Good day all,

I have a couple of questions on how the priority screening process works.

A few months ago I uploaded a photo that qualified for priority screening as per the set out criteria, I did mark it for priority screening and left a comment for the screeners as well (on the upload page). As far as I could tell, it never went into priority screening, by monitoring it in the Photo Corner section. It was accepted though, but in the normal time frame.

So unless it was perhaps considered not eligible for priority screening, I want to know if I maybe missed something or neglected to do something. Are you suppose to send the screeners an email as well when requesting priority screening?

Then second question, if you do request priority screening and the screeners feel it doesn't fit the criteria, I suppose the photo will remain in the queue but how do you know that it was "assessed" for priority screening by them?

Then another case - today I went to the airport to photograph a new airline here in our country, which started with commercial operations/flights today. When I got the shots, I went back home and processed the image, and uploaded it, once again marking it for priority screening and leaving a comment to the screeners on the upload page. An hour or so after I uploaded the image, another photographer's photo of the same arrival was accepted into the database. Several hours later, my photo was not even screened yet.

Obviously it fit the criteria, because the other photographer's image was accepted, and my point is that given the time frames and circumstances, our uploads couldn't have been more than an hour apart, so it was within the same hour time frame, yet his was processed and mine not. So therefore I'm wondering once again if there is something I am missing.

Both these cases as described above left me a bit disappointed.

Thank you for reading my long message, and looking forward to some valuable feedback.

I don't mean to pick at the team here but similar is happening with the news banner — you'll get an airliner with a tiny new sticker put up there but a new livery for an airline apparently doesn't deserve a place. It's an area in which the team needs to keep on top of things really.

Back to your case, I'm confident that your image will be added (or rejected) soon enough. Even if you uploaded it 10 minutes after the first guy that could result in a few hours' delay in screening. If it has to go for further scrutiny it could take even longer — I've had priority shots accepted the day after the first images got in — I think as long as you upload within 24 hours of the first acceptance you're good.

bluepoole wrote:

Are you suppose to send the screeners an email as well when requesting priority screening?

No

Then second question, if you do request priority screening and the screeners feel it doesn't fit the criteria, I suppose the photo will remain in the queue but how do you know that it was "assessed" for priority screening by them?

Go to Photo Corner --> Screening --> click on Detail for the concerned photo --> below the image is the Photo Log, it will show "deprioritized" if the screeners have assessed it as non-priority.

Hi Bluepoole,

Many thanks for your message.

Can you please let me know the photo ID's of your pictures involved so that I can check?

Thanks in advance!

Kind regards,
Thomas