I've had my first ever submission rejection from a group on
deviantART; it's a bit of a surprise, having been on dA for over 6 years now. The grounds for rejection?
The
photo was taken on my Blackberry.
That was it. Because I didn't take it on a "proper camera", it was deemed a "snapshot" - artistic merit such as composition etc was not considered at all.
Interrestingly, the
other photo submitted at the same time was accepted - despite the fact it was taken on a camera with lower specs than the camera on my Blackberry (2.1MP vs 3.2MP). On technical merit, it was inferior to the photo that was rejected.
It's like having a painting be rejected because it was painted using synthetic brushes instead of sable ones. It's basically hardware snobbery, pure and simple. It's missing the point.
Photography isn't about who has the more expensive kit. It's about knowing what to do with it. That $10K of equipment in your hand is worthless if you don't have the artistic talent to compose the perfect image.
From now on all photos I upload to dA will have the EXIF data stripped out. The quality of my work will speak for itself.
The worst thing about this? It's not something I can "improve" upon, skillwise; the only way in the moderators' eyes I could improve the supposed quality of my work would be solely through spending a large amount of cash. Which upon reflection speaks far more about their close-mindedness than about my skills and talent. Rejection still hurts though. :-/
