PhotoShelter more picky?

Or am I just a poor self editor? 2 of 8 pictures accepted yesterday. Not a great run. Again, I don't take it personally. However, I don't like wasting their or my time. I really wish they had a subject/technical checkbox for rejections so I could figure out why things were rejected and better self edit for their collection.

That's where the issue is. They have something in mind for their collection, a certain feel. They want "pictures of real life". The quote is something like that. Anway, one of their editor's choice is a father sitting on the messy floor of an apartment changing a diaper. Its almost a snapshot (who am I kidding, I can't tell that piece of art from a snapshot). When we were out at the Tulip festival I took a picture of my wife holding my 6mo son while he grabbed a tulip. Cute picture, real life. To me it had more composure than a snapshot without being posed. It was rejected.

So did I miss the ball technically? Did they hate the composure? Or do I not get the "real life"?

Oh well, as I keep saying. Just gotta take more pictures.

Stock whiners

Something I've noticed in the forums on a lot of stock photo sites. Whiny photographers. There's a few typical complainers.

There's the guy with 4 pictures online for OVER A WEEK who hasn't had a single sale yet!!!!?!?! Don't mention that all four pictures are of the same subject, his cat.

Then there is the PROFESSIONAL Photographer. He's the one convinced that cheap DSLRs are going to put him out of business. Hey, if all you have is your equipment, you've been overcharging your clients. There should be some skill, technique and experience you have that Joe Schmoe with his Rebel XT can't match.

Last is the microstocker alarmist/gloater. Very closely related to the above. These are the people convinced that anyone with a high megapixel digicam is going to put them out of a job. They also gloat heavily when anything bad happens to a microstock agency (see Lucky Oliver).

Lastly are the ones who complain about editors. Listen, the deal is, if your image is declined, the particular editor feels it doesn't meet a technical or subject matter bar and its not marketable. If the image is so great, sell it yourself.

Granted, I'm doing this part time and my livelihood is not dependent on this. However, I've also yet to make a sale so I don't see how I'm digging into their profits.

Got my first hit at alamy, no sales yet...

Well, I was checking my "Alamy Measures" and I got my first views and zooms on Alamy yesterday. A "view" as termed by Alamy is when one of your thumbnails shows up in search results. A "zoom" is when one of your thumbnails is clicked on.

Not bad, as of yesterday I only had about 20 pictures online. I've got over 40 today so I'll keep my fingers crossed.

One quick note about Alamy. I HATE their image tagging setup, if you accidently click the wrong link you lose all your unsaved data. I really need to get ITPC (I think that's the acronym) worked into my workflow.

Alamy's rocking and rolling

Alamy is certainly different than PhotoShelter. For one, they are better known and currently have stronger sales stats. Secondly, they are not an edited collection. They have quality standards that must be met but they don't edit for content. After your initial submission is approved, consecutive submissions are only spot checked (if the spot check fails, the whole batch is rejected).

This has allowed me to toss a lot of images up rather quickly in comparison to the much slower review cycle at PhotoShelter. This is both a good and a bad thing. If I just toss up noise, I'm diluting the quality of Alamy's catalog and its value to its customers. On the other hand, if I think a particular image is marketable and PhotoShelter disagrees I have another avenue to sell on. Neither site requires exclusivity so the only real investment is time.

Time time time. I really need to crack down on this. I have all of my images up on a server. However I currently do a lot of editing via a laptop that is joined to my work domain. I have a domain at home but that is just becoming an administrative nightmare. I keep intending to install a Windows Home Server instead and use Lightroom to catalog ALL of my images from a share hosted on the server. If I put all the relative data into the tags on the images I could save a lot of time on processing accepted uploads. Man I hope I can see some success at stock photography. Just enough to let my wife stay at home and take care of our son. Two working adults is well and great before kids, but those boogers take a lot of time and money.

Alamy says yes

Well, Alamy accepted my submissions so now I get to upload to them as well. I'm feeling better about my self-editing capabilities now. I submitted 4 pictures to Alamy and all 4 were accepted.

When populated, my gallery will be available here. The 4 images I applied with should be available there within 24 hours.

Now I get to learn a new agency!