Earlier today, Apple announced WWDC08, their annual developer conference. Last year was the second year in a row that I served as a photographer for the Apple Developer Connection and I was lucky enough to be joined by Pınar Özger. Some of the photos that we made showed up during last year's event, but most were held by Apple for future marketing purposes. I'm happy to report that in the initial WWDC08 marketing pages, our photos take center stage.

And boy, do they ever take center stage. Instead of just being used as supporting elements in the page design, the set of five images are the main element of the page design. Instead of cropping them to fit into a box in the page layout, the images are presented in their full 3:2 ratio as they came out of the camera. And, they're presented cover-flow style which both draws focus to them and fits in with Apple's aesthetic.

Pınar's photos really get the focus here--the majority of them are hers. And the center photo, which is the entire focus of the composition is a brilliant piece of work on her part. She saw an attendee wearing the conference t-shirt and the screen separately and quickly orchestrated the shot by positioning the attendee in just the right place. The result is obviously a great shot for this page.

You can bet that I'll be paying close attention to the collateral for this year's WWDC08 closely to see how else our photographs will be used. It's kind of like Christmas.

Update 3/31: The front page photos have been shuffled up a bit with a few more shots that Pınar and I took. The red monitor shot has been replaced by a blue monitor shot, also executed by Pınar.

The guy in the middle-right shot in the orange shirt was the first guy in line for the keynote. He had been waiting for some insane amount of time to get in. I took this shot of him as the attendees started coming up the escalators. 

Also, Apple has posted a page about the Student Scholarship Program featuring yet some more photographs.

It's so very nice to see these photos being used like this. It really is cool. And, it's cool to see Pınar's close up people pics are really the star of this show.