Application Photos Were Rejected

When someone applies to be a contributor on iStockphoto.com, part of the process involves submitting three photographs (rasters) or three vectors.  A special inspection team will looks at these to see if the applicant has the “chops” or the vision to join the iStock contributor team.

Now, these submissions are not checked for things like model releases, or oversharpening, or any technical issues.  It’s more of a “is this person creative enough that they get the hang of what stock is” review.

When the contributor is approved, these submissions are essentially tossed aside.  The new contributor is now part of the real inspection queue, with an empty portfolio.  If they submit their initial try out images to the regular inspection queue, they risk getting them rejected as not being up to technical standards, or any other rejection reason.  This is spelled out clearly, in two places.  Number one, the initial welcome email received from iStock:

Please note: you must reupload samples through the normal upload process to have them included into your portfolio. Please keep in mind these files will be reviewed by our inspection team and are not guaranteed to be accepted since they go through a different inspection process.

This is also laid out quite clearly in the FAQ:

If I’m approved as a contributing photographer, are the samples I provided automatically accepted?
No, you will need to resubmit those images to our inspectors for approval.

This bears repeating, as this comes up about once a day in the forums.  Initial application submissions are not automatically accepted into the contributor’s portfolio, nor are they guaranteed acceptance through the regular queue.

So, perhaps a good start for a new contributor is to try posting these submissions in the critique forum to see if they are up to snuff.  Posters should read the first post in the forum on how to best construct a critique post.