"TOKYO — Momofuku Ando, the Japanese inventor of instant noodles — a dish that has sustained American college students for decades — has died. He was 96."

I remember eating Cup Noodles as a child at my Grandma's house. First, my sister and I would rip off the outer cardboard packaging, and then fumble with the cellophane wrapping. The whistling of the tea kettle would signify that it was time. We peeled back the top to the dotted line — no more, no less. Grandma would pour the water in for we were too little to handle boiling water, and then she placed a plate over the lid to allow it to cook.

The package says three minutes, but who's to know what three minutes is? I was so tempted to peek under the plate, but was fearful that something would go terribly awry. Terribly awry. So we waited patiently until Grandma said it was ok, then uncovered the plate and pull the cover back completely. Perfection.

How did the morsels of vegetable get so tender and saturated with color? Clearly, this must be good for you. But alas, there is no time to ponder, it is time to eat.

Sayonara, Mr. Noodle, we'll miss you very much.

"Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime. Give him ramen noodles, and you don't have to teach him anything."
— LAWRENCE DOWNES

1. I wish Canon and Nikon would make a pro body (read: metal and durable) that didn't scream "I'm a photographer! Look at me!" Miniaturization seems to be pervasive in electronics with the exception of pro photography.

2. I hope that even in the heat of conflict and spot news, when the adrenaline is pumping and sleep is scarce, that photojournalists find the strength to maintain the highest levels of integrity in their work.

3. I wish Apple would come out with a 12" Macbook Pro that weighs 3 lbs and doesn't have a battery that doubles as a space heater.

4. I hope upload speeds from our homes catch up with our download speeds.

5. I hope that the erosion of photographer rights slows, and that we continue to work together as an industry to increase the value of professionally created images.

6. I hope self-cleaning sensors become the norm for D-SLRs.

7. I hope to continue to be inspired by great photography, and the people who create it.

8. I hope technology makes color profiling between devices a non-issue because I still don't understand what black point compensation for soft proofing means.

8b. I hope all web browsers become color managed.

9. I hope to control my appetite for new lighting gear.

10. I hope you never lose a single image.

Lastly, I wrote in June about my grandfather turning 100 years old. He passed away last week in his sleep at 100 years, six months and three days. People like my grandfather don't receive large obituaries in the New York Times. Their funerals aren't attended by the masses. And yet to me, his death is as significant a loss as any I've experienced. So with my little corner of the Internet, I just want to say how much I'm gonna miss him. Here's to you grandpa.

This video will give you an overview of how you can use Photo Mechanic to select images from a take, and then upload them to PhotoShelter. Of course, you can also upload images using our free Uploader or Apple Aperture.

Getty makes a very small fraction of photographers a lot of money. In fact, a handful (i.e. <10) even make over $500,000/year from stock image sales. They can do this because they consolidated collections and provided a one-stop shop to the image buyer. They took massive commissions, but also spent money on advertising the service, so now they can rightfully claim that they do more image sales business than their next two competitors combined (Corbis and Jupiter Images).

But times are tough, and the fact is that the three largest stock agencies represent less than 1% of professional photographers worldwide. The rise of sites like Alamy and iStockPhoto (owned by Getty) suggest that there is a larger market for images both on the supply and the demand side. In an effort to cash in on this, they have introduced Getty Open.

Of course "Getty Open" is a moniker akin to the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea." Well friend, there ain't nothing democratic about North Korea, but a little marketing will hopefully go a long way.

Getty Open is an effort to allow anyone who wants to sell an image to do so. The catch is that you'll have to pay Getty $50 per image to submit, and then give up 70% of the sale with a two-year exclusive. Their value proposition is that if the image does sell, you'll make up that money. And of course, there is some psychology going on. If I have to pay to play, then I will self-select more critically. And for some people, spending money makes them feel like they are exerting control.

But think about this. If you're a good photographer, you don't have to pay to submit to Getty. They just take your images because they know it will sell. So Open is more about monetizing the fact that more people want to be "with Getty" than they really want. Sure, they will find a few diamonds in the rough, but for the most part, this gives them a revenue stream by preying on those who don't know better. This is like putting a non-refundable deposit to get on the waiting list for a hot new condo development, and not being able to put a deposit on any other property.

There is incredible upside for Getty without much risk. Piss off photographers, but who cares. As long as they can keep their image buyers happy, who cares about photographers? After all, whining photographers don't drive the business, revenue does.

Getty didn't get to be #1 by being stupid. I would even argue that they removed inefficiencies in the market that created a larger market for stock imagery.

But don't be seduced by this one. Close the door on Open.

"Dean Baquet, the editor of The Los Angeles Times who defied orders from his corporate bosses to cut jobs, was forced out of his own job today, shocking his newsroom just as it was gearing up to cover election returns."

I'm not going to pretend to know all the politics of the newsroom, nor the subtleties of the newspaper business. It's been well-documented that newspaper print subscriptions are down significantly around the country (the LA Times was down 8% in the previous 6 months), as are ad placements within those newspapers. However, the curious part of this tale is that aggregate readership when the web is factored in is larger than ever, and that the LA Times operating profit margin is 20% higher than the average Fortune 500 company.

Prudent business management is proactive and not reactive, so perhaps management knows something we don't. Or perhaps management is just wrong, and misguided by a short-term numbers game rather than concerning itself about the longer term growth of the web and an obligation to provide quality news coverage. Any business has solvency as one of its pillars, but it's not the only pillar.

I'm not in denial about the decline of print, but if aggregate readership through the web is higher than print ever was, I would argue that more money and thought leadership should be put into monetization of the web. Perhaps it is ultimately the editors? fault for not finding the magic combination for web success. I'm certainly shocked that magazines and/or with declining print circulations but growing web presences seek to hire veterans of print rather than installing more forward-thinking denizens. But I digress.

If a video sharing site with rejects from America's Home Videos can attain a viewership of tens of millions and then be sold for $1.65B, then a newspaper should be able to find a modicum of financial success with quality content that doesn't result in layoffs.

Over-simplification? Let me know what you think.

We had a great time, and hope to see you again next year! Mark your calendars! Less than a year till the next party!

The lack of human intervention to process the sale means that there is less "friction," and thus the sale is more likely to occur.

But these automated pricing calculators with integrated sales and delivery systems have been the domain of large stock houses because the cost to develop and maintain them is high. This has two effects: 1) If photographers and agencies try to sell on their own, they have to always intervene before a sale can be made, and 2) if photographers go with a stock house, they never set the price for their own image. They have to accept the price and terms of the stock house.

When we talked to photographers about how they priced their images, we heard one thing over and over again: fotoQuote. Hearing this reaffirmed what we knew already. Namely, fotoquote's pricing survey information was the industry standard. I've used it myself several times this year when magazines and book publishers have contacted me for stock sales. But because fotoQuote was a standalone program, it was still discontiguous from the sales process.

When we integrate fotoQuote and PhotoShelter, we'll be able to provide the individual photographer with a way to price and deliver Rights-Managed imagery automatically (We'll also have a negotiate feature). I really believe that this is the final link that will allow photographers to really run their businesses like the multi-hundred million dollar stock agencies. Like our other licensing types, there will be no additional charge to use this service outside of our normal fee structure.

We normally don't pre-announce features, but such is the way that the PR Machine works around trade shows like PhotoPlus Expo. And we certainly thought that this announcement was noteworty. You'll be able to use PhotoShelter with fotoQuote in January 2007.

So we're happy to release the availability of a free account. This means that you can try out most of the features of PhotoShelter without obligation indefinitely. If you find that it's working for you, then upgrade to a paying account. If it's only providing transient utility to you, then pay nothing and use it occasionally for your lower volume jobs. (You can find out more about what the free account includes here).

The other happy part of this equation is that we no longer require you to enter your credit card information on sign-up. We figure if you like the service, then you can enter your billing information later.

Eddie Adams started the workshop as a way to give back to the community, and even after his death, it's going stronger than ever. In addition to a number of lectures, each student is given an assignment to shoot over the course of two days. Their take is edited with the help of top notch editors from around the country like Michelle McNally and Nancy Andrews. It's truly inspiring to see the depth of story telling that these photographers accomplish in such a non-descript area as Sullivan County.

Recent additions to the workshop include the creation of Multimedia projects spearheaded by Brian Storm of MediaStorm. You can see a lot of the student work in the upcoming weeks by heading over to EddieAdamsWorkshop.com

Jason, Grover and I are all alumni, so it was great to go back and be in that environment. In addition to providing on-going technical support, we also gave everyone PhotoShelter lanyards. It was cool to see everyone running around with the lanyards hanging from their necks.

The nice thing about having your own blog, is you can post whatever you want. Since I can get a little long-winded, I decided to post a photo instead. Here's one I shot a couple weeks ago in my apartment with apologies to my downstairs neighbors for the thumping noises.

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!

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.

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 supression 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 jerryrig 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" wiht 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 photographpy. 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 stockhouses, 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 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 buyinig 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.