CENTERED
The main subject of your photo(s) was not correctly centered in the image.

The most common reason for this rejection is that you have left too much "empty space" on any given side of the aircraft. Generally speaking the empty space on each side of the aircraft (both horizontally and vertically) should be equal.

You might also be getting this rejection for a shot where an aircraft is substantially pictured but a small amount of the wingtip, tail, or engine(s) is cut off. In this case you should re-crop the original photo to either include the whole aircraft or crop in tighter.

If you think you have been able to improve the photos, please re-upload them. Do not forget to include a note to the screeners, detailing what you have done to improve the image. There is a special field available for such notes. Please note that we are still very interested in having these photos in our database, we only ask that you try to improve the quality of the images as much as possible.

Main subject out of center - Photo copyright © Javier Guerrero

Too low in the frame - Photo copyright © Thierry Deutsch

Too much dead space in front of the nose (rejected) / accepted shot - Photo copyright © Thierry Deutsch

shot accepted due to justified positioning of the chopper in the lower part of the frame - Photo copyright © Walter van Bel

Rejected shot: lots of empty sky above the aircraft and closely cropped at the bottom / Accepted shot: the aircraft nicely fills the frame - Photo copyright © Henk Schmidt-Bergemann

The rejection text is in fact quite clear, however many people get lost in the numbers while centering a photo. Keep in mind that though the photo should theoretically be centered at a 50:50 ratio from the main subject's center, the photo must above all look balanced. The best way to achieve this is to lean back from your screen and look at the photo from a certain distance; this works best after a good night's sleep! ;-)

Keep in mind that "balanced" at Airliners.net is not to be equated with "balanced" as it is normally understood in photography; the rule of the 2/3 where you have the main subject of the photo centered along an imaginery horizontal line extending along the lower 1/3 of the photo will only work in very few cases on A.net, normally if you can show a spectacular background with it, like Walter's helicopter picture shown above.

Another thing you've got to be careful with is the horizontal centering of aircraft shot side-on; many people like to leave a little more space between the aircraft nose and the frame so as to let the subject breathe and make it look a little more balanced then if it were centered by leaving the same amount of space between aircraft nose and the tip of the elevator which is so thin it could be seen as dead space; doing so can however quickly lead to a center rejection (see Lufthansa example above).

As the official rejection message states you might get a photo rejected if "...an aircraft is substantially pictured but a small amount of the wingtip, tail, or engine(s) is cut off." This may also apply if you cut the vertical stabilizer for no obvious reason while there is lots of empty space at the bottom of the picture. A most interesting read about this issue can be found here: http://www.airliners.net/discussions/aviation_photography/read.main/278476/