Alamy Reject?

Phil1974

Phil1974

Suspended / Banned
Messages
868
Name
Phil
Edit My Images
Yes
Hi All,
I signed up for Alamy yesterday and submitted my 4 test images after reading the criteria. I checked back today to find one of my shots failed the Quality Control due to being "soft or lacking definition" I have posted it below.....


View attachment 30718


Now I know there is a very shallow DOF here but is it really that soft? Just wondered if anyone else had had rejections from Alamy (or anyone else) that they were a bit suprised about?

Cheers,
Phil
 
They don't really like artsy shots or shallow depth of field shots. All my sales have been dull and mundane subjects that are only suited to medical journals and agricultural magazines lol.

Forget about submitting good photos and stick with plain to the point stuff, that's what sells in my experience.
 
To be honest the DOF is really too thin for animals like this, and there is a hint of camera shake. I am really not surprised. They may pay peanuts but they expect more of a monkey (pun intended)
 
Well I must be blind then because that looks perfectly acceptable to me.
I gave up with submitting to Alamy years ago and that's fine by me because I okay via the likes of shutterstock and fotolia.
 
Thanks guys. I think I might give up now as I've just had another 7 rejected by Shutterstock due to noise. Not sure what the QC guys use to look at these shots. They must have a pretty strong magnifying glass [emoji1]
 
To be honest, the big OOF blob behind the ear/shoulder and the uneven background are probably more of a problem. And being a very shallow depth of field it wouldn't be easy for someone to clean-up. It gets labelled as "soft and lacking definition" because it's the catch-all for the problems as a whole. If the monkey had greater depth of field and sharply defined edges to the fur coat it might be viewed as workable for someone wanting to clean the background, but looking at this shot they're not going to give it a second glance before pressing 'Next..'. Unless they specifically want a monkey with a OOF branch growing out of its shoulder.. ..
 
Can you post the ones shutterstock rejected?
 
Unfortunately due to the low DoF they will fail as on the whole it is soft, the eyes are OK but the ears etc are soft, so for a sale would limit who would use, therefore reducing the chance of them making there share of the sale.
 
I didn't really stop to consider any further PP being done to it. Alistair's comments make sense.
I'll post up a couple of the Shutterstock ones on Sunday as I'm away at the moment.
Also if you Google "monkey with OOF branch" you don't get any exact results. I may have found a very niche market [emoji1]
 
Phil, someone at Alamy simply doesn't appreciate your product enough to pay you for it - that's their problem so don't beat yourself up over it! Enjoy what you produce for yourself. If you were making a living (or trying to) from your pictures, it would probably be worth trying to please the submissions editors to get shots on their books but as a hobbyist, why not just enjoy it?
 
Phil, there are reasons why this picture was rejected. As the others have said, the depth of field is inappropriately shallow and there is evidence of blur caused by movement. As Alastair pointed out there is a distracting background element and the composition doesn't show the entire creature. The shallow depth of field makes it difficult for the viewer to see enough detail in the animal and this is causing a degree of visual confusion. There's no reason why you can't have photographs accepted providing they avoid these problems, but as Nod has said, why worry - just enjoy your hobby!
 
Whoops forgot about this thread, sorry. Thanks Lindsay. I'm not really worried by it I was just a little surprised. More so by the Shutterstock ones now actually. I'll keep trying and see where I get. I have a better understanding of what is potentially going to make the grade now at least.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top