Hi Guys,

I'm hoping that some micro stock company will accept my pictures some day. Is this shot good enough to be accepted? If not, what are the reasons?




What would be the best site for newcomers like myself?

First off...it looks a bit on the bright side. Might have been better to kick down the exposure a bit. Did you bracket the shot? Second...remember the rule of thirds. Every line in the picture is pretty much in the wrong place. Also...the subject looks a bit bedraggled. Too many dead or dying branches. And finally...I can't remember exactly which one it was but I know at least one agency states right in their submission guidelines that they do NOT need any more palm tree pictures...I guess that is a pretty common subject.

You might get this accepted at a few sites. I would try bigstockphoto and lucky oliver for starters.

Thanks for the advice striver. I really appreciate that. Anybody else want to give their opinion?

@striver: I made the colors brighter with PS, guess I've gotta leave them as it is. I did not bracket.

Divide the shot to 3 parts horizontally and vertically; place the main object on one of the intersection - is that the rule of third?

Thanks for suggesting some sites for uploading. I would also like to show you the full size 8megapixle shot, so that you could tell me if the quality is good enough, or whether there is too much noise. All comments are welcome.

Download: http://www.sendspace.com/file/jd8iog (4.5MB)

Thank you again.

ok....take a look at this 100 percent crop of the sky area around the cloud. Notice the dark blue splotchiness against the lighter blue. Your whole sky area is full of that. Shutterstick would reject it for noise. Other places might let it go through that way...if the picture was good quality otherwise.



otherwise you have good lighting and focus. Good sharp detail. Some motion blur in a few fronds from the breeze and in the foam line on the beach but otherwise a generally good picture. If I were reviewing for shutterstock I would reject it. For luckyoliver I would accept it. But it would be better if you fix the sky.

Thank you very much for going though the picture in detail. What would be the best way to fix the sky with PS? Any particular technique?

lol @ shutterstick sorry warped sense of humour :lol:


As a beginner I started off with Bigstockphoto, 123RF,Fotolia and Galastock. But with regards to Galastock I wouldnt go there(refer to other posts)

I left Shutterstock(or Stick hehehe) till last, I never made it into Istockphoto lol.

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Here is a 100% view from another shot.



after reducing the noise and smugged with PS (I don't know if that is the right tool to use), it looks like this.



Did I do the right thing?

Thanks for your advice photobunny.

The sky area looks a little better...not sure which tool you used exactly - I would choose the 'blur' tool (looks like a teardrop) over the smudge tool for doing this.

But in this image you also have some haloing/artifacting. See those white lines around the silhouette? Those will get you rejected (particularly at shutterstock). Those often come from sharpening. Sometimes you can get rid of those if they aren't too bad with the blur tool set for a very small diameter (and maybe between 30 and 50%) and running very carefully along the white line.

My personal opinion is that I'd still be a little concerned about the sky, and it's difficult to tell about the focus from you've posted - I don't know that it would pass shutterstock, but it might on bigstock photo.

I've run the blur tool at a diameter of 5 and strength of 60% very carefully along the white halo in your pic (still see a couple of areas I've missed), and the result is perhaps a little better, but my overall suggestion would be just reshoot a similar image, unless of course this one is something unusual that you can't do again.

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Thank you Gracy for the tips.

Here is the full picture.



I've removed the halo from the whole picture. Here is part of it. http://www.sendspace.com/file/w2ajq8 (589KB) Could you please let me know if this is now acceptable. I'm trying to find out the quality that would be accepted generally.

All comments are welcome.

Thanks.