Had you not seen the distinguishable face prior to uploading it, then I suggest you take some of the time you will save editing you images in the future,
and pay more attention to the contents of each image.

Cranky MIZ

I think you missed this portion of the original post:

an unidentifiable person from the back at the edge of a waterfall.

I have two character traits that are my downfall.  I get bored easily and I procrastinate.  I have thousands of images sitting on my hard drives that need to be edited, keyworded, etc.  Most of these were not shot specifically for stock, but there are many saleable images regardless of why they were shot (i.e, vacation photos).   But I get bored going back through all of my old stuff especially when I know I have a vacation, roadtrip, camping trip, etc. coming up soon.  Keywording is my biggest downfall though.  When I have some free time to edit, I think about all the keywording (and titles and captions) that has to be done and I get turned off quickly.  Then I procrastinate and nothing gets done. 

Also, I work on a computer all day every day (programmer) so I tend to dread booting up my computer at home in the evening. 

lol...hilarious.

I remember when I moved away to the big city.. long distance was about $1 per minute to call home.  I had bills that were hundreds of dollars.

Then the big telecommunications companies heard about this new Internet phone thing coming along and introduced calling packages that seemed like a sweet bargain.

Now - saved by the digital revolution - it's unlimited long distance calls anywhere in North America at $40 per month (which includes the line and 911 service etc.) and 4 cents per minute to Europe.    It's just a fraction of what telephone cost just 10 years ago.

Industries change.  These phone companies aren't going out of business, they are evolving.   But, they cannot rape the customer anymore and survive.

If you are of the macro-state-of-mind you will need to evolve or slowly starve.  Let's see where microstock really is 5 years from now, and where the traditional guys are.

Don't forget Vonage, Broadvox and internet options like Skype!  And still the phone companies survive.  lol

After reading through the material, I don't agree that we will no longer have automatic copyright ownership upon creation.  That said, this looks like a bad deal for us if the micro agencies do indeed strip the metadata upon download.  If this thing passes, we'll have to demand the agencies leave all copyright/contact/identification metadata intact. 

Don't be afraid of registering your images for copyright protection.  It's easy and it's not expensive at all.  You can do it online now (need to sign up as a beta tester) and it's easy.  The fee is $35 online or $45 by paper.  That fee covers as many images (thumbnail size) that you can fit on a CD (or DVD?) or zip into a rather larger file.  The last one I sent was around 10mb. I've done two so far with THOUSANDS of images each time.  So the cost is very nominal.  Even without this new legislation, you really have to register your images to be fully protected and to fight infringers in court.

When I first got Vista back in September, I installed CS2 with no problems.  I never had any problems running it either.  I have now upgraded to CS3 and I still haven't experienced any issues (knock on wood). 

I don't care if I can't upload: 40 images waiting for review and 30 pending my edit 

It just disrupts my workflow and it's aggravating.  I have a folder where set aside images "waiting for iStock."  Now I guess I'm going to need another one "waiting for BigStock."  I just sometimes have to wonder if it's all really worthwhile.  Maybe I'm just crabby today.  lol

I can blow the OP's theory out of the water.  Search for Sydney Opera House on SS and you'll find two of my images in the top row.  The only reason they're on the first page is they're recently uploaded and they started selling quickly.  I can assure you I am not an SS "favorite" contributor by any stretch of the imagination.  Heck, I've been contributing to SS for 15 months and I have yet to hit the $500 mark to get last year's raise!

In my experience BS has been the easiest of those you listed to get images accepted.  IS is my worst acceptance rate (48% last time I looked) of the sites where I actually make money.  StockXpert though is worse.  Not only do they reject tons for "sorry we're not looking for such images at this time", but their review times have slowed to a crawl.  My last batch has been sitting out there for two weeks now.

If DT and SS merged, I think I'd go exclusive with them.  They are my top 2 earners.  Combining the sales of both along with a higher rate for being exclusive seems very worthwhile.  I really wouldn't miss all the uploading nonsense at IS either! 

It would be nice to see them merge AND add the ability for contributors to set their own prices on some images.  Now that would be an awesome site!

Must be nice.  My last batch has been sitting for 11 days now waiting for review.  I really wish they'd get their sh** together over there. 

231 since October 2007.  Sales have really slowed for me there.  I finally hit my first payout a couple of months ago.  I'm only 1/3 of the way to my second payout. 

I have managed to get through 90 days without a sale on Luckyoliver. That is with a portfolio of 147 images

Can anyone better that!?

I would consider you a winner if you have a large port and no sales or a similar port size and a longer dry patch.

15 months with $6.70 in sales.  I had approx. 250 images online.  I dumped them and I'm in the process of dumping Albumo.  Of course, it will take a long while to dump Albumo.  You can only delete ONE image a day!