robnunnphoto.com

Now this is interesting. To be honest I'd never bothered submitting black and white shots from my Fujifilm S5700 / S700 to Istockphoto or Bigstockphoto, I just assumed the extra noise usually created when converting to b&w would lead to automatic rejections.

However, this morning I got an email saying that BigStock had accepted a black and white that I had submitted to test the waters. Let's take a look at that one, plus a couple of the rejections.





It's in: Bridge Railings With Strong Shadows



I took this photograph for the "Curves" assignment on the Fujifilm S5700 S700 Flickr User Group, and decided to submit it to BigStockPhoto along with a few other images that I'd done a lot of post-processing on, just to see if they'd get in.

I converted the photo in Photoshop, using the Black and White Adjustment Layer, then played with the levels. (I think I used a pass of Noise Ninja first, but I can't quite remember).

So why is this so exciting? Well, I should have submitted a b&w version and a colour version of the same image, to see if they'd both get in, and if that is the case then there's double the sales opportunities for most photographs: Just upload the original, and a black and white version!

What Didn't Get In:

Red Paving Bricks With Railing Shadow. Reason: Snapshot composition: This image is more of a snapshot than a marketable stock image. Overall problems can include poor lighting, poor composition, non-interesting subject matter, etc.



Seagull And Lamppost Abstract. Reason: Low interest subject: Probably little demand/selling potential for this image. Try for more marketable shots. thanks.



Some good learning points there, hope it gives you some pointers if, like me, you're dabbling in micro-stock photography.

Cheers, Rob.