Some Kickstarter campaigns launch with a tonne of emails. Timeshel, however, an iPhone-centric photo printing service, launched with a party.
Timeshel functions as a subscription service–and at $14.95 per month, it’s neither for the occasional photographer, nor for the professional, but for the person in-between. Using the company’s iPhone app, customers create a collection of 30 photos over the course of each month. On the last day of the month, the photos making the cut (doubles are permitted) are automatically sent off to print. The images arrive about 10 days later, printed on fade-resistant archival paper (in one of two sizes–3.5” x 4.67” or 3.5” x 3.5”) and housed in a white plastic “shel” that doubles as a stackable storage system.
“We ordered from all those services, and we figured we could do a better job,” says Pfitzenmaier, a former product manager with two startups under his belt. “[The prints] weren’t easy to get, the quality was awful, and no one knew what to do with them once they arrived.”
Pfitzenmaier explains the service as a kind of “slow photography” response to the social media phenomenon of “Instagram envy.”
