I thought I’d share this funny thread on msg with you. (With permission from the authors, the first two comments are posted here)

Microstock agencies are like girlfriends.
In the beginning it is grand,
show me your pixels, love your pixels,
I need your pixels,
I want your pixels, more, please more.
All is happy, all she talks about is your pixels.
You think everything is great and move-in with her.
It is so swell she is happy with your pixels,
she tells you your pixels make her feel good.
One night, you say, “let me show some new pixels.”
Suddenly, out of the blue
honey not tonight, “I have a headache!”
Your first rejection!
The next night, “honey not tonight, I have already seen your pix!”
Your rejection rate increases!
You realize your girlfriend is becoming old and tired.
She tells you, “I don’t want to see your pix, I already had your pix.
Total rejection, you lose all interest and quit submitting.
The final rejection, she says, It is just a “snapshot” and the final insult,
The new Photographer is a stud and his pixels are bigger.

©2011 C Buegeler

msg member jsnover responds to the above:

Or, they’re like boyfriends – full of flattery and wonderful promises, but once they’ve got what they want – your images – everything’s different.

They don’t reply to your customer support tickets, payments are late, promises for more promotion for your images just never materialize – but it’ll be happening “soon”, they’re seeing not one, but thousands of others…

In the end, there you are, alone on a Saturday night with just your hard drive full of wonderful images, crying into a large tub of ice cream which you’re eating furiously.

Related posts:

1. Poetry for the Struggling Microstocker
2. Why bother?

Sometimes rejected photos are not entirely rejected. Some agencies offer the opportunity to re-submit photos if you are able to modify the image accordingly.

I don’t often use Photoshop for anything other than basic editing, but I do spend a fair bit of time trying to make my photos appear more presentable/marketable. So when one agency rejects a photo that I have already spent time on editing, do I bother to edit the image again according to how they want it? I often don’t bother. For the photo below though, I did and it was accepted by Dreamstime the second time around. Since it was accepted it has been downloaded 6 times on DT, netting me $20.46.

So I’m glad I bothered. Naturally I would be happier if the agency just accepted my image straight away. Heck, they should just accept all my images . The agencies however have high standards now and we are kept on our toes or left frustrated. Plus to be frank, in retrospect I probably do improve from these rejections and when I compare the images I sent originally to re-edited versions, often only then can I see what the reviewer saw.

Darn it! I hate admitting they’re right..

Related posts:

1. This Microstock Site is a “Joke”
2. Microstock agencies are like girlfriends

I’ve seen this kind of thread a few times in various forums. Newbie photographer (or maybe just new to submitting for stock) submits images to a leading microstock agency. The images are rejected. The person blames the site. The original poster of this thread ends by saying “This place is a joke! Goodbye!” Submitting images to microstock agencies can really bring you back down to earth, I’ve even read about ‘professionals’ entering the industry, struggling and giving up.

Sometimes I hear the words ‘microstock has revolutionised the stock industry’. It’s not microstock, it’s the advent of the digital camera. No more messing around with film rolls and darkrooms. Now I can take a photo and send it anywhere in the world in minutes and so can you and so can everyone else. However, sending them to microstock agencies and getting them accepted is a different matter. With image submissions continuing to increase at pace, agencies can afford to be more picky about what they accept. I actually fear that the microstock agencies will one day have a list of blacklisted cameras, like the more traditional stock agencies often do. Istockphoto are possibly already in that realm. I like telling people that I have a 6 megapixel camera still with its kit lens, getting looked down on and then saying that my photos have been downloaded thousands of times, well ok, over a thousand times (including macrostock sales). Unless of course the person who I’m talking to works for iStock, in which case he or she would continue to smile with a dismissive look.

Lets make this clear. Becoming successful at microstock photography and for that matter any type of photography, IS NOT EASY, but is achievable for anybody who is willing to persevere. What one regards as success though, will vary quite differently from person to person. Microstock photography is not a get rich quick scheme (if you know of any let me know) and for the vast majority of contributors it is and probably will always be, a source of additional income, not your source of income. You are not going to make money with images you have sitting on your hardrive, unless those images were specifically shot with the market in mind. Not these days anyway. If you’re reading this on your way to work or in your office, turn up on time, say yes to your boss and get on with your colleagues, because you need your job and the chances are that this is no escape route. Yes there are those who take to microstock like a duck to water, you remember those kids at school who were always good at everything? Yes, I hated them too . But you still need an awful lot of images online and an even greater amount of downloads to make a living from microstock. Now I am talking thousands and more like tens of thousands of downloads. This requires a lot of time (the day job, the spouse, the kids usually consume that), the technical know-how, knowing what the market wants, knowing how to produce what it wants and being able to produce it differently to everyone else, that is if you really want to get good returns for your images. I know what you’re thinking, it’s been a while since you’ve made some coffee for your colleagues, oh and you haven’t complimented your boss’s ties in a while too.

For most, entering the microstock industry puts you on a sharp learning curve. My first batch of 23 images sent to Dreamstime was rejected too. My reaction? Well lets just say that my Indonesian girlfriend at the time, learnt quite a few English expletives on that day. A few months later when I calmed down, I tried it again and when I have time I keep submitting to Dreamstime and a few others and I’m able to see progress. Learning what images to submit and how the agencies want to see the images is paramount. I find images a little over exposed and a little over saturated works wonders, exactly how I don’t like to see my images, but I’m not the one who is reviewing or buying them. Reviewers seem to love cows, maybe they have never seen them before. If I’m going through a bad patch and getting lots of rejections, I send them a few cows. However, apart from putting a smile on the reviewer’s face, in reality it’s pretty pointless as my cow shots never sell. I’ll have to make sure I look at the top selling livestock images before I go out shooting cows again.

Having images rejected is of course annoying, but our images aren’t rejected for fun. Successful Sites like Dreamstime have already proved themselves. Often contributors have yet to (myself included). I still get my share of rejections. Currently my acceptance ratio on Dreamstime is just 40% and this is an improved figure, also I got accepted at Shutterstock on the 6th time of applying, but now it’s my biggest earner.

Most microstock sites try to allow a contributor community to exist, usually in the form of forums or blogs. These are of course monitored and censored, sometimes to the point where you can only find praise. If you really want to express yourself (within reason), head over to MSG, however be aware, the agencies are watching this too.

Naturally, microstock agencies don’t see their sites as a joke, they see themselves as a business and if we want to succeed, that’s how we should see them too.

Related posts:

1. Poetry for the Struggling Microstocker
2. Why bother?

On July 1 2010, Crestock was acquired by Masterfile Corporation. Acquisitions of microstock agencies by more traditional stock agencies have been a common trend over the past few years. Both micro and macro agencies seem poles apart with their price levels and business strategies, but the sensible people at least realise that they now both have a place in the market and can coexist.

I only have experience of Crestock as a contributor and can’t comment on the buyers’ side, which might be a bed of roses for all I know. The contributor side though has been appallingly mismanaged and bitterness felt towards them can be found in abundance in various microstock forums and even on Crestock’s own forum.

Issues of contention include:

• Exceptionally long review times for submitted work. I only submitted images on a couple of occasions, but I waited weeks for them to be reviewed, many contributors have reported waiting for months.

• Exceptionally high rejection rates. Every contributor learns to accept that not all his/her images will be accepted. From memory when I tried to submit to Crestock in 2008, I initially submitted a handful of photos (less than 10), of which 4 were accepted and then I submitted 17 photos of which all were rejected. I was astounded and never submitted again. I have since read on several occasions that this is a common experience. One successful microstocker submitted 1000 images of which 25 were accepted. Not surprisingly he described this as an “insult”.

• Contributing photographers complain about having to wait months for payment once payment has been requested. Again, it is insulting for a contributor to have to wait for months for his/her payment. The agency has already received payment for the sold images and not to regard payment to the copyright holders as a priority is inexcusable.

• No response to emails sent by contributors to support.

The President of Masterfile, has stated in Crestock’s blog and in an email to contributors that these issues will be addressed:

1. Payouts. The first order of business will be to get all unpaid royalties (a.k.a. “commissions”) paid to artists who have previously requested payouts. This process will be completed within two weeks. You can rest assured that payments will be regular and timely from now on.

2. Image backlog. Crestock currently has a considerable backlog of new images in the editing queue. We will get that cleared within two months. In the meantime, we are adding experienced image inspectors and editors to our team to handle larger volumes – so we will welcome your new image submissions and will move them through the process quickly.

3. Quick Response Time. Over the past year, Crestock operated with reduced staff which seriously restricted their ability to respond to questions and problems. Effective immediately, you can expect a response to your e-mail inquiries within 24 hours (weekends not included).

It’s a good start by Masterfile to openly declare the problems that Crestock has had and state that they intend to deal with them. “The first order of business will be to get all unpaid royalties (a.k.a. “commissions”) paid to artists who have previously requested payouts.” Does that include those who gave up waiting to be paid and cancelled their accounts? If they manage to succeed in turning things around they can win back disenchanted contributors, which incidentally as annoying as agencies probably find us sometimes, um we have our uses!

Actually, Crestock has a lot going for it. There are a few neat features on the site, such as seeing your typed keyword history and recently viewed images when you are logged in. Buyers have the option of purchasing subscription packages, credits or they can just buy an individual image. Also aesthetically speaking the site looks great, no need for a revamp in my opinion.

I won’t be submitting images just yet though. I intend to wait a while and look for comments in forums on how the new “experienced image inspectors and editors” are doing, before deciding whether to give Crestock another try.

Related posts:

1. Microstock agencies are like girlfriends
2. Microstock Sites Spring Clean

.

Oh why did you reject my photos again?

I gave you my best but you said it was lame

I stayed up all night but my work was in vain

I’m human you know, I can’t take so much pain!

Oh why did you reject my photos again?

My photos are great, you’re completely insane

You send your instructions and show that you reign

Just fix the following…

Over/Under exposure

Over or under saturated colors

This file contains artifacting when viewed at full size

Problems with contrast

Some of the keywords used for this file do not appear to be fully relevant to the subject.

Noise or Pixelation

Image is too dark or too light

Quality of routing

Purple fringe, blown highlights

Visible branding/logo

Non-interesting subject matter

Over-sharpening or post processing techniques

Please provide a set of simple, descriptive, focused keywords for this image before resubmitting.

Framing problem

Interpolation problem

Please view image at 100% prior to submission

…and send them again.

Related posts:

1. Microstock agencies are like girlfriends
2. This Microstock Site is a “Joke”

Sounds serious and it is, because BigStock will reject images that contain problem keywords or subjects, and just when you thought it couldn’t get any harder to get your photos online.

The use of the following keywords will trigger off sirens at BigStock’s Head Quarters and a cage will be dropped over the reviewer who is examining your image. The reviewer will not be released until the suspect keyword or image in question is fully screened, using the latest NASA technology. Once verified the reviewer is released and allowed a 15 minute break, where he/she will be served tea and biscuits and have an opportunity to talk to the in-house counsellor.

1. Apple – Apparently a computer company decided to name itself after a popular fruit, that’s a silly idea if you ask me, it will never take off! I’m not exactly sure what would happen if you keyword a photo of an apple with the keyword ‘apple’, hopefully good sense would prevail and the reviewer won’t be detained.
2. Ayer’s Rock – “Religious – not allowed”. Therefore, images of the Earth are not allowed as it is also a rock.
3. Car freshener -  Little Trees air freshener was invented in 1952 by a man called Julius Samann who “spent five cold years…in the Canadian wilderness”, chasing bears and extracting pine needle oils. “He came up with the shape, the name and the fragrance….It should come as no surprise, then, that we are so vigilant in protecting our trademarks.” They go on to say, “So whether you’re calling your new car-seat cushion-fluffing business “Car-Freshner”, or you’re using our Tree in your pet store ads, don’t be surprised if you get a letter (or more) from our legal team.” You can just feel the love, can’t you! I’m kidding about the bears by the way and stay away from car fresheners.
4. Eiffel Tower – “Daytime shots are OK. Night shots not allowed as a standalone commercial use shot (lights are protected).” I’ve never understood the French!
5. Granny – Well this is getting silly now, you mean to say shots of your Granny will be rejected because they infringe copyright laws? Oh hang on, I read it wrong, it says Grammy.
6. An expletive – Which I often repeat in quick succession, with increased volume on each repetition, when I receive notifications of image rejections, is “Not allowed as a keyword.” It’s there in the list, in between Frank Lloyd Wright and Garmin. Just in case you haven’t got it yet, it rhymes with pluck!

These are a few of the examples from the list that BigStock has kindly provided. These subjects can be accepted if submitted as editorial images, so long as they are considered to be newsworthy. I’m sure the list will continue to grow until one day there will not be enough memory on all those apples to store the information, and you won’t even be able to send photos of your dog sporting his new perm, because the breed is now the emblem for a new software company. Hehe ‘apple’, there’s hope for me yet.

Related posts:

1. Is it time to give Crestock another try?
2. Microstock agencies are like girlfriends

I generally wish that the agencies would offer a little more accurate information when sending rejection reasons. Instead of, your pic. was rejected because of this or possibly this. What? Does the reviewer not know the reason? I don’t mind getting set formatted responses, but there should be enough of them to fit every rejection reason. Surely there can only be a certain amount of rejection reasons. Here’s the snapshot in question which was rejected by BigStockPhoto, but has to date been downloaded 6 times elsewhere, from keen snapshot enthusiasts. Click to open.

Despite this slightly belittling rejection reason, on the whole, I find BigStockPhoto to be one of the most respectful to photographers. Having been brought up in the U.K. where people tend to use the word ‘sorry’ excessively, I like the way they are always apologising to me. Tends to soften the blow of the rejection. Hang on, didn’t I say I was never offended by being rejected? Here’s a wonderful rejection which actually looks like the reviewer typed it himself. “Beautiful color! Simply too blurry, sorry!” I don’t want to show you the image, as it has been accepted elsewhere and don’t want those agencies to start inspecting the blurriness of the image.

Another observation of BigStockPhoto is that they seem to have an incredibly low tolerance of image adjustment in Photoshop. I keep getting, “Artifact Problems: Noise/Grain/Chromatic or other artifacts due to low light, blue or purple fringing, high ISO, over-sharpening or post processing techniques.” Even for images I shot in RAW. Not worried too much though as my acceptance ratio is still reasonable on BSP. It’s Dreamstime that frustrates me, recently I’ve not been able to get anything on, wonder if they’ve been reading my posts! Ironically this comes at a time when my downloads on DT have never been higher.

Here’s a comment I left on a Dreamstime thread, where I’m actually complimentary to DT, yes I said COMPLIMENTARY to DT, so can you start accepting my pictures again please?

“From my experience here they are pretty fair, not too lenient in their acceptances, so that a certain standard is maintained and not too finicky, so that they are able keep a broad range of imagery and not just images from the super pros.

No review system can be perfect as mentioned before there is a human element. There can always be differences of opinion, you wear the clothes you wear because you like them, another person might have a completely different wardrobe.

However Dreamstime seem reasonably consistent and the rejection reasons they send are sufficient enough for me to understand and accept. 123rf give the least details, their set reply is usually just “Poor Lighting/Composition”. Well which one is it, poor lighting or composition? How am I expected to improve if they don’t tell me why an image is rejected?

Related posts:

1. Why bother?
2. Microstock agencies are like girlfriends

I do quite well for acceptances on 123rf, and BigStockPhoto. My acceptance ratio on Dreamstime is very low, but I like the site a lot, so not discouraged. Istockphoto accepted my 3 photos in the application process, photos which I subsequently have to resend. Your 3 photos have been reviewed and have met our criteria, please send them again to be reviewed. Don’t quite get that one. Anyway, I’m not going to argue, I’m not the one who is making millions. Haven’t sent them back yet, will update this blog as soon as I do (Update: On resending the three photos, two were rejected). Shutterstock and Stockxpert don’t want to know me, I don’t hold that against them. Maybe, I should take them out for dinner one day and they might get to like me

My relatively inept photoshop skills and incredibly slow internet speed (I live in Indonesia), prevent me from doing things a bit faster. Plus, I think I either need to upgrade my equipment or start shooting in raw, to keep up with the ever increasing standards by the agencies. Anyway nuff of the excuses already.

Despite the slow progress and alienation I receive by some of the big players, I am enjoying it. I’ll let you know if I’m not.

Related posts:

1. Why bother?
2. Is it time to give Crestock another try?