Nov

iStockphoto Rejected My First Application

Written by Neil Galloway

If you read my article yesterday on iStockphoto called Earning Money As A Hobby Photographer then you know I spoke about microstock sites. Sites where you can upload your photos and they are available for downloading for a fee. You then get a cut of this.

Anyhow, I applied to iStockphoto and went through a fairly involved application process on-line. At the very end, you upload 3 sample photographs. I uploaded a few of my favourites and I just found out today that I was rejected. That's right! My photos were not of a high enough quality for their site.

When you sign up, there is a mini tutorial that you go through explaining quality and other copyright issues when submitting photos to your site. I thought that most of the photographs I have take on my Nikon D70s would be good enough no question. I thought it would be more on composition, but I am wrong obviously.

I am still able to go ahead with my application though. I just have to upload new samples after a 3 day waiting period. I will try again going into the weekend and I will be a little more picky in terms of image quality and less into the composition and how much I like the photo personally.

Sample Photos

Each photo had a description as to why it was rejected. One was my white jellyfish seen below. I uploaded the full resolution version but they said it had artifacting in the photo. It was a dark room and my ISO setting was quite high. Still, I thought the composition of the photos was good enough. I guess their standards are higher than I thought.

My other rejected photos were of the cruise ship at Stanley Park and Henderson gravestone. The cruise ship photograph had artifacting as well and the gravestone had a lack of color.

Henderson Grave

Cruise Ship In Stanley Park

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Category: Photography

3 Comments

Wes Says:
2007-11-21 11:02:37
My business partner and I both pooled together our photos for the submission, and we went through three rounds of rejections before we gave up. We had some very high quality stuff, good enough to have already generated sales to the public, that they sent back to us for just as silly of reasons as yours.

We suspect it's either a technical person doing an artistic job, or a computer algorithm that is making these determinations.

mistercrowley Says:
2008-03-04 13:58:28
I too submitted my sample photos to iStockphoto and was rejected. I didn't receive any critiques on any of the individual photos, however they stated that my subject matter and style was too much alike. The pictures were of the Grand Canyon, a rainbow over a waterfall and a tower of ice formed from a frozen waterfall. I guess because they are all landscape photos they are too alike in subject matter. I wonder what would have happened if Ansel Adams submitted 3 landscape photos... Also as far as style. That's my style, it is unique to me, it is what I see and how I compose my shot, that's why it's called a style. I don't want to take pictures in any other style. I would be bending my perception of what I see and then it's no longer my photography. Ah well. I'll try once more with different images however after reading your post, looking kinda bleak.

I think your photos are terrific btw Neil. I especially like the depth of field on the Henderson Grave. Lack of color... Whatever... How about a lack of good judgment on their part.

Shaun Southern Says:
2008-07-27 04:58:01
I too submitted an application. First they said my photos were bad composition. Then one was accepted, the other two had 'artifacts'. Total rubbish, infact the only one with artifacts was the one accepted. Waste of time.