PhotoShelter user, Jock Fistick took this picture for us during an Apple Aperture presentation at Photokina. It's cool to see such a big logo!

If you haven't had a chance to check out Apple's Aperture yet, it might be time to do it. Version 1.5 is out, and not only are the new features pretty killer, but Apple selected PhotoShelter as one of a handful of companies to build plug-ins for the product. Judging by the other companies they selected, we seem to be in pretty good company.

And of course, we can't help but mention that two of the spotlighted photographers on the Aperture website are PhotoShelter users as well. Make sure you check out Bill Frakes' and Vincent Laforet's websites, both using the PhotoShelter Seamless Customization.

I thought I'd deviate from the normal ramblings about the industry to explain a bit about how product development works in general, and why changing things isn't as easy as you might think.

All products begin with an idea. The idea is rarely formed by consensus, but rather the dream of one or a very small group of people. Malcolm Gladwell wrote a bit about team size and product creation in a New Yorker article last year. Too many cooks in the kitchen can literally ruin a good idea.

Once a product is developed and released to the masses, the typical company will collect feedback in one form another. This might be a directed survey, or it might be unsolicited feedback like "[insert camera manufacturer] when are you going to get your act together?!!? Your noise suppression at high ISO suck!"

Impetus to change a product by altering a feature or adding a new one is generally market driven by three guiding principles. 1) Does it increase market share? 2) Does it make more money? 3) Does it reduce costs?

In a mature company, the person articulating the requirements for the product (but not necessarily the implementation) is a marketing person that is concerned with satisfying one of the three principles. After the bigwigs approve the idea and the marketing assumptions, it gets handed over to some engineering group to satisfy those requirements.

"Make me a chocolate chip cookie that is soft, under 50 calories, has a 4 year shelf life, and costs $0.25"

The process of articulating the requirements, doing the research and development, testing, and rolling out of the product is part of a lifecycle. It stands to reason that if you've gotten to testing, and then the requirements change, you'll derail the project schedule because more development has to occur. This is disaffectionately known as "feature creep."

The product lifecycle is no different if you're building a cookie, a space shuttle or PhotoShelter. The team sizes may vary, the requirements may be vastly different, but the conception of ideas, the feedback loop from various "constituents", the "research and development," testing and roll out are the same from a conceptual point of view.

Companies also typically have a "road map" and plan releases several steps ahead of their actual deployment. Intel, for example, has a road map for their chip development that extends many years into the future. This is necessary because it sets a vision for the company. Would Apple switch to Intel chips if they didn't know that the next generation of chip would be more powerful and use less energy? Would people want to work there if Intel didn't articulate how it would continue to be an industry leader for many years to come?

What does this have to do with PhotoShelter? Here's where I open the kimono.

When you e-mail a suggestion to PhotoShelter, we put the suggestion onto a list. Some suggestions we hear a lot (those are good suggestions), and some are very specific and obscure (those aren't so good). A bad suggestion doesn't necessarily mean that it's a bad idea per se, but that it's too specific for the wider audience.

Suggestions get bundled into releases. Releases usually have a theme (e.g. lightboxes!), and a cool code name because we're geeks. Releases have rough dates associated with them, and as the release moves into development, the dates get firmed up, and then the documentation, press releases and newsletters get written.

You probably don't think of PhotoShelter as a product the way you do with something like Photoshop. But we do. We have very specific release schedules and internal versioning. If we're near the end of a development cycle and you come up with a great idea, we most likely won't implement it until the next cycle because it causes too many problems to jerry rig the thing into the release.

Sometimes a change to the system has wide ranging dependencies. In these cases, we have to "regression" test the entire system. If we change something to the billing system, we have to test the whole sign-up process, cart checkout process, rebilling process, etc. Very rarely are changes so isolated that you can just unit test them and be done with it. Testing is really boring, but a necessary and often long part of the development cycle.

In the same way that the average person assumes that taking a picture is just about pressing a shutter button, the average person assumes that making a website is just typing in some HTML. But we know that taking a good picture involves planning, travel, set up, post production, archiving, distribution, marketing, etc.

Suffice it to say, developing a product is a multi-phasic process. And although Jack Bauer can save the world in 24 hours, and Chloe can "open a protocol" with a few keystrokes, the world doesn't really work that way. So if your suggestion isn't implemented within 24 hours, now you know why.

Now, I will attempt to answer a few pressing questions in photography. I have no inside knowledge, but I'll just use my common sense.

1. Why doesn't Nikon develop a full frame sensor camera like Canon?
The only people that really care about full frame are a segment of pros and some serious hobbyists. Last year, about 3.5MM DSLRs shipped, and I'd venture to guess that maybe 50,000 of those were actually full frame. Compare this to the approximately 65 million point and shoots that shipped last year. Even though the DSLR market is the most rapidly growing, the economics of the situation don't make developing a FF sensor a logical conclusion for a smaller company like Nikon.

I'm not a Nikon apologist. I'm just saying that my photos aren't any better with a full frame camera.

2. What's up with Foveon?
The concept is cool, and the sensor does really well at avoiding things like mosaic patterns, but the noise and overall chip performance will probably keep it a niche product (read: hello Sigma) for at least another generation.

3. What does the photo industry look like in 3 years?
It'll be harder and harder to be a full-time photographer. A backlash will occur against the larger stock houses, which will change the landscape. I don't think it will necessarily cause a revolution, but I think the economics of the game will change.

I remember the World Wide Web in 1995.

I downloaded a beta version of Netscape, and was amazed at the concept of hyperlinking, image maps, and the beginnings of e-commerce.

A few years later, I purchased my first digital camera (an Olympus point and shoot with a maximum resolution of 640x480) and posted some pictures on the web. At the same time, I remember seeing some of the first photographer websites filled with portfolios of amazing pictures.

In the past decade, sites like Yahoo!, eBay, and Amazon redefined the way we live. They took interactivity to a new level, providing a practical and functional means to disseminate information and allow for "frictionless" transactions.

Almost anyone can set up a storefront with sites like Yahoo! Small Business or Cafe Press. We get directions on our cellphones, book plane tickets online, and buy auto insurance..

So with all the technological change, why are photographer websites lost in time? The vast majority of sites still only allow a user to view a few images - a static translation of a printed book moved to the web. I would venture to say that the vast majority of photographer websites still have the same sections now as they did ten years ago, namely, a few galleries of their best stuff, a bio, and a contact page.

I can buy homemade soap and doggy sweaters from some grandma's website in Mackinaw, but I can't purchase an image from most photographers. I can get a satellite image of my home, but I can't save my favorite images to a lightbox.

Complaining about the rate of change is so 90s. It's time for photographers to stop lamenting the "good ole days" and start thinking about how they can invest in their business rather than buying a new lens that won't generate more revenue.

Your website isn't part of your marketing. It is your marketing. Bring it into the 21st century, please.

It's easy to get wrapped up with September 11. But rather than focus on the destruction, the lives lost, the lives shattered -- I thought a different approach might be more apropos on this five year anniversary.

While perusing the archives of world-renown photographer, Eddie Adams, I came across some photos I hadn't seen of the construction of the buildings. Whereas I have vivid memories of the slotted "skin" of the building sticking from the wreckage, here was the same lattice work being assembled onto the building by workmen.

As the government, land developers and families struggle to rebuild Ground Zero, here is a poignant reminder of how it started.

Search: World Trade Center on PhotoShelter

On September 11, 2001, I ventured out onto the street after hearing the sounds of jets crashing into the WTC. I lived two blocks away at the time. I strolled up and down Broadway, and finally made my way onto Fulton Street when the first tower came down -- All the while, I was snapping away not knowing that the day would become seminal in our nation's history.

A few months later, I saw a little article on CNN discussing how the National Institute of Standards and Technology was trying to find images of the buildings that weren't available through the newswires to try to reconstruct how and why the buildings collapsed.

I sent in my images and received notice from Dr. Bill Pitts requesting more high-res images from the day. Dr. Pitts and his crew went about meticulously reconstructing where I was at what time, and what my pictures show. A time consuming effort indeed.

Sony GPS-CS1. Unlike the current crop of geotagging hardware devices, this little guy just sits in your pocket or hangs on your belt. As you move around it simply records where you were at what time. When you get home, you download the GPS data, and run it through their software which mates up with your digital pictures based on the time/date. It can even plot out the course you took during the day.

Like most things Sony, this may very well end up in the "didn't quite make it" pile, but I find the notion of this device pretty fascinating, and would love to see other camera vendors integrate the ability to mate this type of GPS stream data into their camera software (I use a D2X, Nikon!).

I live in Manhattan, and happen to be on a block that has a number of those cloth "billboards" that get draped along the sides of buildings. In the past, I've had some attractive billboards for premium alcohols or the latest box office hit, so imagine my surprise when I was walking to work the other day and saw the inset image.

My personal feelings about online gambling are trivial compared to the horror I felt when I saw this image. No, really. Pure horror. Here is a company that spent a fair amount of money to advertise. But instead of hiring professional models and a professional photographer, they decided to go cheap. What they got was a poorly composed picture filled with unattractive people and a flash that only covers part of the image.

I don't think the average person would be able to articulate why the photo is bad beyond the ugly models, but they would know that this is a poor image. Compare this with the huge Calvin Klein billboard near Houston St and Lafayette. There is no mistaking the models, photography, art direction, etc.

The quality of the image is an extension of the brand.

The image is a second rate -- ill-conceived and poorly executed. It makes me believe the same about the website without even visiting it.

Of course, I'm preaching to the choir since you are most likely a professional photographer. But I believe educating our audience and showing them how bad photography is detrimental to their brand is one way to advance the role and value of professional photography.