Sure, it's April, but back in December, I wanted to make some T-shirts for the guys as a holiday gift. But what should go on the shirt???!?!

I was perusing illustrators on AltPick, a source book for creatives, and found a guy in Canada named Luc Latulippe who had a very clean, modern style. So I gave him a call, and we talked about some ideas....

The shirts came out great (even though my sister didn't like them). And then while I was googling, I found Luc's Flickr page which shows the final design and his original sketch for the shirt -- it's monster-proof, baby.

I was taking a long-term documentary project at ICP, when my teacher, Andre Lambertson suggested that I apply for the Eddie Adams Workshop. Although I was familiar with Eddie's work, I had no idea that there was a workshop, nor how well-esteemed the program had become in its nearly two decades of operation.

I was pretty surprised when I was accepted, and then blown away when I actually attended in the Fall of 2003 for a few incredibly inspiring days. Although the workshop has a photojournalism focus, the speakers represented every facet of photography. The underwater photography of Howard Schatz, the nudes of Jock Sturges, the edgy portraiture of Clay Patrick McBride, and of course some of the top photojournalists in the world.

Since three of the PhotoShelter founders are Barnstorm Alumni, we decided to get involved this year. We rebuilt the website to have a searchable alumni database and message boards, and today we released a full, online application mechanism.

I can't say enough about the workshop that Eddie built. If you're a current student, military, or professional with less than 3 years of experience, you really ought to consider applying to the workshop.

http://www.eddieadamsworkshop.com/apply

Part of my PhotoShelter job responsibilities include not being in the office as much as possible. It's easy to get caught up in all the excitement of the internal workings of the office (watching and waiting for faxes to come in, and sharpening pencils are some of my personal favorite moments.)

Some of my favorite out-of-the-office activities include:

* Watching people use the product.
This always fascinates me, and I learn something new every time. One thing I like to do is just stand behind someone and watch them use PhotoShelter. This kind of approach gives us information that doesn't normally show up in an email from a user.

If, for example, a user can't find something easily, or if they're not taking advantage of built-in shortcuts, that tells me we need to do a better job of making it more obvious that there are more efficient ways to manage their regular workflow.

We've found that this kind of unintentional feedback is incredibly useful - and it's not possible to collect from within the office.

* Opportunity to brainstorm with users.
It is common for people to show a healthy level of enthusiasm for PhotoShelter when we're talking about the future. We receive suggestions via email all the time. But an in-person brainstorming session gives us the ability to interact with a customer and get to the core of their idea, and the inspiration for it in the first place.

* See and hear about the different ways in which people are using PhotoShelter.
Just when I think I've heard of every possible usage scenario, someone comes along and shows me how they've come up with some creative way to use PhotoShelter. Sometimes, for example, it's how they used PhotoShelter to solve one of their long-standing workflow-related issue, sometimes it's the way someone is structuring their archive, and sometimes its how someone is seamlessly integrating PhotoShelter into their personal website in new and innovative ways.

Most of the time, these people don't even realize that they've come up with anything "creative" or "new" at all - they're just doing what comes natural to them. Seeing these creative solutions gives us ideas, and makes it possible for us to recommend that "creative" solution to other PhotoShelter users.

* Hearing real-life experiences help us make the product better.
It seems like every photographer has their "war stories" -- Tales of their life as a photographer in the real world. Not only are they often entertaining, but also they're a valuable source of information for us. For example, a photographer talking about the time when FTP and email ports were being blocked by their hotel's network, causing their inability to send images back to their editors on deadline. This, of course, is the inspiration behind PhotoShelter's uploading protocol, which uses the standard, always-open, encrypted web port to ensure that uploads can happen on even the strictest of networks.

I'm always looking for excuses to leave the office and meet up with people - and it seems like I'll travel just about anywhere if it involves talking to other people about PhotoShelter. It's a contagious thing - because, for me, the result of every trip is added excitement, increased motivation, and the first-hand knowledge that PhotoShelter is helping a lot of people in a lot of different ways.

I feel like I can finally take a moment to breathe again. The months leading up to PhotoPlus Expo were quite busy here in the PhotoShelter Lab (yeah, it's technically the 'office', but "Lab" sounds much more accurate and certainly cooler), so we haven't been blogging as much.

The Expo was great. Everybody seemed to be talking about RAW files, inspired by Apple's big product announcement, "Aperture." Of course, PhotoShelter has been supporting RAW files since the day we launched, so we were thrilled to see Apple join the party.

Our booth was almost constantly busy. We had two computers set up, and gave what seemed to be non-stop product demos. I don't think I'll ever get tired of people saying (loudly, at times) "OH MAN! That is COOL!" when they watched the drag-n-drop sequencing in action. Everyone seemed to key in on certain things, though - but the Drag-n-Drop stuff seemed to be universally cool.

If you were one of the lucky ones to score one of our PhotoShelter t-shirts, we hope you wear it proudly! For those of you who didn't, well, here's a picture of the back of it. Let me warn you that there is some photo geek humor on the other end of that link - so click at your own risk!

(These were such a hit that we might even make another batch and make them available on the site.)

Thanks to everyone who made a special trip to see us at the Expo. The support and encouragement is definitely appreciated by the entire staff. We really need to get our collective butts out of the lab more often.

PhotoShelter is many different things to different people.

Years ago, when we first started talking to people about our ideas, we quickly realized that every photographer needed something slightly different. Each photographer had their own way of doing things, their own blend of client-types, and their own level of technical ability. In order for PhotoShelter to be successful, we would need to build a product that was flexible enough to allow each photographer to define how they would use it, and effectively explain that PhotoShelter's mission was not limited to a specific photographer type.

Now that PhotoShelter has launched, we're seeing exactly what we thought we would see - people using PhotoShelter in a variety of ways, for a variety of different reasons.

I thought it would be interesting to point out some of the most commonly-used PhotoShelter features.

1) Adding an image search capability to their personal websites.
This can be a significant technological challenge for most people with websites, so adding a robust image search function to a website is usually out of the question for most.

By giving photographers the actual code to cut-and-paste into their websites, we made it as easy, and many of our users are taking advantage of this.

2) Archiving of, and limited access to, their "best take" from an assignment.
Some Photographers are using PhotoShelter as a selective archive. Instead of uploading all 1000 images from an assignment, they're editing the take down to the best 50-or-so images, and storing those inside of their PhotoShelter archives.

The tighter edit usually contains images that are more likely to sell, and are usually considered the "money makers" of the assignment. The rest of the raw take might be burned to DVD-R media. Should a DVD-R disk go bad, it's not a catastrophic loss, because the "money makers" are safely stored within their PhotoShelter archive.

This also gives them the ability to allow certain clients to enter their archives and search through their "best of" images.

3) Large-sized image file delivery to trusted clients.
For many photographers, image delivery is often a problem. Many clients have no idea what "FTP" is, and prefer to receive everything via email attachment. However, as file sizes increase, we're seeing an increase in email rejections due to large attachments. After a few failed back-and-forth transfer attempts, the end result is usually "I'll overnight a CD-ROM to you..."

However, web access is rarely restricted and familiar to everyone. Therefore, delivery of large high-resolution images to a client through a web browser can be a much more effective way to transfer images. (Which doesn't require you to rush to burn a disk, fill out the forms, and make the overnight deadline.)

Photographers are taking full advantage of the PhotoShelter Bandwidth Subscription, which not only transfers the images in a very user-friendly way, but it also keeps a record of each download, who downloaded it, and when.

4) "Syndication Service" through the use of RSS Feeds.
Photographers who are shooting a lot of assignments on a regular basis have been creating RSS feeds of their galleries, and giving them to editors. At many publications, editors use these RSS feeds to keep track of the latest, most updated content available from a variety of sources.

RSS effectively gives an individual photographer the ability to "syndicate" himself or herself, and automatically broadcast the availability of their latest images to editors interested in using them.

5) Selling prints.
Some photographers who have previously not even considered selling prints of their images (due to the overhead of making and shipping them), have been taking advantage of this new revenue source. Our relationship with EZ Prints makes the process of selling prints a hands-free (and profitable) experience.

Obviously, this is only a partial list. As we continue to expand PhotoShelter's features, the possibilities grow exponentially. It's always a fun process to build a new product, and it's always interesting to see how people use it.