7 common stock photo rejection reasons (and how you can fix them)

What to shoot, what to avoid, and how to get your photos accepted into Wemark’s growing collection.

Photo: Mint Images / Wemark

Shooting stock photos buyers want to license, download and use for a project isn’t as easy as it sounds, and stock photo standards have gotten a lot stricter over the past few years. Contrary to what meme-land might have you think, there’s some real talent and value that goes beyond the stiff clichés of business handshakes and awkward models blasted with shoddy strobe lights.

There’s an art to shooting photos that brands, small businesses, startups, and other image-hungry outlets can actually use to build a story and capture their audience’s hearts.

To ensure we’re giving buyers the content they want, our review team follows rigorous, yet evolving guidelines when deciding which photo submissions to accept and reject. Below is a quick cheat sheet outlining common rejection reasons and what you can do to get your submissions back on track.

1) Image quality

Aside from images that are descriptive, tell a good story, have a visual “wow” factor, or simply be a good fit for a campaign, buyers want images that have a clear focus, aren’t pixelated, and are properly exposed. Sure, there are exceptions to any of these rules — primarily with contemporary lifestyle photos aimed at appearing “natural,” “authentic,” or nailing a particular mood — but for the most part, these are pretty cut and dry.

To keep images from feeling noisy or pixilated, unless you’re working with a camera that handles high ISO particularly well, we suggest shooting with a low ISO — preferably under 400. While we accept images shot with 4MP cameras and some smartphones, we’ve found that they don’t handle noise too well and recommend using a digital SLR or high-quality mirrorless camera.

To maintain a proper focus (aside from properly focusing on your subject, obviously!) use a shutter speed over 125/second or a tripod if you’re in lower light conditions that require a slower shutter speed.

2) Poor Framing/ cropping

Framing can be subjective but the following questions can help guide whether your image is “poorly framed”:

Is the visual information in your photo organized in a way that a designer can lay copy over effectively? Does it (if relevant) have a strong use of negative space?
Does the structure of your image create a path for the eye to cleanly travel through?
Is the image slanted in a way that feels unintentional? Are heads, body parts or objects cropped that shouldn’t be?
Are there distracting objects or other elements jutting into the frame?
Ultimately, your photos should have a sense of visual balance that makes them useful to designers, art directors, and anyone using them to articulate an idea. While you don’t need to live by this concept word for word, and rules are meant to riff on, it’s also helpful to familiarize yourself with the “rule of thirds.”

3) Copyright / Trademark issues

Brands large and small are careful about where their logos and trademarks appear, especially in materials used by other brands. They’re also sensitive about images that include their trademarks being licensed for commercial use. This includes photos of models wearing branded tee-shirts, logos in a cityscape (think Times Square, NYC) — essentially, any appearance of a logo in a photo. You can avoid this by making sure models aren’t wearing branded shirts, avoiding any landscape or scenario that includes a logo, or if you need to, removing them in post-production after the shoot.

4) Image requires a model/ property release

Photos of people and many private properties require releases. While properties can be more lenient (we’ll get to that in a bit) if you have a photo that includes a person, we’ll likely reject without a model release. Please note that for standard track photographers, we aren’t yet accepting photos that require model releases. So if you haven’t yet been accepted into our “experienced track,” please hold off on submitting any photos that require model or property releases until further notice.

Here’s a deeper dive:

Model releases are legal documents, often a page long or less, that grant a photographer permission to commercially license a photograph of a recognizable person. If you’re creating an individual portrait, directing a large scene with multiple people, or any other kind of photo in which a person can be identified, a model release will confirm that the subject consented to the photoshoot and to the commercial use of the subject images. As we mentioned above, if you don’t have a model release unless the person’s face is blurry or unrecognizable, there’s a good chance your photo of a person will be rejected.

Property releases grant legal permission for photos of private property to be used for commercial purposes. A properly worded property release can also enable the photographer to include trademarks and copyrighted works in an image. You might think this just applies to buildings, but it actually extends to pets, cars, artwork and even tattoos. A property release can also serve as proof that you had permission to enter a certain property and were not trespassing. If a customer wants to use a photograph depicting an identifiable or protected “property,” they’ll need to make sure the photographer got a signed property release.

Some of the most popular examples of protected properties are the Empire State Building, the Hollywood sign, The Eiffel Tower when lit at night (during the day, it’s fine), and Disney’s Magic Kingdom. Contrary to what you might expect, as public as these buildings and spaces might seem, images depicting them require releases for advertisements or other commercial uses. The exterior of people’s homes generally won’t require a property release, but if you know the owner, it can’t hurt to get one signed.

Like with model releases, we’re currently only accepting property-release-requiring photos from Wemark Experienced Track photographers. If you have photos that require these kinds of releases, please hold off until you’re accepted into Wemark’s experienced track. If you’re uncertain about a specific photo, feel free to get in touch.

5) Lack of commercial viability

This may sound vague or subjective, but there’s some meat to it. The simplest way to understand this rejection reason is to think like a buyer. Before clicking “submit,” take a close, honest look at each photo and think of at least five potential uses (hint: magazine cover, banking ad, email marketing campaign etc.) If you can’t come up with at least five, there’s a good chance it’s not commercially viable.

6) Image includes date stamps, watermarks or other artifacts

Imagine you’re an art director at a major ad agency. You find the perfect image for your next campaign. It’s going to be used in a range of formats: on billboards, in online banner ads, some email campaigns — maybe in a couple animated GIFS. But when you download it, there’s a big watermark that reads “BOB SMITH PHOTOGRAPHY” or some other text plastered across the image. Or a date stamp in one of the corners. “WTF!?,” you shout at your screen or whoever’s nearby. Now the image is unusable.

Images that include any of these artifacts are almost always useless to buyers, so make sure your images are free of them or they’ll get rejected.

7) Image is identical or nearly identical to another image you submitted

Please try to submit unique images. We don’t need 25 photos of your friend Stephen in slightly different poses. Photos of similar subject matter are fine, but make sure there’s some diversity in the framing, mood, gesture etc or we’re likely to reject.

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Other suggestions to get smart when submitting to Wemark:

Read Wemark’s submission guidelines for more information
Apply to Wemark Experienced track
Apply to Wemark Impress
Google “the rule of thirds” — if you’re not yet familiar, it will change how you think about the basic structure of successful photographs.

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