How to SHOOT and EDIT photos for Shutterstock ?

Rejections are frustrating. There is no second opinion about that. Remember, no matter how good you get , you will still get them. And no, it’s not personal. It’s business. I would like to share my experience so far with approvals and rejections on shutterstock and how to improve your acceptance rate. I am sure there are more and different ways to do it, every photographer has its own way of working.

In addition to the submitter guidelines, I would like to give some more tips from experience.

1.FOCUS – Focus is a tricky one. But as a general rule – try getting everything in focus. For this, shoot with tripod when light is low to avoid camera shake and make sure to have all your sensors active and as much of them flashing, when composing your shot. I have on my canon a A-Dep mode , that is for – foreground and background in focus. But you can aswell pick the “landscape” mode if you shoot in jpg. Of course photos with shallow depth of field are accepted too. But for macro. If you shoot landscapes, cityscapes or buildings , make sure you have everything in focus. For this, check the picture at 100% resolution. This used to be my main rejection reason in the beginning.

Focus issues

2.PICTURE SIZE -  The picture size has to be over 4 MB for shutterstock. Anything under is rejected by the system. So before submitting, check the file size.

4 mpx min

3.WHITE BALANCE – has to be correct , whatever that means. I am open for tips here as I find it difficult to get it right even in post prodiction.

4.POOR LIGHTING/ HARSH SHADOWS – are another rejection reason. These are the shadows you get by direct sun or any strong light source.

Poor lighting

5. PURPLE FRINGE – “purple fringing is the term for an out-of-focus purple or magenta “ghost” image on a photograph.” read more in wikipedia

HOW TO EDIT

with your editing program, remove ANY signs, logos and inscriprtions the you see on your picture. It is best if you avoid those while shooting, but in case it is not possible, make sure to erase them. Roman signs and numbers too. I had the following photo rejected three times before it got finally accepted on the fourth attempt. There was a sign saying “blacksmith” in german on the left building and another inscription “firefighters headquarters” (again in geman) on the central building. But  of course the reviewers are americans, they have not much to do with german.

Trademark

Finally accepted

More posts about stock photography and how to sell your photos > here.

Today , maybe mot by coincidence , shutterstock posted An introduction to shooting for shutterstock presentation. Well written and explained. Woohoo!!!

Притча за мъдростта на художника

„Притчата за мъдростта на художника“
януари 16th, 2012
Някога отдавна, някъде живял прочут художник. Бил на почит, смятали го за изключително мъдър и проницателен човек, а картините му- изящни и вдъхновяващи. Художникът имал ученик. С години наред ученикът показвал картините си само на майстора. Дошъл денят, в който майсторът казал на ученика си:

- Вече си готов. Народa трябва да види какво умееш и да го оцени. Вземи една от картините си и я окачи на централно място в града, така че да се види от много хора. Сложи до нея един червен молив и бележка на която пише, че ако има нещо, което не им се харесва, да го отбележат върху картината.

Ученикът така и направил. На другия ден, когато отишъл да види какъв е резултата – онемял. Цялата картина била покрита с червени кръстчета и кръгчета. Разбира се много се натъжил. Бил рисувал от сърце с толкова любов… толкова труд… Взел картината и отишъл при майстора.

Майсторът го утешил:
- Нарисувай я пак. Не унивай! Окaчи я отново на същото място, но този път остави различни цветове бои и четки за рисуване. На белeжката, която ще оставиш, напиши – ако не им се харесва нещо в картината, да го поправят.

Речено – сторено. На следващия ден ученикът, се изумил от гледката. Картината си останала непокътната, както и боите и четките, недокоснати. Много се зарадвал и се затичал да съобщи новината на майстора си.

Майстора го поздравил и рекъл:
- Виж сега младеж. Исках да ти покажа нещо. Първия път, ти им даде възможност да те критикуват. Направиха го безпощадно. Сигурен съм, че дори хора, които си нямат понятие от рисуване, побързаха да надраскат картината. А вторият път, им каза да те поправят, тоест да изградят нещо.

За да бъдеш градивен, са нужни знания и опит. Именно затова, никoй не посмя да докосне картината, защото никoй от тях не го умее. За да бъдеш уважаван, не е достатъчно да си майстор в нещо, необходимо е да си и далновиден.

Не можеш да получиш правилна оценка за своите творби, от хора които си нямат понятие за това, което правиш. За тях твоята работа не струва пукната пара. Забрави за това да искаш оценка за своя труд от такива хора и никога недей да спориш с хора, които нищо не знаят за твоя труд.

Автор: Неизвестен

How To Get Over Your Fears And Raise Your Prices as a Photographer
English translation – soon to come…

Pinterest – my latest addiction

The idea of pinterest is simply awesome! A virtual online pinboard.

Pinterest: Inspiration for Photographers

As a visually orientated person, I find it simply genius. You can organize your pinboards by themes, grab any pic from the net or upload whetever is taking space on your hard drive. But the best part of it is that you can see other people’s boards and get ideas and inspiration. I already gathered enough for the next years to come.
This is my first thing I’ve done after a tutorial I’ve found on the pinterest site .Here is the petals folding totorial.

I did some improvements on the flowers. First of all 7×7 square paper is too small to work with I used 9×9 cm , pre-cut square papers from a block notes cube. And after trying paper glue stick and allaround glue, from which nothing worked properly, I tried decoupage water based glue that you apply with pinsel. It bonds right away! Added a bead on a wire and slided it through the center of the paper flower. Wrapped the wire in yarn.:)

And there you have never fading flowers, that don’t need water or sun. Make as much as you want. In any color and size you want. They even use them for wedding decoration or brides bouquet .

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Protected: Christmas with the family

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2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 13,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 5 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

I’m living in a winter wonder-la-la-la-land :)

I'm living in a winter wonder-la-la-la-land (Click for snow animation)

I woke up this morning at the sounds of avalanche detonations. An the snow keeps dropping, dropping ,dropping.This is my last animation for this year.I took the photo yesturday while walking with the family. Wish everyone a great New Years Party.

Do you like better the still photo or the animated version?

Working from Home: A Short and creative Film by Shutterstock

“The desire to write grows with writing.” — Desiderius Erasmus

Today I had my first night shot approved on shutterstock. There was always something wrong with my previous ones. Wherever white balance, focus, composition, I had them all rejected until now.It seems I am learning with tiny steps. It’s my 60th approved photo and I got 60usd on my account. This makes an average of 1 dollar per pic. 15 more to go to my first paycheck.

See the new Shutterstock spot at for ipad.

Working from Home: A Short Film from Shutterstock on Vimeo.

Merry Chrismas ,everyone

Christmas tree ANIMATED - Click on picture

I am all into animating pictures this month. We decorated the christmas tree today and it’s snowing alot outside…Merry Christmas, everyone !!!

Orion

Orion animated - klick for shimmering stars

The sky was crystal clear this night with tons of twinkling stars of all the colors. Which is not always the case. While admiring them through the window, I noticed those three in a row and another smaller three below them that looked like a constellation. I couldn’t find the name of it in internet at first, but this was because they were part of a bigger constellation : Orion. What I have noticed was called “the belt of Orion” see Orion (constellation) for more.

Last time I saw a falling star was about 2 years ago.Tonight I got another one. Everyone sleeping at 2:45am, and me? Adjusting tripod in the living room… I thought “I must be nuts” but in the same time “ah, so peaceful and quiet,finally time for some photos” . I notice that I have less and less time for photos lately . I also don’t have the cam with me so much. It’s difficult to carry cam, extra lens and 2 kids only with 2 hands…

“Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are.
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!”

 
Twinkle twinkle little star video with lyrics
I set the camera on tripod, timer to 10 seconds release. The ISO 1600, aperture priority mode, Aperture 4,5 , shutter speed 10 sec.A slight under exposure of -0,3step Both pictures were shot through the window. It was too cold outside to open it.

I wish I wish for snow

CLICK on picture to see it animated (wait for the animation to load completely)

It has been cold for awhile, but no snow in sight.
This is my snow prayer. Let it snow , please!!!
Made in PS2 and animated in Image ready.
I know the snow doesn’t loop flawlessly around the end.
Nobody’s perfect…

HOW I made it? Fast walkthrough.

1.Open your image in Photoshop. 2.Make a transparent layer on top of it  3. With a white brush draw snowflakes.  4 duplicate layer and drag it up  5 merge both layers. 6.Go to Image ready  7.Duplicate first frame of animation  8.drag snowflakes layer down until you reach the end   9.Duplicate last frame  10.select both frames and press “twain animation frames” in animation window.I made 15 frames.Watch the program creatin the frames for you  11 . play animation  12.Save optimized as .GIF

Actually a nice tutorial on how to animate a picture in Photoshop can be found here

UPDATE :
07 december 2011 – It took a bit, but my wishes have been heard. It started snowing this night finally. This is what I woke up to this morning…

P.S. I am sorry that I am posting rarely,but family is really time consuming right now .

Add snow to your pictures with these FREE snow overlays for Photoshop .

Innsbruck before Christmas - Klick for animation

When I compare both animations, the first one works better because it’s a pic with snow on it. Of course it could be that snow just started to drop , like on the second one but I will avoid animating such pictures in the future.

Actually my best snow animation turned out to be this one. I am improving…