You might have noticed that PhotoShelter looks a little different. We recently redesigned the public side of the site based on a few (obvious) observations:

• Everyone has larger monitors than they did back in the mid 90s
• Vertical space is more precious than horizontal space
• The site has grown tremendously in the past year
• Iconography can be very useful in interface design
• This blog is one of the top 50 read blogs on the Internet

Ok, I totally made up that last point. Nonetheless, the other observations withstanding, we decided that it was time to get with the times, and clean up some of the design to make PhotoShelter not only look better, but easier to use.

We're going to continue to make tweaks to the user interface, as always, based on feedback we receive. And as we see more shifts in the way that people use the Internet, you can be assured that we'll make the necessary changes to the application.

I was too quick to chastise the use of Citizen Journalism. In fact, the New York Times has pointed out one very crucial niche -- paparazzi.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/14/technology/14pix.html

I can't think of a more appropriate use of citizen journalism than paparazzi. Why? Because the context and veracity of a photo of actor X in sweatpants makes no difference. It's merely the image that counts. And if some random dude is lucky enough to photograph Suri Cruise with his cellphone, then more power to him.

The rise of microstock has been meteoric to say the least. For the uninitiated, microstock is cheap, royalty-free stock imagery. Instead of paying $200, you pay $1. In most models, you pay for an image based on size. $1 for a small one, $20 for a larger one.

From a buyer's perspective, this makes all the sense in the world. Most people can't understand why they should pay several hundred dollars for an image that they want to use on a website. Most people believe that they can take the picture themselves. And most companies would go out of business if they could only use Rights-Managed imagery.

In a purely academic sense, microstock fulfills an economic demand for a low-end pricing with "above average" images. Digital photography has made microstock possible because anyone with a decent camera can create quality images. The problem with the current model is that pricing is artificially low in some cases.

Although pricing is a voodoo art, we can generally say that in a capitalistic society, the price should be what the market should bear. If you can find someone to pay $3000 for a handbag, then the price is right. In the case of images, the market will always demand cheap images, but since the pricing is fixed based on the size of the image, the price of a really good image is constrained artificially.

You could argue that a designer handbag isn't the same thing as a photo. People are willing to pay for exclusivity at the ultra-high-end. But similarly, people will pay a little more for an image that "speaks" to them.

There are some fantastic images on iStockPhoto, fotolia and the like, and the prices are a steal. But as some critics have pointed out, butchering the market by offering images at what is effectively "below cost" has a long-term damaging effect.

If I see two images of the New York skyline, and one is $1 and the other is $20, and I really like the more expensive one, I'm likely to pay for it because the decision to buy is greater than the economic spread of $19. But without allowing the markets to price better images at a higher price, the market won't be able to realize its full potential, and is by definition, inefficient.

One easy solution? Allow photographers to set their own prices.

I received a tour of the Seattle Times photography department recently. I've always enjoyed seeing the insides of a newspaper office ever since I first walked into the small cramped offices of The Village Times (the local hometown weekly newspaper in Setauket, New York) in 1983 as a high schooler.

Rod Mar, my tour guide through the Seattle Times, showed us the various areas of the operation, and as we were walking past one room, I picked up a familiar scent, and it stopped me dead in my tracks.

"What's in here?" I asked as I walked into a small, dark and damp room.

"It's a darkroom, dude," Rod said. "Remember those?"

"Yeah, I know that, but does it still work? I mean, is this FOR REAL?!" I asked.

"Yes. One of the photographers still uses it," he said. "He's hardcore."

I couldn't help it. I took pictures. It was like walking back in time, through places in my brain that I forgot were still there. The surroundings were comfortable, and familiar. The processing trays were tilted up in drying position. The timer, with its glowing green dial, was waiting patiently next to the enlarger.

I still remember how to use everything too. I can still process a roll of film and make a print by hand.

I felt like I was on an archeological dig, as I was taking pictures of the ancient relics that have become nearly extinct thanks to today's computers and digital cameras.

Then I realized that all of this information is still taking up space in my brain. (Something about the smell of fixer will do this to you. If you ever want to travel back in time, and take a little mental journey through your past, I suggest you smell some fixer. It's a trip!)

Unlike PhotoShelter, my brain has a limited amount of storage. Most of the things that are stored there are there for good, and cannot be deleted — permanently burned into my memory. And many of these things are no longer needed.

The ability to "double-roll" film
Putting 2 rolls of film on the same stainless steel reel in order to develop twice the amount of film at the same time is still taking up space in my brain. (Not to mention the ability to put the film on the stainless steel reel, something that took me a few years to do with confidence.)

Human Thermometer
Remember how 68 degrees was the default optimal temperature for processing black and white film? I sure do. And I am still able to stick my hand in water and tell you at exactly what point it hits 68 degrees. I taught myself how to do this ages ago, in case I ever found myself in a situation where there was no thermometer, and I needed to get film processed. Well, that info is still there.

Human Stopwatch
Another trick I taught myself in the darkroom is the ability to count off minutes and seconds exactly &mash; without having to look at a timer or a clock. This still comes in handy today from time to time (no pun intended), but not that often.

Hand Contortionist
Making prints often required you to twist your hands into odd shapes, useful for "dodging and burning." My hands are still capable of this, yet there is no practical use for it.

What would I do with this space in my brain if I could erase the things I no longer need? I'm not quite sure. But I have become totally addicted to my car's satellite navigation system because I can barely drive around the corner without it. I can't remember phone numbers, and without the phone book in my BlackBerry, I would be unable to contact a single person, and I can't remember birthdays without the calendar software I use on my PowerBook.

Perhaps I might stop relying on all my techno gadgets to keep me organized, connected, and on time?

Call me a romantic, or an old-timer unwilling to let go of the past, but the nasty smell of fixer, and all the things that go with it, is something I don't think I ever want to forget.

We've received questions about the site outage that one of our competitors suffered in the past week. We thought that we would address some of the issues that were raised:

What is a long term archiving solution?
When people talk about the longevity of digital they are really addressing two main issues: 1) will the file format be readable in the future, and 2) will the physical device to which the data is written last the ravages of time?

The answer to #1 is almost assuredly yes. Many of us shoot with JPEG, some shoot with RAW, some store Photoshop files. The JPEG standard is well-known and well-implemented and there will always be software to read it. The same is basically true with other image file formats as well. Even though there are over 400 RAW formats, they all are very similar to TIFF, and the file format can be "reverse-engineered." This is why Photoshop and PhotoShelter, for example, can open your Nikon or Canon RAW files.

The answer to #2 is the clincher. CDs/DVDs have questionable lifespan. Despite the claims of the manufacturers regarding the longevity of plastic, a simple scratch on the surface could make the media unreadable. Many people copy images onto hard drives then store them in a cool, dark place. But drives are mechanical devices that will eventually fail. If the drives are not spun up every 3-6 months, it's possible for the head or spindle to lock. The data will presumably still be there, but the recovery costs can reach up into the thousands of dollars.

RAID is a good solution, but if/when a drive in your RAID dies, you have to replace it quickly. If you have two or more failures in your RAID set, the data is useless. And of course, the more drives you have in your RAID set, the higher probability that you will suffer a failure.

The reason why we think PhotoShelter is a great solution is that it is a "managed storage" solution. We proactively monitor the data, and swap out drives when we detect potential failures. PhotoShelter is also geographically redundant, so a catastrophic failure in our New York datacenter does not affect your images in our California datacenter.

We do not outsource the management of the technology that runs PhotoShelter because we are a technology company. We are not a marketing company that outsources technology creation and maintenance. We take technology very seriously, and we think our experience in the field speaks for itself.

Not knowing the specifics of our competitor's site outage, it would be presumptuous to make assertions about how it could be avoided. However, our engineering team is the same team that previously architected and built some of the largest sites on the Internet. Building redundancy and fault-tolerance is something we mandated for PhotoShelter from day 1.

We certainly do not take any joy out of a system failure -- particularly when those affected are freelance photographers that are merely trying to make a living, and trying to find a tool that streamlines their workflow. But we do think that a subscription-based online service needs to take its technology seriously, and you can rest-assured that we do.

The proliferation of the Internet, cellphones, and the turning point of Sept. 11 have made Citizen Journalism more than the soup d'jour. Sept. 11 was allegedly the most photographed single news event in history -- captured by professionals and amateurs alike (including yours truly). The London Underground bombing's most iconic images were taken with a cellphone in darkness.

The proliferation of blogs and podcasts have made it possible for everyone to stand on a soap box and issue their rants, wax poetic with critiques, and report the news. Wikipedia has allowed the masses to collaboratively form a collective knowledge store. Finally, the democratization of technology has brought truth to the world!

Or has it?

Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central's Colbert Report recently hacked his own Wikipedia entry, and encouraged viewers to change entries on elephants to reflect certain untruths. As he has astutely pointed out in the past, "truthiness" isn't "truth," it's merely what the squeaky wheel proclaims to be true.

The proliferation of cellphones, digital point and shoots, and D-SLRs has made everyone a photographer. I would never dissuade anyone from taking a picture, or pursuing photography as a passion, but the bottom line is that there is a gamut of talent in the world, and not everyone can be the best.

So I am concerned with the proliferation of sites like CNN's Exchange and Citizen Image whose main value proposition is that everyone ought to contribute to the news. Jim from Indiana sent in this image of a squirrel allegedly "trying to stay cool during the blistering heat wave," but the fact of the matter is that since Jim is most likely not a trained news person, and doesn't have an editorial board that creates a standard of ethics, nor a DOP and picture editors who provide guidance, we get images like these that are supposed to represent news.

What if the squirrel wasn't trying to stay cool? Perhaps the squirrel was resting, or was sick from a non-heat related matter. More significantly, CNN decided to publish this as news because presumably it had nothing more interesting to put up. Its reliance on voluntary contributions drive the news in this area of the site, and therefore investigative reporting is almost necessarily dissuaded. The squirrel isn't news. A photo of a squirrel is , at best, a terrible feature.

In a generic sense, anyone can report news. Anyone can review a movie. Anyone can criticize art or music. And popular opinion doesn't often coincide with critical acclaim for the simple reason that popular opinion often caters to the lowest common denominator (e.g. Pirates of the Caribbean 2). Credibility is the cornerstone of news reporting, and the average citizen does not fact check, does not rely on multiple witnesses, and does not try to gleen a larger picture. They merely report on their own experience and perception of an event with very little experience to contextualize how information should be gathered and presented. A piece that doesn't actively try to seek something beyond personal bias isn't news, it's an op/ed. It's a journal entry.

If a citizen reporter takes a cellphone snapshot of a white van and sends it in to a citizen journalist site with the caption "terrorist van," we have very little means of verifying the truth. We can only rely on the truthiness.

Everyone should keep taking pictures. But news services should stop trying to rely on free labor and content by dangling the carrot of being published as an excuse for not paying for content created by professionals. And we should avoid propagation of the belief that a "collective" contribution is really the truth. Some, but not all, truths are self-evident.