Swan: don't try anything too fancy for your application. It's too dark and would be difficult for a buyer to use, particularly if they wanted to incorporate it into a design.

Contract sandwich: I had to look it up, and could only discover something called a sandwich contract in Canada, which seems to be a variation on a sandwich course here. OK my not knowing the expression doesn't mean much, but it's far too literal an interpretation of a concept, and pretty unappetising. As the pic was downloading, I wondered what the white smudge at the top of the sandwich was, but now I see it was the bottom side of the contract paper, but I just don't like it. Sorry.

Don't try to be artsy-fartsy. Make sure your technique is sound.

You were shooting this with a very large aperture and therefore very, very shallow depth of field.

This gives you a very small focused area especially in the sandwich shot. It's just too shallow for this kind of concept to begin with.

Shallow depth of field is something very powerful but only if used appropriately.

The swan image doesn't show IS your photographic capabilities nor your creative ones. They want to see both!

You need to WOW them with something that either hasn't been done before or you re-do an existing concept but better than most of the photos IS already has. You need to prove that you are an asset to their library.

Think about what can be advertised when using the photo of the (paper?) swan? Unless it's used for some origami web site I can't see much more use for that image.

Supplying niches is not a bad thing but also very tough. The swan images is overall too dark, focus problems all over as Jsnover already mentioned.

The sandwich shot could be the beginning of something big. White balance looks pretty ok, lighting is nothing extraordinaire but also not bad but the sandwich itself is nothing special. At least stack up some stuff. Get more layers of salad leafs, maybe a slice of tomato, pickles, olives, a few more slices of different cheeses - knock yourself out!!!

It just looks too wimpy, kind of getting lost in the picture.

Keep at it but I would hold off with your IS application for now until you get the quality they are looking for.

Keep posting here to get more critique and encouragement!

Best of luck!

Thanks, everyone. The technical feedback is all very useful, and I see much more clearly now.

The other thing I've learned here is that all the "really obvious" references I was making aren't actually all that obvious, and I was probably going too niche anyways.

The Black Swan is deliberately ugly and intended to look a little malevolent, since it's the statistically unlikely event that financial people are so interested in these last few years (google "black swan theory"). This apparently is NOT comprehensible in the general audience, which is a great piece of information.

The sandwich was a simple play on "eating your words" really. The concept was that it would suit to illustrate anything about bad contracts, really. Apparently that didn't really fly all that well either, at least some people found it confusing.

I was trying to follow their advice to "think conceptual" but I think I pushed it too far and wound up thinking "think niche, think obscure" which isn't really the right thing at all!

Thanks again, everyone.

I seem to get any photo with a shallow depth of field rejected, so now I only submit pin sharp images, can be very frustrating but just keep at it