I won't upload anything until I see what they are doing to yours, because I'm sure I'll get something wrong. I looked at the examples and they are all different. SNAFU

It's totally arbitrary.
Here's the official sticky thread with the examples:
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=300292&page=1
From this, the officially sanctioned date formats would seem to be:
February 2, 2011; January 13, 2009; & some more in this format (comma between date and year)
January 22nd 2011; no comma
October, 23 2010 Note, totally bizarre positioning of comma.
8th September 2007 - no comma

And in this thread:
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=310782&page=1
The same inspector gives as an example:
Alicante, Spain, 21st April 2009 (a comma, not a hyphen between Spain and the date, no comma between April and 2009)
Zat valley, High Atlas Mountains, Morocco - 26th January 2011 (no comma between the month and the date)

I've had over 140 acceptances with the date given the way I would normally give it:
1st January2011.
However I've also had several rejections, telling me to "put the date in the format month, date, year", and when I've questioned it, I've been told, by that very same inspector who gave all the examples above, that I MUST put a comma between the month and the year.
I truly don't understand why I'm getting rejections for following an official format given by the editorial lead.

Thanks now I'm just as confused as I was without example. The inspector example looks like your example.

And yes I did look at the thread on IS and I don't get it. Why don't they just have one stable example of what they expect and stop picking over one comma?

If anyone has any advise or objections, here's what I will use for my personal guide. I have one of these in large print for SS as well with their required format. Once I started using it, I haven't had a rejection for improper captioning. DId I get it right?

IS Caption Example

City, State, Country - Month ##, YEAR: Who & What & Why. Additional information.

eddyp · « **Reply #24 on:** March 22, 2011, 01:49 »

Quote from: ShadySue on March 21, 2011, 17:34

Had another strange one today.
Rejected for different date in EXIF and in caption.
Oh, ditsy me, I thought.
So I resubmitted, and the date in that auto-populated 'date created' field was the same as the date I'd put in the caption. Checked the rejection notice again, and it said that the EXIF was different. (I just take the date from the 'date created' into the caption). Checked the file EXIF in Bridge, and right enough it was one day different.
-snip-

Same thing happened to me... I saw the "auto" date which was March 26 and wrote that down, but when I actually say the real exif data, the date was March 25... maybe that is not a "bug" but a "feature" as has been said in other forums... and now I have to wait another 10 days or so for inspection

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Author Topic: Istock's nitpicking on editorial captions (Read 15590 times)

Danybot

melastmohican

Danybot

Jo Ann Snover

KB

grp_photo

BaldricksTrousers

Perry

Jo Ann Snover

jen

oxman

Danybot

Jo Ann Snover

RacePhoto

ShadySue

ProArtwork

ShadySue

jen

Jo Ann Snover

ShadySue

Mantis

RacePhoto

ShadySue

RacePhoto

eddyp

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