Trevor Parker

No worries Steve, I actually appreciate the critique. Yes oftentimes I do produce pictures a little underexposed. Its sort of a habit I've gotten into, maybe as a personal preference. I always try to make sure nothing is blown out on the histogram but it is also typically shifted lower. For example in the image below (not uploaded on SS) the histogram skews much more towards the shadows. It varies by image but I tend to prefer darker exposures for whatever reason. Maybe my monitor brightness is too high lol.

I believe they were initially rejected as commercial uploads for focus/noise. As a bit of an experiment I started uploading what was initially rejected as commercial a second time as editorial to see if the algorithm accepted them. It worked for a while but now it seems both will reject for noise on selective focus.

So the Shutterstock contributor AI algorithm for accepting/rejecting images is entirely broken. I can't upload a single photo shot in f/5 or wider without getting rejected for "noise." Basically anything with Bokeh is automatically rejected. Moving to Adobe stock from now on, this is too stupid. From my experience thus far shutterstock is by far the absolute worst stock photography website I've ever contributed to. And all of this work for 10 cents per download? You're absolutely insane if you think this business model will work.

So the Shutterstock contributor AI algorithm for accepting/rejecting images is entirely broken. I can't upload a single photo shot in f/5 or wider without getting rejected for "noise." Basically anything with Bokeh is automatically rejected. Moving to Adobe stock from now on, this is too stupid.