Discounts for PSRI Members

As the punch line from an old commercial goes “Membership has its privileges!” Our sponsors, in addition to their generous contribution to our fund raising efforts, also offer discounts to our members. These are specially coded discounts available to PSRI members. The following table lists the companies offering discounts. To take advantage of these discounts you need to obtain the proper discount code from one of the officers. When you wish to purchase one of these products, make sure to take advantage of the discounts which will save a few dollars to you and show our support to these companies who support us.

I will announce the codes again on Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at the meeting and will distribute them through our internal email news.

Vendor	Discount
Photodex, Proshow Producer and Proshow Gold	20%
Nik Software, all their products	15%
Topaz Labs, full line of their products	15%
Printmakers, Inc., on prints, books, special items	7%
HDR Soft, Photomatix HDR software	20%

Photoshop Turns 20

Four men who started the software that has become the standard talk about the “good old days.”

… and his drawings

If you liked Michael Paul Smith’s time-travel photographs from the past, take a look at his drawings and paintings. They are rendered with great technical detail, great technique, and they manifest strong artistic vision. The drawing below is his “first attempt to draw with colored pencils.” Colored pencils? Explore all his collections and galleries for real gems.

A Different Kind of Photography

Flickr has millions of photographs; now I don’t know the exact number but it seems to house a huge volume of photographs. Many, obviously not all by any stretch of imaginations, are similar photographs of places people have visited, friends having good time, animals caught in interesting and cute poses, and so on. In that haystack, I have stumbled upon a photographer and his unique work that both amazed and very pleased me.

Michael Paul Smith combines his mastery of model building with his photography and the result is akin to some kind of time-travel. His affinity to mid 1950s automobiles and his roots still strong in his hometown compelled him to build models of the era, cars, trucks, diners, car dealerships, country roads, and so on. I find his model building skills are extraordinary and his photography quite original and exacting. I have his permission to use these couple of photographs to give you a taste of what awaits you. I encourage you to visit his flickr collection and have a trip down the memory lane. Thank you Michael for your vision, and for your permission to use the photographs in this post.

PSRI Magazine is Out

The PSReye Focus magazine, featuring the photographs and articles of PSRI members and Providence College photography students is available for purchase. It is the result of the hard work of two Providence College students, Emma Hansen and John Vaghi with contributions from many photographers and the keen and critical eye of the editorial board of the magazine. It is published on an on-demand printing platform and anyone can purchase as many copies as they want. The photographic contributions are great so is the print and paper quality. It should make an excellent Christmas gift or stocking stuffer for the photo buff and art lovers.

Order it directly from MagCloud. The holiday price until January 1, 2010 is $12.50 plus shipping. After that the price will go up to $15.00 plus shipping. Shipping charges depend on the delivery speed, the lowest cost option at $1.40 per magazine arrives within about one week. MagCloud accepts PayPal or credit card payments and you will receive your copy in your mailbox within about one week although they indicate 1-2 weeks.

We hope that you enjoy the magazine, which is most likely a camera club first.

A new site feature

If you like to be alerted when there is a new post on the site, you can subscribe to the alert service by entering your e-mail address in the field on the right sidebar. You will receive a confirmation message, you need to follow the link in the message to complete the subscription. After that, you will receive a message any time one of the editors posts a new article with a link to the page. You can unsubscribe any time using the same process but with the “Unsubscribe” button being clicked.

Note to editorial board members, you are automatically subscribed to this service.

A new public beta

Look at the image below, you will see version “3″ of Adobe Lightroom. Yes, it is on the horizon with new and/or improved feature set including better noise reduction, better vignetting, and although invisible, a better processing engine. Take a look and decide if the features are of any interest to you. You can download it from Adobe Labs.

Your digital camera and the Nobel Prize

This year, the Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to two American physicists “for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit – the CCD sensor”. Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith made it possible for us to enjoy the tremendous capabilities of digital photography. We owe them gratitude.

Read more about them at the Nobel Prize Web site.

A new color tool

Designed to be portable and used anywhere, X-Rite ColorChecker^® Passport and the included Adobe Lightroom Plugin promises to make color correction, neutral white balance, or creative white balance adjustments extremely easy. Based on the larger Macbeth Color Checker, the new tool is about the size of a passport (see the name!) Read more about this interesting tool at the X-Rite Web site.

A new blog and a new book

Boston based photographer Lou Jones has started writing a blog that is directed at camera clubs and related organizations. Some of you will remember Lou from his appearance at PSRI a few years ago as a panelist on a discussion I moderated, and you may know his professional and artistic work. If not, there are links below to his Web site and his new blog. This is now a chance to get to follow what he might be doing, how, when, where, etc.

Lou is the author of several books and he recently added a new one to the list, Speedlights & Speedlites. I am ordering my copy from Amazon. Judging from his previous books, this should be very informative and inspirational. Definitely worth a look.

Lou Jones Web site

Lou Jones Blog

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