Hi I'm the OP.  DT accepted all these images, no problems.   Yeah I know that doesn't really prove anything.  Well it proves I'm not completely crazy 

Quote from: stockastic on March 21, 2012, 09:29

Hi I'm the OP.  DT accepted all these images, no problems.   Yeah I know that doesn't really prove anything.  Well it proves I'm not completely crazy 

Have you contacted SS about these rejections? I feel we need to do that more. They can't fix the problem with reviewers if they don't know about it. A polite and to the point email to them including maybe some fragments of 100% resolution of the images in question can surely do no harm, but might help. If all of us take it to them when rejections don't make any sense maybe it will improve their process in the future.

Doing so just slows down the process for everyone else.

I'm a small potato,  I doubt I'd even get a response from SS.

My opinions: the "public domain" rejection is dumb and shows someone mindlessly applying a checklist.   An expert photographer (like some of you) could make a case that the one rejected for "focus" could be even sharper, or that the one rejected for "lighting" isn't as beautiful as it could have been.  But both of them are more than good enough, and are just as good as many others I've submitted before.  

Another of my opionions:  some of these reviewers have grown up in the 'vector' world, and have looked at so many perfect renderings of common objects that when they see an actual closeup photo of something like a hand tool, they don't get it - things like the actual surface texture of the object, the limits of DOF, etc. - they think everything should be smooth and razor-sharp like a CAD rendering.

I think I'll just wait a few weeks before submitting any more.  Maybe the new group of reviewers they just contracted will have calmed down by then