The web is exploding the stock photography market. While the per-image price is very low, there is, over time, the possibility of making good money through volume sales. Photographers are flocking to these sites by the tens of thousands. These services are a veritable sponge for the tsunami of digital images flooding the net.

The so called "micro-stock" sites evaluate submitted images for approval, and images are accepted or rejected on standards of quality set by the various sites. While, for the most part, the evaluation of an image is good, often it is off-target and requesting a review is often time consuming (taking weeks and months) or impossible.

I'm wondering if this striving for ultimate image quality really serves the needs image market. While it is certainly an admirable thing to offer a "quality" product, who sets these standards of "quality"? What you call "High Quality" may be way beyond what I may need - or may not even be high enough.

I would like to suggest another model for micro-stock image acceptance: Grading. There would be several grades of image quality. A,B,C or Salon,Studio,Cutting Room Floor, or whatever. And images in each grade would command prices accordingly. Thus that noisy, somewhat out-of-focus image may end up in the basement grade, but it also might provide the perfect answer for the look or feel some designer is striving for. And at an even better bargain. The top, salon-grade image could earn the bigger fee it deserves. And the buyers have a much greater choice.

One might think this will bring in a flood of junk. Perhaps the really bottom grade stuff could have a time-limit where after some time of no sales, it is automatically deleted. You want to make more money as a photographer? Hone your skills and get more work into the upper grades!

I'm currently involved with two micro-stock sites, and it is somewhat humorous to see the differing rejection/accptance standards of each. One even will reject an image because "...the focus is not where we think it should be." Hey - who is the artist here? Sheesh.

While there has to be certain minimal standards of suitable subject material and of some semblance of image quality, I think there is a lot of money being lost for both parties by enforcing the current rigid go/no-go standards.