Sunset rejected, want to learn how to do make better photos

Thanks all for the replies and the feedback.
I understand what you mean about the under and overexposure of the image. And indeed, sunsets aren't really a good idea of uploading anymore.

The foreground is completely black with no detail whatsoever, which won't work well in a number of commercial applications. Additionally the large blownout blob of sun presents problems in printing. Sunsets are already a very over-represented category in Adobe Stock, so unless it's technically perfect and visually distinctive, the chances that you would ever sell one are close to zero.

• Adobe Stock already contains 50 million perfect sunrises/sunsets.   They don't need more. And you can't compete with that unless it's really, really extraordinary.
  https://stock.adobe.com/search?k=sunset
  https://stock.adobe.com/search?k=sunrise
• Take some photography classes & join a photography club.
• Find more unique subjects to photograph that nobody else has thought of. 
• Compare your very best work with current Stock inventory to ensure that yours is as good or better than what Stock has.

Adobe Stock customers expect the highest visual and technical quality for use in commercial projects.  Read these links.

• https://helpx.adobe.com/stock/contributor/help/reasons-for-content-rejection.html
• https://helpx.adobe.com/stock/contributor/help/quality-and-technical-issues.html
• https://helpx.adobe.com/stock/contributor/user-guide.html/stock/contributor/help/photography-illustrations.ug.html
• https://helpx.adobe.com/stock/how-to/tips-stock-image-acceptance.html

Hope that helps.  Good luck.

I think if you look at the Histogram, it really highlights the underexposure in this photo.  If you zoom in to 100% on the sky, there is noticeable noise there.  I'm also not seeing any visible detail in the trees in the foreground, and when zoomed into 100% it appears they are out of focus.

I think it's important to consider Stock from the point of view of commercial assets and how they might be used.  For instance, starting in a place of underexposure makes it really challenging to raise the exposure if someone wanted to.  This wouldn't be very useful to me if I were making a composite as I can't tweak this to match the rest of my image.

I think even if this photo met the quality requirements, it would likely be rejected with a "Similar Images" rejection, there are millions of sunsets already in the database.  I think a sunset would need significant "wow factor" to be accepted.  Find unique compositions and subjects for your best chance at success.

I hope this helps!

The photo is underexposed and, the sun is a white blob, so it's overexposed. Too much for the photo. The exposure is unbalanced.

Also, there are gazillions of sunset photos, so I don't recommend submitting them.