Photobook-maker Artifact Uprising launches mobile app

Golden Triangle-based Artifact Uprising has launched a mobile app this week that allows users to design and order a small photobook ($16.99) printed with images from their smartphone.

"People are realizing they can be great photographers with their camera-phone," says Artifact Uprising CEO and Co-Founder Jenna Walker, reciting the app's tagline: "Off your device and into your life." "We're calling it the democratization of photography."

Before Artifact Uprising, Walker was an established Denver photographer. "We saw a need in the market for something that was different than the big companies," she says of the genesis of the Galvanize-based company.

It follows that Walker started the company with a pair of fellow photographers in her husband, Matt, and her sister, Katie Thurmes, to fill the need.

There was an immediate learning curve to hurdle. "We launched the company as artists and quickly realized we needed to learn technology," says Walker.

The company offers a variety of customizable hardcover and softcover photobooks as well as boxes and other products made from reclaimed beetlekill pine. The latter are manufactured by Azure Furniture, also based in Denver. The photobooks are printed at a facility in Aurora.

A little over a year after its launch, Artifact Uprising has bootstrapped its way to a staff of eight employees plus several interns, and continues to hire.  "We'll likely hire two people in early 2014," says Walker.

"It's been an interesting path, just trusting our guts," says Walker. "It's been fun to see our guts check out right."