A major part of submitting to microstock agencies is captioning and keywording your images in ways that provide relevant details and optimize them for search engines. Sites that accept editorial content often require that they contain “newsworthy” information, which sometimes means adding relevant facts to the caption. Of course, when your images have political content, relevant terms can get controversial.  I had an exchange with a certain agency’s selection editor over the following caption, which included this tidbit to add context to an Israeli soldier praying at the Western Wall:

Despite claims that they’re “the most moral army in the world,” human rights abuses persist.

I would like to cite the agency’s response, but my request to do so went unanswered and all of their emails had that legal confidentiality disclaimer language at the bottom. So I quote only my response to their objections:

I appreciate that [your agency] has accepted my images for its archive. However, I would appreciate some clarification of your comments regarding “non-factual” caption information. If you mean that I should avoid non-controversial information, I can understand why [your agency] would make such a requirement. You are in the business of selling images, and may not want to offend potential customers. However, the information in my caption regarding the Israeli military is entirely factual: “Despite claims that they’re ‘the most moral army in the world,’ human rights abuses persist.” I cite the following sources to substantiate my statement:

Fact: Numerous Israeli leaders have made this well-known claim regarding the morality of the Israeli military.

“Prime Minister Ariel Sharon expressed, on behalf of the Cabinet, complete trust and appreciation for the IDF and its commanders. He emphasized that the IDF is the most moral army in the world, since it copes with situations that no other army has come across.” [link]

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “Israeli citizens know the truth, that the IDF is a moral army without peer, either qualitatively or morally.” [link]

Fact: The U.S. State Department, United Nations, and numerous internationally respected human rights organizations, including organizations within Israel, have condemned the persistent record of human rights abuses committed by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF):

“During the year IDF soldiers and Border Police officers were indicted and convicted for abuse of Palestinians.” [link]

UN Human Rights Council denounces recent Israeli military actions in northern Gaza [link]

“The coalition of nine human rights organizations, which included Physicians for Human Rights, the Israeli section of Amnesty International and the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, charged that Israel’s conduct “constitutes a blatant violation of the laws of warfare and raises the suspicion, which we ask be investigated, of the commission of war crimes.” [link]

I could have cited many more sources citing the Israeli motto that they have “the more moral army in the world.” I could have also cited many more sources demonstrating as fact the persistent pattern of abuse by Israeli soldiers—including testimony from many soldiers themselves. And yet, seemingly contrary to their own policy, the response suggested that I should only mention human rights abuses if they were in the actual photo—even though their own guidelines recommend adding “newsworthy” information to add value to the images. Oh well, agree to disagree?

The issue came up again recently with another agency regarding keywords rejected for an image of the Israeli separation barrier surrounding Bethlehem. The rejection notice:

We regret to inform you that we cannot accept your submission, entitled Israeli Flag and Separation Wall … for the following reasons:

The following keywords used for this file do not appear to be fully relevant to the subject.

{[ Apartheid,  Separation,  Segregation (Racism),  Segregation (Racism),  Separation]}

Some of the keywords used for this file do not appear to be fully relevant to the subject.

Of course, these terms are highly charged. I myself generally use less charged terms: “separation wall” or “separation barrier” to avoid the mental shut-down with the audience that can occur with terms like “apartheid” and “segregation.” And yet, all of those terms are completely valid, applicable, and present in the discourse on this topic—and potentially used by clients searching for such images. My guess is that most of the people publishing images of one of the ugliest aspects of the Israeli occupation of Palestine are critical of the wall, and might actually prefer those terms.

This issue also surfaces in the most basic of identifying information: location. Several sites require that you include the “country” where the image was taken. Some only provide a drop-down menu that contains “Israel” as an option, but not “Palestinian Territories.” Even so, for the caption dateline in locations in the West Bank or Gaza, I generally use, for example: “BETHLEHEM, OCCUPIED PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES.”

This gets trickier in Jerusalem, and I haven’t been entirely consistent. Some sites only require the city (and not the country) if it’s famous enough. Then,  simply “JERUSALEM” will do just fine. For others that still require a country, I go case-by-case. Though none of Jerusalem is internationally recognized as Israeli territory, I generally go by east and west. For example, in an East Jerusalem neighborhood like Sheikh Jarrah: “EAST JERUSALEM, OCCUPIED PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES.”

I feel more conflicted about the Old City, which I believe should be administered according to the UN Partition Plan as an international city. I often give subtle preference to one side or the other according to the significance of the site itself. For example, at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, “JERUSALEM, PALESTINE-ISRAEL.” At the Western Wall, “JERUSALEM, ISRAEL-PALESTINE.” Not the best system I’m sure, but none of that territory belongs to Israel according to international law, so I can’t bring myself to just put “Israel.” And ultimately I believe that city must be shared under some kind of agreement that sets it apart from both nations, so it will always be hyphenated in some way or another. Kind of like an egalitarian marriage that needs to figure out how to combine or share last names in a way that’s sustainable and elegant, there’s no perfect solution, so I’m always open to suggestions and feedback.

So I was a little shocked when, within days of posting my “Secrets of Editorial Microstock—Revealed!” post, I was contacted by the PR firm representing BigStock, who wanted to dialogue about my criticisms of their site. I was surprised because my site doesn’t get a ton of traffic, which means that either a) My modest volume yet professional quality is finally getting noticed, or b) BigStock is getting its money’s worth out of their PR firm.

I welcomed their responses to my various complaints, and clarified some of my experience with their batch tool in my follow-up post, but here’s their point-by-point response to my original criticism. I have to say, I’m not that surprised by anything here. I complained that they reject images that sell great on Dreamstime and Shutterstock—they stand by their “high-quality” standards. I complained about slow review time—they say they’re making improvements. …. And so forth. My major complaint continues to be about sales. But now that they’re using TWITTER I’m sure the downloads will be skyrocketing.

Bigstock’s Image Selectivity:

Bigstock’s approval rate for images is on par with other top online stock photography sites.  Our image customers are seeking high-quality images on a large variety of topics and our goal is to service their needs on behalf of our contributors.  If there’s ever a question or concern about a specific image that hasn’t been accepted, or if there is a feeling that an error has been made, contributors can contact support with their concerns and we’ll provide guidance.

Review Time:

We typically approve images in one to three days . This can vary if we see a surge of upload activity within a specific week. We understand that short approval times are critical for editorial content.  We recently added additional reviewers as well as an additional review coordinator to shorten  the amount of time from upload to approval.

Uploading Process:

Bigstock’s new uploading tool retains most of the functionality of the old process while providing better batch tools and more flexible options for selecting images. We also added keyboard shortcuts, such as the ability to use the tab key to cycle through the entire metadata editing process. Our category suggestion tool was moved, but we’re seeking ways to consolidate. We’ve also launched a new “quick view” for upload and earnings data. While many contributors have told us that they are happy with these improvements, we do appreciate and respond to feedback sent to feedback@bigstockphoto.com.   Additional features are coming soon.

Sales:

We’ve made major investments in marketing and infrastructure to expand Bigstock’s global presence  We’re pleased to report that since March, we’ve launched a redesigned website; new online, e-mail and print ad campaigns; a redesigned newsletter; a trade show presence; regular Facebook and Twitter updates; as well as two new blogs, “The Upload” for contributors and “The Download” for image buyers.  We see ourselves as partners with our contributors and many exciting things are underway to support Bigstock’s growth.

Thanks for the opportunity to share our news and enhancements with you. Stay tuned for more updates to come.

I should begin posting running totals of sales like my buddy Laryn Kragt Bakker. His (far more impressive) stats tell the same tale–BigStock is in last place. I’m not trying to beat up on BigStock, but with limited time to process and upload, I’m starting to measure that time according to ROI. And right now, it’s just not worth it.

Some addenda to my recent post on microstock editorial intricacies. For starters, within days of that post, Shutterstock released a beta batch edit tool that absolutely rocks. A huge improvement over their older, much more linear process. I only wish they let you submit some pix but wait to edit others later, as Dreamstime and BigStock both do.

In the process, I also discovered that though I prefer BigStock’s previous batch tool, their  current one is about the same as Shutterstock’s new one (which make sense since Shutterstock owns Bigstock). It’s less intuitive (to me) than their previous one, which left all fields populated by your first choice, even if you selected more than one image, which made it easy to edit multiple images with the same basic info. Shutterstock’s tool is still superior because it at least populates matching fields when multiple images are selected (e.g. if the captions match), while BigStock’s just leaves all fields blank when multiple images are selected, and allows you to overwrite them. I like to have something to work with, rather than doing a lot of copy-and-paste, since I’m often uploading many images with same or similar captions—especially with editorial images—when the same caption applies to multiple images from the same event.

Also, as an experiment, I uploaded batches to the following sites one evening. Here are the results:

Dreamstime: Uploaded at 5pm – response by 5am the next morning (12 hrs)!

Shutterstock: Uploaded at 5:30 pm -  response by 8pm the following evening (27 hrs).

BigStock: Uploaded at 6pm – response two full days later (48 hrs).

I should also mention that earlier in the week I uploaded just two images to Shutterstock at 9am and got an approval response by 10am—1 hour response time! Wow!

My fundamental approach to microstock has been not to shoot for microstock’s sake, but to use microstock to compensate me for photos I was shooting anyway but may not have had a designated use for. There have been a few shoots I’ve done for purely mercenary purposes—photos of the Supreme Court and the U.S. Capitol, for example, that I might not have taken otherwise. But in general, this means that I have yet to ask any subject of any photo sign a model release that is required for any recognizable person for “royalty free” licensing most common on microstock sites.

Instead, I submit photos that contain recognizable people under “editorial” licenses, which are allegedly less marketable, but until I’m willing to stage smiling interactions between brightly lit businesspeople, I’m eschewing microstock’s most wanted images in favor of stuff I was interested in anyway. In DC, this has meant a lot of marches and rallies, which have sold at a steady trickle under editorial licenses.

However, each microstock site has its own idiosyncrasies when it comes to editorial photos, and you can save yourself a fair amount of frustration by mastering the various requirements of each site. At this point, I’m only aware of three major microstock sites that even accept editorial images: Dreamstime, Shutterstock, and BigStock. I have been submitting to all three for over a year. Here’s what I learned:

Shutterstock

Shutterstock requires a model release or editorial license for any “identifiable person.” In other words, if there’s a person in the shot, but they can’t be identified, it can be licensed as RF. There’s obviously some gray area there, but if it gets rejected, you can always resubmit as editorial. There’s also the requirement that any editorial shot be “newsworthy”—again, rather subjective, and apparently much of this can hinge on how you caption the photo. Here’s where Shutterstock is a little annoying, but I’ve gotten pretty good sales from them so it’s worth it. Click here to read their forum thread on editorial caption requirements. Here’s my summary:

• Follow the dateline format they require and then repeat the date in the caption itself. Yes, it eats up half of your 200 character limit on redundant information, but if you don’t, they’ll scold you and ask you to resubmit. Here’s their example: “JACKSON, NJ – JUNE 16: Singer Deborah Harry performs onstage at Six Flags Great Adventure June 16, 2008 in Jackson, NJ”
• Pictures don’t need to be recent to be newsworthy. If your image is not recent, reference a current or ongoing events, or throw in some fact or figure relating to the image that makes it relevant now and forever. For example, I’ve uploaded images from 2002 of Israeli soldiers in the Occupied West Bank.
  
• Shutterstock also requires name, age, and town/area of residence for any children. This is enforced unevenly, as some of my photos containing unidentified children have been approved, and the line between child/teen/adult is not completely clear. But I’m more likely to get ID info if there are kids involved. Here’s an example of when I did collect the info: “WASHINGTON, DC – MARCH 21: Daniel Rogel and son Daniel Rogel Jr. (4) of Silver Spring MD stand with some 200,000 immigrants’ rights activists on the National Mall on March 21, 2010 in Washington, DC.” 

Despite some of Shutterstock’s inconvenient requirements, they review editorial submissions super-fast, often within 24 hours, sometimes faster. They also seem to allow more latitude on quality issues like sharpness, camera noise, etc. for especially newsworthy shots. I was kind of shocked that they accepted many of my U2 concert photos that were shot with my point-and-shoot Canon Powershot.

Dreamstime

Dreamstime has hazy requirements similar to Shutterstock regarding “recognizable” people, but here’s an example of a rejection message:

The main subject of the image (or part of it) is one or several persons, model release documentation is required even if the face is not visible.

Their captioning requirements are much less strict than Shutterstock’s, but they do require that you include “editorial info” such as event-related links or links from news sites. That usually means a quick Google News search to find a recent article relating to the content of the photo—either directly, as in the case of the many protest rallies I’ve shot—or indirectly, such as finding an article about current events in the West Bank to go with photos I took there years ago. I just paste the URL in there and it works just fine.

Dreamstime has no ID requirements in their captions, so no need to get name/residence info for their sake, but if I’ve collected it anyway to submit to Shutterstock, I’ll include it in my Dreamstime caption. Their length limits are also more relaxed.

Dreamstime also allows you to send a “priority review” request through their “contact us” page, so that editorial images get reviewed much faster than RF images. Paste in all the image IDs for your breaking news editorial shots into the contact form and they’ll get reviewed pretty quick. There are even $5 bonuses for “In the News” images that they feature.

BigStock

I’ve stopped submitting any photos to BigStock for the following reasons: Picky, picky, picky. Slow, slow, slow. Cold, cold, cold (as in sales). They have consistently rejected photos approved by Shutterstock and Dreamstime, and despite such high standards sell very few of my photos that they do accept. They also take a very long time to review images, and there’s no way to request expedited review for breaking news events. So I got tired of having my photos rejected for bogus “out of focus” or “composition” reasons when those same images were accepted and making decent sales on other sites. It just wasn’t worth my time. For a while their only redeeming feature was a great batch caption/category/keyword submitting tool that was superior to every other microstock site. And then they redesigned their site. And despite the aesthetic improvement, the upload process is no longer as awesome. Oh well. They were acquired by Shutterstock a few months back, but other than the site redesign, I haven’t observed any difference in sales or general viability.

Others

It’s also worth noting that a few other microstock sites that don’t accept editorial images have fairly forgiving requirements for what constitutes a “recognizable” person. Both Fotolia and iStockphoto seem to be OK with people appearing in RF images, as long as their faces aren’t visible. For example, both Fotolia accepted this photo of a kayaker in Trondheim, Norway, even though I didn’t swim out and get a model release from him.

Maybe if I just got more industrious and started getting model releases, this would all be moot. But somehow I don’t thing these guys would cooperate…

After enjoying modest success on Dreamstime, Shutterstock, and BigStock microstock sites, I’m expanding a bit to Fotolia and hopefully iStockphoto. I waited on these latter two because they don’t have editorial options, and that’s been the bulk of my work. But now that I have a fair body of stuff that qualifies as royalty-free—my shots from Petra and Jerusalem are among my top sellers—so I’m ready to expand my horizons a bit. So far I’ve earned a whopping $1.20 on Fotolia in my first week! Woo-hoo!

iStockphoto sets a bit of a higher bar for applying. They make you take a quiz and then wait several days while they review three sample images. I applied last weekend and am still “pending approval.”

So far, I’m impressed with Fotolia’s relatively speedy approval process. We’ll see how their sales compare to the others. Dreamstime seems to be the slowest, but I’ve had my highest sales there…. Hopefully that doesn’t mean there’s an inverse proportion.

I haven’t written much about my adventures in microstock, partly because I feel like I’m still learning the ropes. My buddy Laryn Kragt Bakker taught me almost everything I know about microstock, but our photographic genres are generally different, so I’ve had to do a fair amount of experimenting to find what works for me. Much of my work is editorial in nature, and I decided to experiment with microstock more as a way of putting some of my dormant archives to work—as opposed to seeking out opportunities to shoot highly marketable stock imagery. So most of what I’ve contributed has been from rallies and events in DC that I was shooting anyway, as well as appropriate images from my world travels. Right now, it seems like my images of Barack Obama and Petra (the ancient ruins in Jordan, not the Christian rock band) are my most popular. I’m not selling a ton, but enough to make it worth my while to submit them.

For those unfamiliar with the concept of microstock, they’re basically volume discounters of stock images. Unlike traditional stock agencies such as Getty or Corbis which make it very difficult for someone who is not a full-time professional to contribute, microstock sites welcome any contributions so long as your images pass their quality standards. Of course, they pay much less–often less than $1 per image, but if your images were just going to sit on your hard drive anyway, they might as well be sitting on a microstock site earning you some cash that you can put toward your next lens or camera body. And some folks do quite a tidy business. Laryn has earned $11K in about 3.5 years. I’m not on track to earn that much, but I should clear about $500 by the end of the year.

Laryn also clued me in to Alamy, which is kind of a happy medium between microstock and more typical agencies in that they make it relatively easy for a part-timer like myself to submit as few or as many images as I’m able, but pay significantly higher rates per image. However, they don’t sell nearly the volume of the microstocks, so the upshot is fewer sales at higher prices. Double however, it’s taken me until now to make my first sale of the year—$76 for an image from the Obama inauguration—while other images lie dormant. They also have a few more hoops to jump through when submitting images, including a highly counterintuitive required upsize to tiff followed by a conversion to jpeg. (Huh?) Whatever floats their boat. But perhaps this sale will motivate me to do a few more submissions, since up until now, between the zero sales and strange format conversion requirements, I had focused most of my efforts on feeding the dependable trickle from microstocks.