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8 out of 8 have technical issues
I wonder if the staff have quotas to fulill?
Constructive critiqe welcome BS like "there's too many of that already on there" isn't
Hello Terry,
Well to give my few cents worth.
Having looked at one photo -baby robin - when enlarged, there are signs of noise. But other issues which tend to come under technical issue are white balance, contrast, saturation/vibrance etc. But you have read about these right?
So, bearing this in mind, what I see is this.
The robin photo as it stands is a bit flat. It needs more contrast and a bit more vibrance. You could also alter the tone curve a bit more giving it a slight S-shape. White balance also could be improved a bit. As the robin is on the grass, the grass has given a slight green cast to the photo - only a bit though, but for me noticeable.
As an example you could try something like this:
You also need to tidy up the background, remove the blurred out grass - I removed it in this example.
However, these photos may fail on other reasons as well, like noise - artifacts.
Haven't looked at the others yet, but I think the issues would follow the same pattern. Contrast, vibrance, white balance.
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8 out of 8 have technical issues
I wonder if the staff have quotas to fulill?
Constructive critiqe welcome BS like "there's too many of that already on there" isn't
Hello Terry,
Well to give my few cents worth.
Having looked at one photo -baby robin - when enlarged, there are signs of noise. But other issues which tend to come under technical issue are white balance, contrast, saturation/vibrance etc. But you have read about these right?
So, bearing this in mind, what I see is this.
The robin photo as it stands is a bit flat. It needs more contrast and a bit more vibrance. You could also alter the tone curve a bit more giving it a slight S-shape. White balance also could be improved a bit. As the robin is on the grass, the grass has given a slight green cast to the photo - only a bit though, but for me noticeable.
As an example you could try something like this:
You also need to tidy up the background, remove the blurred out grass - I removed it in this example.
However, these photos may fail on other reasons as well, like noise - artifacts.
Haven't looked at the others yet, but I think the issues would follow the same pattern. Contrast, vibrance, white balance.
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Great photos! The first and the last one have a very shallow depth of field, so that the bird is also out of focus in some places. I would try again without these two pictures.
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Hi Marianne,
Refusals are individual per image. So there is a problem on each of the images.
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I like your pictures. It's worth knowing that when they say technical issues
1. That's what they mean; there are different rejections for things like "Model release needed" or "We have too many of these".
2. Very high technical standards are expected from everything. Customers expect the best professsional standard, that can be used in a national advertising campaign or on the side of a bus.
3. No allowance is made for the interest of the subject or difficulty of capturing it. Some subjects will be impossible to capture to the required standards! Nature photography is particularly unforgiving.
4. I have seen no evidence of quotas.
This insight may or may not be welcome.
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Beautiful birds! I agree that the first and last one are out of focus (especially the last one). The others almost all have some noise in the background. The fifth one really has noise in the tail when you look at it 100%. Get rid of the noise and I think those will be fine.
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Just saw on the 7th one you have something weird on the tree in a couple places. Most of the tree is sharp and then it looks like something was smugged out or something.
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Ask yourself if and how you would use these in a million dollar ad campaign.
Examine all images at 100% magnification and you'll begin to see the technical problems. And don't be defensive about rejection. Rejection is not personal. It's strictly business.
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I appreciate your feedback and comments but I'll disagree witht he "strictly business" part, It's strictly subjective and that can be proven by comparing images rejected to images accepted and seeing that there is not discernable pattern.
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Sorry, but you are wrong. It's strictly business.
I just looked at the first image and I found at least 3 technical issues: Sharpening artefacts, noise and missing contrast. One of the issues would be sufficient to refuse the picture:
Look at the feathers and you will see sharpening artefacts, look at the eyes and you will see noise, as for the contrast look here:
The sharpening artefacts destroyed the image if you do not have the raw files.
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I'm beginning to think that stock imges are a mugs game, unless you happen to own shares in the agency
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I don't agree. But hey, why not submit the same images to Getty and Shutterstock and see what they say.
Good luck!