Quote from: Dreamframer on July 31, 2010, 02:04

Here you go, vertical lines straightened, colors and contrast added, branches on the lest and right removed, and shadow on the bottom lightened up.
I didn't crop it more than I had to due to straightening vertical lines. You can crop it more.

It's still a horse, dissected by a fence !?  If this is stock worthy, I've been wasting my time !!??  

...selling fences? 

...DT which seemed to have the best value for money combined with the largest selection of images...

i am also buying from DT coz of above reasons, good search engine and...hmmm...it just feels right somehow.

as a contributor DT is my number 3 head-to-head with FT but far, far away from SS and IS (which is getting closer to SS every month). exclusivity is also no option for me though. disorderly hit the nail on the head:

First, they would have to sell my portfolio better than everyone else, not anyone else.  They'd have to generate more than all the others combined, which no one agency does.  Shutterstock's my top earner, and for the past year they're less than 30% of my total.  So even if they offered to double my earnings per image, I'd still be giving away money.

There's a second reason, and that's the way agencies' exclusivity programs put restrictions on what I can do beyond what I sell.  Some claim rights to images they rejected; others claim rights to everything I shoot, telling me I can't give away images if I want.  Sorry, but unless an agency wants to restrict themselves to just carrying my product, why should I restrict myself to their channel?

And then there's a third, which is that an agency that plays fair now can change in the future.  I've seen too many players rejigger the rules to their benefit and our disadvantage.  (Fotolia, I'm looking at you.)  Maybe they'll fall on hard times and decide that the best way to survive is to screw their suppliers.  Maybe they'll get acquired, and their new owners won't be as fair and honorable.  Whatever might happen, I prefer to keep my options open.

I can imagine an offer I'd find it hard to refuse.  But no one's making anything close to it, so I'll stay independent and enjoy the freedom and the extra income it provides.

Quote from: RaFaLe on July 23, 2010, 08:51

Things HAVE changed. For sure. My review was completed within AN HOUR after submission.
The problem: they accepted 10 of the 110 images

Thanks for the info. They are still the same then. No use considering uploading there. The same disease as all these new sites like Fresh, Veer. Too selective and ignorant reviewers as to what sells. It's an omen: they won't make it.

i also gave it shot with crestock about 1 1/2 years ago. uploaded approx. 20 pics - don't remember exact number anymore. anyway, none of those pics ever got rejected on any other site. crestock accepted only 2 of them. so, where is the point of wasting time as long as they don't accept 90% of our (small player's) pics and offer us an rpd of probably far less than usd 0.50 + of course being a low earner (not even in the top 10)....

hehe - by the way, i just logged in to my account after more than 1 year. i got 1 sale and a balance of +25 cents  

they must have forgotten me  :'(

today's (22.07.2010) screenshot of my oldest pending pics:

I think you ask same thing in another posting, no?
but here I answer again..
 Dreamstime new review is sometime mystery too  expecially when new reviews
use mostly subjective reasons. but no big deal for me. My sales are good for the oldest stuff and no sales for new stuff, so no reason to worry for new uploads because I don't give new stuff anymore.
Shutterstock is opposite. New stuff get download instant. So I like balance with Shutterstock for today and Dreamstime for 2 years older pictues in port

in the other thread i mentioned the strange rejections coz of similar shots. now this here was about review time and new rejections about exposure and light issues in shots that are accepted by all the other sites. and i also never had such problems on DT with my studio shots... :-(

looks like DT has enough pics and starts to reject more often

seems like it's not a good time to upload on DT. i have pictures in the queue for 19 days now. plus am i getting rejections i never had before. maybe i stop uploading there for a while. it looks like the reviewers who didn't get their summer vacations are in a lazy and very, very bad mood...  

edit: sample pic taken off - no itension to pimp pics here...

i also just had another of those stupid rejections coz of "Your submission should not duplicate content already in your portfolio...". i don't understand dreamstime at all  links taken from SS coz both the pics got accepted there as on all the other sites (apart from IS who rejected the 2nd one coz of copyright issues - "flat currency on left side" - muahahaha, but that's another issue we unfortunately have to face there  )

accepted:



not accepted coz of above reason:

I just had some more of my stock pile reviewed....50 approved...50 rejected. On every one of the 50 rejected photos it said exactly the same thing:
 
"Other concerns. Composition, styling, and/or lighting do not quite reflect the aesthetic that appeals to Veer customers."

The previous rejects from the last batch explained why they were rejected. Many of these are on all the other sites and are good sellers. What was strange was several of the accepted one's I figured wouldn't make it because they were taken in the evening and I really thought they would get rejected because of noise. Many of the rejects are isolated images.

they are veered, aren't they

Everyone will have their own opinion as to whether your images are good or bad. You have to take it as constructive criticism and move on.

i don't mind getting rejections here and then. guess all of us have them, sometimes with good, sometimes with strange reasons. i usually got no problem with that.

what i don't understand here in this case though is that veer is rejecting 2 technical absolutely correct pictures (because they don't match the reviewer's personal taste) out of the first 10 and asking for 10 more pics to get me approved. rejecting the 2 and accepting the application - this would have been the right way i guess.

but anyway, it saves me a lot of time - i hesitated for about 6 month to start with veer because uploading to the other low earners is already time consuming enough without getting much back. as i already mentioned: if i compare the earnings ratings here on microstockgroup i could expect approximately usd 5-10 per month... 

to be honest: i sometimes don't understand myself why i don't just stick with the big 4. they usually pay me more than 95% of the stock income... 

'fraid I agree with both those rejections, the expression on the first one looks forced, not like a genuine smile. The second is cropped too tight, usable but not as usable as it would be with a wider crop. Reviewers can afford to be picky with the sheer volume of stuff out there now, there are plenty of very similar photos without these problems.

where does a genuine smile start and where does it end? at least there seemed to be a few designers who downloaded this picture in the past 2 weeks. and talking about the tight crop: some of the most popular stock pics are cropped even tighter.

i believe the reviewers should more take care about sharpness, right focus, noise, wb, isolation, etc in this case and let the designers decide which pictures they like for their work.

Do you have those images on all the other sites you listed and are they selling well?

these two pictures are from some of my latest photo shoots. they just got accepted. the "non natural expression" is online for approx. 2 weeks and did sell quite well especially on SS. the "bad composition" just got accepted on about 6 of the the sites in the last one or two days (the others still pending)... hmmm...

i believe it's not right to call my model's expression unnatural. what if this is just the way she looks like when she smiles?? would they say "we don't like the smile of your model"? and what if designers are looking for an unnatural, forced expression (if it really looks forced)? or do they also not accept people with fancy hair colors coz it's not natural? and so on.....

anyway, i thought the upload procedure on veer was quite easy. that's why i gave it a try. but now i think it's not worth it. i don't need the 5-10 bucks a month if i get wild rejections...  

i haven't logged in to my panther media account for a very loooong time. i got 13 pics accepted about 2 years ago but their upload procedure annoyed me.

now, surprisingly i've got euro 11.97 on my account which is quite ok with only 13 pics so i considered uploading again as i'd have approx. 800 pics ready.

unfortunately panther media's upload is still way too complicated. i can't spend 2-3 minutes on every single picture, don't they understand that? why would i want to waste 3 or 4 full days in order to make 5-10 euros a month

very sad but i'll login and check again in a few month. maybe the panthers will wake up one day...