My Wedding & Photography Works

Shutterstock is one of those macro stock site where you can sell ur image for 0.25cents each (or for my case 0.36cents each) . Not much it sounds ,but it could be something with volume game. to register, do use the link below

http://submit.shutterstock.com/?ref=71884

Anyway this article is not intended for those of you who are already expert in stock game but it’s meant for those beginner who would like to try their luck to win some free upgrades on the accessories. Believe me it’s the source of all my camera upgrades.

Ok. Last week an old friend of mine Liew Kim Hie who recently purchased a nikon D90 and decided to register not as my referral. As expected , the first 10 submission is not always an easy process. He got rejected and of course he asked me for the reasons.

To become a submitter of Shutterstock , you need to first register with the site.

http://submit.shutterstock.com/?ref=71884

As non-US citizen , we are required to scan a copy of our passport and submit it to Shutterstock. After a while , probably you have to submit your first 10. You must pass at least 7 of your first 10 submission or you will have to wait a deadly 30 days to resubmit again. Once you passed your first 10, you may submit any number of photos without fearing any rejection and life would be pretty much simpler onwards.

This was his first 10 submission. Looks like he got 10 out of 10 rejections. You can check the comments left by reviewer on the right panel. If there are rejection reasons , it usually means the image is rejected. If there are no comments it could possible be the image is accepted.

Let’s go through all these images and the possible rejection reasons.

First 3 Shutterstock rejection

1. Bad composition ,there seems to be a patch of grass on the foreground of one of the cat. There seems to be too much background on the upper right side of the photo. Try zooming into the cats. A tighter composition would do better

2. The background is too distracting. There are a bit of grass on the foreground too. Isolation may help in these cases but it’s rather a complex process.

3. There seems to be no meaning of this photo. the cat ? the drain?the tree? These types of images are probably valueless to a designer perspective. Remember to have Ads perspective in mind as images from stock are most probably used as advertisement purposes.

Also please try to avoid using the same subject repeatedly for the first 10 submission

Next 3 Shutterstock Rejection

4. This image looks ok to me. But do avoid these type of dark images for the first 10 as it’s very risky. Shutterstock is well known to like bright images.

5. Not too bad. Background is clean , but do remember that you need model releases from both of the person in the image.

6. Again model release, I assume she’s a minor so you will need a minor model release

Next 4 Shutterstock rejection

7. Again , night and dark images are very risky. A lot of noise issues ,blur, etc. Submit these only after u made the first 10.

8. Imho ,forest shots are tough for first 10 submissions too. Make sure

9. The composition could be better. The legs of the people are cut off.

10. Focus ? It sounds like the images are not sharp enough. Do make sure images are sharp at 100% zoom. Shutterstock as well as the whole stock industry require images that up to acceptable sharpness. This image seems to have limited commercial values to.

The usual popular rejection reasons.

Composition–Limited commercial value due to framing, cropping, and/or composition.

They hate the photo. Resubmitting will probably ended up being rejected again. Try to resize your image to 4MP and resubmit , it may help a little

Poor Lighting–Poor or uneven lighting, or shadows. White balance may be incorrect.

Image is probaly too dark ,dull with uninteresting lighting. Tweaking the image brighter may help

Focus–Your image is not in focus or focus is not located where we feel it works best.

Image is not sharp! Probably out of focus or not correctly focused by stock standards. Resizing does help if your megapixel is large enough!

I hope this article is not too boring and has been informative for you!

Tagged: first 10, microstock, photo, photographer, photography, review, shutterstock, submission