Part of the issue on steemit is the massive volume of low quality photos that are used as "content" just so they have something to be voted on and buy votes for. I have made an exception a couple times for a few amazing photos, but they were truly amazing photos and think it was 4 or 5 of them. This has maybe happened 2 or 3 times out of 400-500 submissions with 2-3 featured bloggers each...lets call it 1000 featured posts. Very rare and to avoid confusion I'd rather keep it simple.
I can tell a good photo, one done with thought to framing, lighting, and shutter speeds and so forth but honestly most people just can't. They haven't had any sort of training in the field and will say "nice photo" to a photo of car on a street shot with a cell phone with horrible lighting and framing of the subject just because...when in reality the photo was just total crap and an excuse to have a post for the day.
So not trying to pick on you in the least with these descriptions as I don't think your photos were crap by any means but to keep it fair and simple we came up with the 200 word rule. Has saved me probably hundreds of hours trying to explain why a post is crap vs high enough quality to be acceptable when it comes to photos.