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Author Topic: Shutterstock Reviewers Beating Me Up.... Anyone Else?  (Read 214700 times)

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« Reply #875 on: July 27, 2015, 05:02 »
0
Don't panic ! I'm contributor to many micro-stocks since 2006 and they all seems to have the same life cycle...
At the moment SS has a very fast review time with a 100% rejection result. Reviewers seems to be replaced by some automatic process and they need time to fix some bugs...
When your photos are accepted by few and rejected by one, it helps to feel less frustrated :)
 


« Reply #876 on: July 27, 2015, 07:51 »
+4

When your photos are accepted by few and rejected by one, it helps to feel less frustrated :)

Not when the one is half of your income.

« Reply #877 on: July 27, 2015, 11:14 »
+2
Just got 4 images rejected for focus issues on SS.  Bogus review even by a software review--- software can show where the focus point-- right where it should be on all 4 and no, there was no movement and shutter speed was fast enough to catch it if there was.

Images accepted on all other stock sites. 

Accepted photos of same subject matter on their website are of very poor technical quality.....and boring content-wise.

Obviously my sales elsewhere are better.    It is getting to the point where I do not even want to bother with SS.    I hear their sales are great from you guys but hard to believe.




« Reply #878 on: August 11, 2015, 05:43 »
0
Just got 4 images rejected for focus issues on SS.  Bogus review even by a software review--- software can show where the focus point-- right where it should be on all 4 and no, there was no movement and shutter speed was fast enough to catch it if there was.

Images accepted on all other stock sites. 

Accepted photos of same subject matter on their website are of very poor technical quality.....and boring content-wise.

Obviously my sales elsewhere are better.    It is getting to the point where I do not even want to bother with SS.    I hear their sales are great from you guys but hard to believe.

+1.

My first 150+ images since joining SS were accepted at around 80% acceptance rate (by feeling, as there's no formal acceptance counter on SS). Since then, after one or two bad submissions (I would rather agree that photos could be of lower quality than my average) my acceptance rate now is close to zero. To give you a feeling, after those 150+ accepted images, I have submitted in total around 100-150 more images. Accepted: 5 or 6. Usual reasons: soft/blurred image, poor lighting conditions and noise. It goes without saying that by using the same camera, my skills and experience (gained, inter alia, with SS over some time) could not produce such a poor quality of photos that they would objectively be rejected. The same goes to the content as it's mainly the relatively in demand quality landscapes (despite been over-saturated on market) and high-value industrial photos (world's largest sea ports, like Hamburg, Rotterdam, Antwerp).

Despite the fact that SS so far provided me with most of the profits, I will try with one or two more photo sets to be uploaded (and then resubmitted, to see if the different reviewer makes a different decision), and if it goes the same way, I will stop with SS, and focus on other stocks, notwithstanding their poor sales. I might need to spend more time with them to improve those sales (and I still believe there is potential for me with places like iStock, FT, DT, 123RF).

« Reply #879 on: August 11, 2015, 06:32 »
+2
A little bit of self-criticism would be nice.

« Reply #880 on: August 29, 2015, 14:22 »
0
Hi,

I almost miss this thread.

After contacting SS about another 'poor lighting' rejection, here's their message :

Thank you for contacting us.
Unfortunately due to the large number of submissions we receive we are unable to offer individual comments on specific rejections.
You are always welcome to try it again.



What can i say to that ?! :o :o :o :o
« Last Edit: August 29, 2015, 14:44 by Thomas from France »

« Reply #881 on: August 29, 2015, 14:47 »
0
I had that rejection problem today, and I know it was not right.

« Reply #882 on: August 29, 2015, 15:18 »
0
Interesting this SS rejection problem, isn't it?
I have almost the same acceptance ratio as few month ago.
My sells are excellent, almost  every day  some SOD's...
AND YES, TODAY IS APRIL THE FIRST !
;)
Ok, no more sarcasm.
If you are not an agency with signed contract with SS , you can slowly forget on SS.
Bye bye, good old times for us indies.

« Reply #883 on: August 30, 2015, 16:28 »
0
Hi,

I almost miss this thread.

After contacting SS about another 'poor lighting' rejection, here's their message :

Thank you for contacting us.
Unfortunately due to the large number of submissions we receive we are unable to offer individual comments on specific rejections.
You are always welcome to try it again.



What can i say to that ?! :o :o :o :o
I got that too. Pissed me right off.

« Reply #884 on: August 30, 2015, 16:57 »
+4
I am getting fed up with Shutterstock and their review process.  A recent image was rejected for focus.... the main item in the photo WAS in sharp focus.  Nikon Transfer marks that area as the focus point as well.  There was nothing else wrong with the image either.  The focus point even looks nice at 200%.   Until they rejected that particular image, I thought maybe the focus/sharpness rejections might have been true.

SS rejects images accepted everywhere else.  Lately I have stop uploading bother to upload to them because I am so sick of the absurdity of it.  I do not mind trying to make my images technically better.  Was always very technical when did film-- even mixed my own print and film chemicals from scratch-- not powder mixes but the isolated chemicals, used a medium format camera etc.   I appreciate some feedback but not when it does not make sense.

I have finally come to the conclusion that I am not going to allow SS to dictate my photography.    I know that SS is supposed to be the big money maker for most but I am selling better on other sites.  I think part of the low sales on SS is the review process which has little basis in reality. 

PZF

« Reply #885 on: August 31, 2015, 03:05 »
0
Yep, very little taken outside gets accepted for one reason or another.
Latest - special characters. I think they mean an apostrophe. But the place IS called Jacob's Ladder. Grrrrrr....

Update. Just got it again. No apostrophe in sight.
Dash? But it's editorial and there is one already....

Double Grrrrrr!
« Last Edit: August 31, 2015, 11:45 by PZF »

« Reply #886 on: September 01, 2015, 01:06 »
+1
I am getting fed up with Shutterstock and their review process.  A recent image was rejected for focus.... the main item in the photo WAS in sharp focus.  Nikon Transfer marks that area as the focus point as well.  There was nothing else wrong with the image either.  The focus point even looks nice at 200%.   Until they rejected that particular image, I thought maybe the focus/sharpness rejections might have been true.

SS rejects images accepted everywhere else.  Lately I have stop uploading bother to upload to them because I am so sick of the absurdity of it.  I do not mind trying to make my images technically better.  Was always very technical when did film-- even mixed my own print and film chemicals from scratch-- not powder mixes but the isolated chemicals, used a medium format camera etc.   I appreciate some feedback but not when it does not make sense.

I have finally come to the conclusion that I am not going to allow SS to dictate my photography.    I know that SS is supposed to be the big money maker for most but I am selling better on other sites.  I think part of the low sales on SS is the review process which has little basis in reality.

Dont worry be happy look on the bright side of life.
Its not about photography, and it is not about your technical skills, or your cameras. You are not selling images, but content, which is a combination of pixels, keywords and availability for the customer. You deliver the first 2, the agency the last. Because there is an overabundance of keyworded images and availability is expensive, they can be carelesss in how they reject, and they come up with strange (or good) reasons  that they hope will push the stream of  keyworded images in a direction. And so it does, images gets sharper, and cameras bought by the contributors become better untill it reaches a current maximum, where it becomes absurd.

And now for your rejected sharp image, it might be so, that it is not about the sharpness, or the focus, but which areas in the image that are unsharp and they way they are unsharp. So take a look and examine the out of focus areas.

« Reply #887 on: September 01, 2015, 11:43 »
+16
The reviewers have a limited number of reasons for rejection available in the list box, the reviewers (most, these days) are not competent and Shutterstock's motives are never shared with contributers. In addition, most of the elements that cause an image to be worthwhile in most situations except microstock backlighting, crosslighting, selective focus, original composition are frowned on by SS and their ilk Therefor: Never take their canned responses as legitimate criticism. It might lead you down the wrong path.

Rinderart

« Reply #888 on: September 01, 2015, 15:52 »
+2
The reviewers have a limited number of reasons for rejection available in the list box, the reviewers (most, these days) are not competent and Shutterstock's motives are never shared with contributers. In addition, most of the elements that cause an image to be worthwhile in most situations except microstock backlighting, crosslighting, selective focus, original composition are frowned on by SS and their ilk Therefor: Never take their canned responses as legitimate criticism. It might lead you down the wrong path.

Probably one of the best Posts ever on this topic. I could not agree more.

« Reply #889 on: September 04, 2015, 09:11 »
+1
Just saw this SS communication from August 31th:

Hello,
As some of you may have noticed we are a few days behind with replying to your email because of an unexpected high volume of emails received. We are sincerely sorry for any inconvenience as you wait to hear back from us.
If you sent us an email in recent days we ask for your patience in receiving a response from us, we also ask you not to email us multiple times since this only exacerbates the issue and slows things down even more.
Thank you for your understanding as we work to catch up and reply to your email in a timely manner
 vincent


unexpected high volume of emails received : because of strange rejections ?


« Reply #890 on: September 14, 2015, 12:16 »
0
Had to re-upload about a dozen images because, even though they were abstract photographs taken with my lensbaby, SS rejected them for not being in the "illustration" category. I put them in that category if I tweak them a lot but when they are basically straight from the camera I feel so frustrated - if they insist on calling photos "illustrations," they could just switch them into the other category - I have to think it's faster and more efficient than 1.rejecting - 2.advising me - and then 3. reviewing the exact same photo again. At least they are all online now.
« Last Edit: September 14, 2015, 12:22 by wordplanet »

« Reply #891 on: September 16, 2015, 07:23 »
+4
Virtually everything i submit now at SS gets rejected for focus (they are in focus, at 100%, often shallow DOF tho), noise (virtually all shot at base ISO), or oversharpening - i rarely sharpen more than a few notches more than LR's default.

Its a complete joke.

If it werent for the high sales SS would barely have any contributors left...


« Reply #892 on: September 17, 2015, 05:38 »
0
Yep im in a similar situation......however they also seem to be accepting more pics than ever I can only conclude they just don't like the stuff I do. I expect their site will get blander and more stocky despite them occasionally saying customers are looking for something "different" then stamping all over anything that doesn't meet their mysterious standards.

« Reply #893 on: September 17, 2015, 07:58 »
+2
I have just been through absolute waste of time myself, 3 times, they are even rejecting the files that they OK'd previously.
Telling me I had NOT selected Editorial when I not only selected it but also put a tag in the keywords.

Probaly spent 10 hours so far and that is more than enough for me, there is NO consistancy to the rejections.

But this is what happens when people who know nothing about photography are employed to review images, they have no abaility to understand the nuances of the art.

SS will suffer in the end because there are places like Stocksy and Imagebrief, that ask for images, that have a creativeness about them.


OM

« Reply #894 on: September 19, 2015, 12:54 »
0
Had a rejection recently that I uploaded as a bit of a test...just to see whether it would be rejected and on which grounds. A completely defocused/blurred shot of a restaurant outdoors with al fresco dining. Nice afternoon sunlight and perfecly lit. Nikon D600 at 125ISO, virtually no post-processing and certainly no sharpening.....rejected on noise! There was no noise.  ;D ;D

They need an 'honesty' rejection key, like 'IMHO LCV' or just 'Crap'!

« Reply #895 on: September 22, 2015, 11:11 »
0
They changed Inspectors by Rejectors (or Terminators).

mcp

« Reply #896 on: September 23, 2015, 06:37 »
0
The reviews are baffling.

SS remains my top site for DL's but the rejections of entire batches, or taking 10% of a batch is frustrating.

Thankfully, FT, 123 and IS are accepting most of the SS rejections (about 80% of them). I guess the next couple of months will see if this will lead to FT, 123 and IS closing the gap on SS in terms of DLs.

« Reply #897 on: September 23, 2015, 08:39 »
0
So...does anybody knows, is photo of music notes allowed to upload? I uploaded a close-up of a few notes and got rejected with Trademark--Image / Metadata potentially infringes on intellectual property rights.

Then I checked on SS site for "music notes" and there are plenty of photos of music notes.

« Reply #898 on: September 23, 2015, 09:59 »
0
The reviews are baffling.

I guess the next couple of months will see if this will lead to FT, 123 and IS closing the gap on SS in terms of DLs.

For me they already are and have been for a few months now

PZF

« Reply #899 on: September 23, 2015, 10:25 »
0
So...does anybody knows, is photo of music notes allowed to upload? I uploaded a close-up of a few notes and got rejected with Trademark--Image / Metadata potentially infringes on intellectual property rights.

Then I checked on SS site for "music notes" and there are plenty of photos of music notes.

Probably they fear it is the MUSIC which is copyright. I drew some notes in PS and they were accepted (I also clarified the fact that the 'music' was created by me).
Or maybe there was something else in the photo....


 

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