Most of our users might hear about “the Cloud” and wonder, “Why would Justin hate the Picnik clouds?” but actually the Cloud is where most of Picnik is stored! It refers to all our offsite data storage, processing, flexibility, and not making Justin install all that hardware himself. That way, it’s where we don’t have to look at it, as if it were hidden behind big white fluffy clouds. So Justin was down there to talk about love, hate, and laziness.

They’ll be there for the rest of the conference, so if you run into them, say hi!

Update: The video is now online!

A big congratulations to our three winners @smith521, @wildcat24, and @bellavaz. All three winners received a one year subscription for Picnik Premium!

We also had two more favorites: @welstechtrainer received three months of Premium for posting an amazing collage that won her the award for the @sandra6dee won three months of Picnik Premium for the most joyful jumping picture.

Want to share you favorite pictures on Twitter? We’ve made it really easy! When you get to the Save & Share tab select Twitter and connect to your account. Congrats to all the winners and have a great summer to all!

Directions: Make a Twitter account, if you don’t have one! Announce yourself by following @picnik on Twitter! Take your picture, then upload it and edit it! Then find the Twitter page under the Save & Share tab to Tweet your summery masterpiece!

The contest runs from Monday at 12.01 am through Thursday at 2 pm PDT. So why are we telling you this early? Because it’s a beautiful weekend in June! So get outside and get those photos!

Note to our Southern Hemisphere Picnikers: You are entirely welcome to include your photos of the grumpy weather you’re having right now.

Update: The contest is now open! Feel free to start Tweeting your submissions!

Update #2: The contest is now closed! Thank you to everyone who participated! We will announce the winners tomorrow, June 19 at 2pm PDT. In the meantime, check out the submissions on Twitter by searching for “#SummerPicnik”.

That’s right, the internet’s most gigantor webmail provider is now offering Picnik as the photo editor for their users! And without having to go digging in an application directory, either, but right there in the applications menu at the left.

Similar to our integrations with Facebook and Flickr, having Picnik inside your email brings Picnik’s photo editing awesomeness to where so many of your photos are kept anyway: in your inbox! Just click on “Edit Photos” next to the Picnik icon and hit connect, and Picnik automatically grabs all the images attachments in your Yahoo! Mail. Can’t find something? You can also Get From Computer, a Website, a Yahoo! Search, a Webcam shot, the list goes on. Then edit, add Effects, Stickers, Text, and Touch-Ups to your heart’s content, and when you’re done, Save to your Computer, Flickr, Print, other third party storage sites, and, of course, email!

Also on Saturday was the annual Issaquah Triathlon, a sprint Triathlon of much more humane distances of 1/4 mile swim, 15 mile bike ride and 3 mile run all around the Lake Sammamish area just to the east of us, which Penguin Handler Justin entered again and finished in 1:13:22, a 20 minute improvement on last year!

Tickets to the three-day event sold out immediately, proving that not only do we enjoy consuming food, we also love talking about food, sharing our experiences with food, and pouring over the digital concoctions of fellow food bloggers. Sarah and I joined a panel called “Food Porn: Food Photography & Styling” alongside chef and author Kathy Casey and food stylist Patty Wittmann. We walked through a quick and dirty Picnik demo, showing the attendant foodies how easy it is to make your food look as delicious as it tastes. We demonstrated how to adjust for poor lighting with a quick auto-fix, resize the image so it fits perfectly on your blog, or flip your pineapple upside down cake upside down! We also showed how to make your alfredo absolutely dreamy with the Orton-ish effect, recreate Mom’s famous apple pie with the 1960’s effect, or sweep away those pesky crumbs with the Clone tool.

What a perfect fit for bloggers who need a little help making their pictures as mouth watering as the masterpieces they whip up! Thanks to all the attendees who asked great questions and offered their testimonials on how Picnik is already as essential as their recipes. Picnik and delicious dishes make a steamy couple and now the word is out.

click to enlarge

We here at Picnik HQ have actually been following his Flickr stream for months, where his photographs of gleaming 18-wheelers, incredibly dirty faces, and wide, “Tatterland” vistas certainly stood out in our Flickr Picnikers group. A lot of his photos are of big trucks with Vibrance effects, but sometimes a little baby in Black & White and Vignette. You get the tough guys looking rugged and mean with HDR-ish over top, but also the tough guys hamming it up with Gooify and Orton-ish. Each picture stands out and it’s obvious that “Trucker Dude” enjoyed taking every one of them. Plus, they actually are really good photographs: well-composed, well-set up, well-lit, well-edited, and each has a personality, tells a story, and actually is worth a thousand words. So we couldn’t wait to get in touch and make him our 14th Featured Picniker!

Picnik: When did you hear about Picnik, and when was that?
Trevor: I honestly can’t remember. Someone had recommended it to me over on Flickr, I believe, bout a year and half ago. Been kind of an addict ever since.

How has Picnik changed your life?
Picnik has opened many new doors for me that were previously unavailable. There were lots of things I wanted to do with a photograph and could not before I found Picnik. Now that I have a better grasp of the terrain it’s still like a grade school show and tell. From day to day I find something new I can do with it I had not ever considered trying before. Even to this day I’m still finding new ways to manipulate shots I had not considered before. A new toy I can afford and stimulate my imagination as it were.

How did you get interested in photography?
It was an on line friend of mine that drew me into photography. A professional based out of Portland OR. as I understand it. Originally I had started shooting pictures around my place of work with the intention of showing a few driver and blogger buddies of mine a different perspective of the trucking industry. When he (Sean) took notice of a few of my better photos he began giving me pointers and tips. From there it had kind of become a personal challenge, to see what I could do with his tips and my then itty bitty Kodak Easy Share digital. Later he had invited me into a photo competition he was hosting, and the entire experience just kind of sucked me in. Soon after the competition I’d upgraded to a high quality camera, and set out, bent on learning how to use the new camera, and ways to manipulate (like Picnik) my photos into resembling more what it was I saw in my head while setting up a shot.

What do you use to shoot with?
Currently I am using a Canon Digital Rebel XTi, fitted with a 18-55mm lens.

You (hilariously) call your children “Heathen Progeny”. Explain.
I was trying to think of a story to put that into better context, and for the life of me I can’t seem to settle on any single one (Though there was that little toilet plunger incident yesterday morning that now seems somewhat and disturbingly lodged in the forefront of my mind). I guess the best way to say it is; Gosh, they sure are an awful lot like their dad when he was their age.

South-eastern Idaho is not a place many associate with cramped, claustrophobic views. How does living in such an incredibly wide-open space help or hinder your photography?
That’s an interesting question. In the last five years the population here has quite nearly doubled. Idaho Falls is still a far cry from anything that one might consider a thriving metropolis, but it is nothing like I remember growing up. Lots of development, lots of expansion. It’s still a small town that depends largely on agriculture and the government nuclear reactor/test facility out on the Arco desert to survive, but I honestly have started feeling a little crowded the past few years. As far as a hindrance, I can’t really think of much off the top of my head. I do enjoy looking at photographs of big city skylines, so called urban jungles, and other images of that nature, but as much as I like them, there is no way for me to duplicate them. I suppose there fascination to me revolves largely around them being such a foreign landscape. They simply don’t exist here. We’ve got kids zipping around on bullet bikes and souped up Subaru’s, but as far as sky scrapers the closet thing that compares is our water tower. As for help. My favorite photograph subject is of course big rigs. And honestly nothing says “Wide open truckin” like the back drops I can find around here. A few minutes driving up to Swan Valley, or out onto Antelope Flats, and I have nothing but a perfect back drop of rolling farm fields, woodlands, or snow capped mountains to add to the entire experience.

What did you like most about Picnik when you first started using it, and what do you like the most about it now?
What I liked about it first. Options. I remember the first time I tried it I immediately noticed and clicked on Orton-ish. My response had been something like “Holy crap, that is cool.” I’d be lying if is said my eyes did not glow a bit when I looked up to see just what it would cost for a premium membership. What I like most about it now is, well, Options. I’ve been using Picnik for a good long while now, and it never seems like there is that feeling of being backed into the proverbial “I’ve milked this one for all it’s worth” corner. Even now there are several options available that I have not yet tried.

Your photos vary mostly between portraits and trucks. What’s easier to photograph: hardened truckers or speeding 10-ton big-rigs?
The big rigs are quite possibly the single most photographer friendly subjects I have ever shot at. Typically they are pretty easy to please, and they don’t normally complain. If I’m trying to do something like a long exposure and I say “Okay, hold still”, they will usually do it. If they are out on the road eating asphalt, it’s still not to hard to get them to cooperate. We both know where the highway is, and we are both pretty convinced that the rig is going to follow that line. It’s especially easy when they have been left in my care (and I guess that’s just one of the perks to my job). On any given work day a number of rigs will simply be dropped off and left for me to run through the bays. This presents me with an opportunity to park them wherever I see fit once we have cleaned them up. If a few pictures happen in the aftermath, well…Who’s going to mind. And I think for the most part the drivers are pretty easy to get along with as well.

This year, in addition to our BBQ Stickers, Flags and Yellow Ribbon shapes, and the rest of our summery selection of Stickers and Fonts, we also have a whole new set of Birthday Stickers, with cakes, banners, balloons, and little numbered candles. Meanwhile, don’t forget the graduates in your life: whether a PhD candidate, undergrad, high-schooler, preschooler, or even just the kid who aced his third grade report card, we’ve got Graduation Stickers too!

So this Memorial Day long weekend, we’ve got everything you need to create an ecard, invitation, or decorate any photo you take, to create something worth memorializing on its own.

Other winners in our Photo & Video category include ginormous luminaries such as YouTube, Flickr and Hulu (you may have heard of them), and in other categories Pandora, Etsy, Facebook, Twitter, and this little startup in Mountain View called Google.

So thank you all so much, trusty Picnikers, for all your votes and for rooting for us! We couldn’t have done it without you!

Lisa’s been Team Picnik’s Chief Marketing Officer since February so we’ve long known that she’s an opinion leader, a mover-and-shaker, and a Naval Undersea Warfare interner, but it’s wonderful to see her recognized as all those things by her inclusion in this inaugural list of the top women in Seattle Tech!