Rejected!

I was thrilled to see that first thing the next morning, shutterstock had already gotten back to me! "Status of your recently submitted batches" sat waiting for me. I opened the e-mail anticipating directions for submitting more photos, and telling me about a couple that could use improvement.

I scanned through the e-mail too eager to read every word. "Thank you for your submission" blah blah blah... Need seven of ten approved to continue uploading... yada yada yada... "We invite you to resubmit in 30 days."

Wait... What? If I can't resubmit for thirty days that means... I scanned down more. There I saw the graph laying out the status of each picture... "3473217 Rejected: Noise--Noise, film grain, over-sharpening, or artifacts at full size." Rejected... Rejected... Rejected... All ten rejected. I stared at the monitor in disbelief. All but one was due to noise.

I closed down the computer and packed up for work, crestfallen and disappointed.

Noise? Noise... I had no idea what that meant. Maybe I had too much going on in my pictures. Were they looking for studio shots with clear and individual subjects? Maybe there were too many bushes with my waterfall. Too much excess information in my windmill picture. Noise... I pondered the idea of noise all day. So if it's noisy, do I need to take a more quiet picture? How do I take a quiet picture?

"Hmm... This picture is very quiet," Shari quipped as she helped me hang some professional photos at work. "And look! Here it's muted!" She pointed to the wide expanse of negative space above the dead tree. We laughed, both of us confused by noisy pictures. Once I'd told Shari about my rejection, it felt a little better.

"I like your screen saver there," my boss commented as she looked on while I opened Quickbooks. "It's very nice." It was the photo of the sand dunes with the foot prints.

"Thank you, I took that myself!"

She told me it looked professional. I told her, apparently not.

By the end of the day my heart sinking disappointment had disappeared and I was bound and determined to figure out what it was that made my pictures noisy. My confidence in my photography was jarred, but not crushed. I now knew that there was something I needed to work on to give my photos that professional touch, and with thousands of great images in stock, I wasn't giving up. I was learning from the experience. And I'd decided I was going to share my experiences in a blog for others to learn from and to gain their own confidence from.