Last Thursday night, the world of analog photography grew exponentially in Hollywood.
The global fans of the world of LOMO will rejoice with this new west coast flagship of the plastic camera kings.

When you want to slow it down a bit, shoot some film, and take a bit of a risk, in your photography, you have to hit this store.

Sure, you can visit on-line as we have done for many years. Or pick up some bits from stores like Freestyle or ICP.
This is the motherload.
Here is an overview of the first floor of the space.

Cameras, film, books, bags, T-shirts, and most importantly: a giddy love for photography in it’s most freeing sense.
the opening celebration began with mariachis and Mexican food, and included a cake in the shape of a classic Diana camera

Everyone was checking out the goods.

Sometimes love was blooming over a sweet plastic camera.

What appeared to be almost a wailing wall of photos, the acolytes camera to touch, photograph, and choose their purchases wisely, knowing they were among film friendly legions of photographers.

They tipped us to the fact that not only are they selling film, but in the future, they will offer processing of that film.
Yep, you now won’t have to mix the chemicals and store the jugs.
They’ll do it all for you.
There are some classes coming up right now to introduced to this world, new for some, and a blessing for the loyal.

Check it all out at:

Lomography Gallery Store LA
7998 Santa Monica Blvd
LA Ca, 90047

You know in the world of digital imaging, 20 years is pretty much unheard of.
In that time, we’ve seen many major software developers come and go.
The dot.com bust, came and went.
But the people at Adobe, continue to constantly improve and deliver on what is the standard for our industry.
Photoshop.
Twenty years ago, we personally had no real need for the product. Ad agencies used it for graphics, and layouts within the Apple system of computers. We were all about the film, and the wet darkroom.
Slowly, it changed. And the software grew.
This beta screen on the right, became this first gen version below;

and eventually what we have today:

Adobe Photoshop Hits Twenty
Community Celebrates Software that Changed the Way We View the World

SAN JOSE, Calif., – Feb. 18, 2010 – Adobe(r) Photoshop(r), the software product that redefined creativity in the digital age, turns 20 on Feb. 19, 2010. Around the world, Photoshop fans are celebrating the impact their favorite software has had across photography, art, design, publishing and commerce. In the United States, the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) will be hosting a special Photoshop 20th Anniversary celebration for over a thousand attendees in San Francisco at the Palace of the Fine Arts Theater today. The event will feature Adobe’s senior vice president of Creative Solutions, John Loiacono, as well as vice president of Photoshop Product Management, Kevin Connor, Photoshop co-creator Thomas Knoll and famed Adobe creative director and Photoshop evangelist, Russell Brown. To be a part of this celebration and view the live Webcast, visit: www.photoshopuser.com/photoshop20th.

The festivities continue overseas in Japan, Southeast Asia and throughout Europe. In honor of the 20th anniversary, Adobe Germany will host a special 20-hour online marathon, featuring over 15 local Photoshop “gurus” demonstrating their favorite tips and tricks live for Photoshop fans. In India and France, digital imaging contests will be held to showcase the work of Photoshop users. A special Adobe TV broadcast will also air on the anniversary date at http://tv.adobe.com/go/photoshop-20th-anniversary, reuniting the original “Photoshop team” for the first time in 18 years, to discuss their early work on the software and demonstrate Photoshop 1.0 on a rebuilt Macintosh computer.

(that sounds way to cool. Get your photoshop geek on, for sure)

The boxes went from this:

to this.

The Photoshop community is also sharing their favorite stories online, with the product and its over 400,000 fan-strong Facebook page, the hub for a worldwide look at the product’s impact. A new “Celebrate” tab directs users to a 20th anniversary logo, which many have already personalized with Photoshop and used as a replacement for their profile image. Connect with the Photoshop team at www.facebook.com/Photoshop or http://twitter.com/photoshop, and add the tag #PS20 to tweets about the anniversary.

“For 20 years Photoshop has played many different roles – it has given creative people the power to deliver amazing images that impact every part of our visual culture and challenged the eye with its ability to transform photographs,” said Shantanu Narayen, president and chief executive officer at Adobe. “It’s no exaggeration to say that, thanks to millions of creative customers, Photoshop has changed the way the world looks at itself.”

The impact of Photoshop is everywhere – billboard signs, magazine covers, major motion pictures, even the logo on the coffee cup you drink out of every morning. All have likely been touched by the software. Over 90 percent of creative professionals have Photoshop on their desktops and today Photoshop is used by professional photographers, graphic designers and advertisers, as well as architects, engineers and even doctors. Whether it’s bringing visual effects to life in the blockbuster film Avatar, helping save lives in partnership with forensics departments and the Center for Missing and Exploited Children, or challenging the human eye to determine if an image is real or fake, Photoshop continues to find new uses and advocates.

How It All Began

In 1987, Thomas Knoll developed a pixel imaging program called Display. It was a simple program to showcase grayscale images on a black-and-white monitor. However, after collaborating with his brother John Knoll, the two began adding features that made it possible to process digital image files. The program eventually caught the attention of industry influencers, and in 1988, Adobe made the decision to license the software, naming it Photoshop, and shipping the first version in 1990.

“Twenty years ago, Adobe predicted that it would sell 500 copies of Photoshop per month,” said Thomas Knoll, co-creator of Photoshop at Adobe. “I guess you could say, we beat those projections! It’s amazing to think that millions of people use this software today. We knew we had a groundbreaking technology on our hands, but we never anticipated how much it would impact the images we see all around us. The ability to seamlessly place someone within an image was just the beginning of Photoshop’s magic.”

Over its 20-year history, Photoshop has evolved significantly from a simple original display program to a wildly popular application that has over 10 million users worldwide. With each release, Adobe has introduced technological innovations that defy the impossible. Layers, introduced in Photoshop 3.0, gave designers the ability to create complex compositions easier than ever before.
The Healing Brush, another groundbreaking feature introduced in Photoshop 7.0, allowed users to magically retouch images by seamlessly removing blemishes and wrinkles, while preserving lighting and texture. Photoshop tools like crop, eraser, blur and dodge and burn have become part of the creative vernacular worldwide.
The Photoshop team thrives off its rich beta tester program, with active and vocal users who have submitted requests and helped shape the development of features throughout the years. Adobe has maintained a strong connection with its customer base through blogs, user research, customer support, forums and feedback from Adobe “evangelists” who travel the world to engage with Photoshop users.

Not a day goes by that we are not using Adobe Photoshop. We have been loyal fans since the PS days, and our digital photo life began to take off.

This is the standard. The company is dedicated to the digital image. Every version starts with a beta and get feedback from the popel who will be actually using the product.
Hope cool is that?
Photoshop’s extended family will help you grow throughout your visual life included graphic design, web design, flash, consumer photos, video editing, and pretty much all of your needs. And of course this past year they introduced Photoshop for the iPhone.
the legions of fans and practitioners insure you that support tips, tricks, shortcuts, training, and answers to many questions are available. We highly recommend joining NAPP, for your learning pleasure, tune into Adobe.tv fro some excellent teaching vids, served in bite sized morsels.

And don’t worry if you get overwhelmed by the amount of depth in the program; its kinda like if you knew it all, it would be like coming to the end of the internet-just won’t happen.

Other software wants to date Photoshop. And they do. The plug-in market is massive, bringing together the best minds in the game to give you additional tools seamlessly woven into an architecture that you are already familiar with.

Happy 20th Birthday to you Photoshop, and many, many, more.

Join in the festivities by clicking on any of the many links listed above.

We’d like to thank everyone who participated in our biggest photo contest yet, Let’s Do Lunch!
There were entries from all over the world and winners from all over the world.
The winners are:

Grand Prize: Katya Evdokimova of London, England

Peoples Choice Award:
Julie Antillon of Alta Loma, CA

Congratulations to all of you!

We are still going through all of the entries to finalize the honorable mentions, which will also be included in a forthcoming book.
Once these have been decided, we will be back to post all of the winning photos.
And of course we will name the Food Bank that our Grand Prize winner has chosen to donate a portion of the entry fees. At the end of the contest, you may remember we also decided to donate an additional 10% of the entry fees to Red Cross for the Haitian Relief Effort.

Once again thank you to everyone for your entries, to our esteemed judges for their time and astute consideration, and our sponsors who generously donated exceptional prizes for this effort.

A few weeks ago we attended a series of photography exhibit openings, with each having a distinctly different flavor.
One had the au courant provocative series of large color images, another gallery featured a historical bent, with black and white images of US history.
Both of these shows came with a price list, and books for sale for those who weren’t ready to make the purchase right then. You can scroll down on this page for the articles on those openings.

The last one we attended was at the Getty Museum, and had such a different mindset that it became a great comparison to the way we receive images and why it is all important to come at them from different viewpoints.

The museum show, expertly curated by 2 woman from the Getty photographic dept., gave us a way to tie in very classical photographic work, to a modern viewpoint, presented in a more unique way.
The Frederick H. Evans exhibit included mainly architectural landscapes, primarily platinum prints, with a few portraits added in.
“A Sea of Steps” – Stairs to the Chapter House, Wells Cathedral, 1903
Creator(s): Frederick H. Evans (British, 1853 – 1943)
Medium: Platinum print
Dimensions: (9 7/16 x 7 1/2 in.)
Copyright: © Mrs. Janet M. Stenner, sole granddaughter of Frederick H. Evans
Object Credit: RPS Collection at the National Media Museum, Bradford, England,
RPS 5012/1
Repro Credit: Royal Photographic Society at the National Media Museum/Science &
Society Picture Library

The sense of light reflected off of the stone or wood surfaces of churches, or other massive structure, is something so strangely liquid, you can only imagine the photographers timing of the daylight to get these images.
In fact, one of the photographs, has a companion shot nearby, as only the camera angle has changed slightly to reveal an entirely new viewpoint.
Earth shattering news? No, but for a generation weaned on digital prints this exploration of an “urban setting” in the turn of the century may give you a sense of a visual calm. It did to us.

And then the concept of the entire current show is further revealed, when you move to the adjoining spaces and rooms with the work of Jeff Cien-Hsing Liao, Catherine Opie, and Soo Kim, called Urban Panoramas.
Each photographer has their own space, and you can listen to the background of the series on provided handsets.
The artists exhibit work telling a tale of urban panoramas with a modern backdrop.
On the floor of each ones “area” there is a map of the path locating the images taken by the photographer. Perhaps, this it letting the viewer have a sense of the either the specificity of a path, or the wanderings of the creator.

The expression of each landscape is told in very different ways. We highly recommend you click on this link and have a listen to the photographers own voice, discussing their work.

Mr. Liao, shooting sheet film in a large format camera, and making up panoramic images from multiple, mainly horizontal, exposures, leads you on a trip around NYC; from the subways to parking structures, to impound yards.

Title/Date: Municipal Parking Garage, Queens Plaza, Negative 2005; Printed 2008
Medium: Inkjet print
Dimensions: (20 x 48 in.)
Copyright: © Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao
Object Credit: Purchased with funds provided by the Photographs Council of the J.
Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Soo Kim did a series in Reykjavik, which online images cannot do justice. This is how she explained what she did to us: First a 12 shot panoramic series was shot at her pre-determined location. Then, if you consider the images numbered 1-12, she would combine the #12 image with the #1 image, cutting out structural flat planes so a skeletal remains would reveal the parts of the image underneath. These 2 images are slightly offset, meaning not flush, so there is a new dimensionality to the new image. Lighting in the gallery helped create a subtle shadow so you could get the space defined by the top print as distinct from the bottom print.
Whew! Is that clear at all?
The point is that we can show you this image here, but truly you should see them in person. She will explain it to you in this audio/visual presentation.

Title/Date: Midnight Reykjavík #5, Negative 2005; Printed 2007
Medium: Layered, hand-cut chromogenic print
Dimensions: Framed: 123.5 x 123.5 cm (48 5/8 x 48 5/8 in.)
Copyright: © Soo Kim
Object Credit: The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Our own Los Angeles based Catherine Opie, gives us a panoramic tour of her home ground in a series of strip malls in black and white.
The strip mall is common cultural marker in our society, and change as the years and communities evolve and shift their make-up.
Her images present a laid back look at these ubiquitous islands of multi-purpose commerce. Mainly told in a flat non dramatic lighting, you can see the simplicity of the non pedestrian culture.

Title/Date: Untitled #2, 1997
Medium: Inkjet print
Dimensions: Image: 40.6 x 104.1 cm (16 x 41 in.)
Copyright: © Catherine Opie
Object Credit: The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

So here is our point: By going to the galleries you can get a, usually, more provocative experience where either very current art or very iconic images are being shown. And of course these are businesses and are meant to sell.
We do encourage you to start to collect photographs, as dictated by your wallet being able to handle it. It is a pleasure to see photographs on your wall that move you.
The investment potential is there, but we have never bought images we didn’t love. Sometimes it took seeing them for a couple of years to take the plunge and of course there will always be the ones we missed out on and regret to this day.

The museum experience brings the photography lover in you completely to the forefront.
A well curated show, which the Getty has been consistently delivering on, can lead you around a space, show you things you may not have discovered in your own life, inspire you, and maybe help you see the world around you in a different way.
Yeah. that’s a lot to ask from an exhibit.
It’s not all on the audio aids you can rent, but it’s always worth to get em. just make the experience that much richer if you don’t have a docent to take you around.
If you can make it to an opening, you also get the opportunity to ask the photographer or curator questions, you may never get answered otherwise.

Since there is nothing for sale, other than some books, or a catalog, the experience has nothing to do with commerce.
It is the sheer, visual, emotional and intellectual, excursion for your cultural pleasure.

There is a large place in this world for both formats, and we encourage you to take advantage of both.
The grid we live in now, asks us to feed back into the community, that which we have learned or experienced.

As a photography fan, these options are a pretty good source to get some impressions to share.

What was the last exhibit you saw?

A Record of Emotion: The Photographs of Frederick H. Evans
Urban Panoramas: Opie, Liao, Kim
February 2nd – June. 6th, 2010
The Getty Center
1200 Getty Center Drive
Los Angeles, California 90049
(310) 440-7300

A short while back, we told about this artist selling off every day in the calendar year to you and you alone.
You can buy a day, add a concept, stir in a bit of background and Shane Rich will cook you up a heaping plate of photographic goodness promoting…whatever the heck you WANT!
Your business, a birthday, special event, a loved one, a graduation, you name it, this man will photographically interpret it for you.
Our day was Jan. 21st and here is how he saw photoinduced:

© Shane Rich

We think it’s pretty cool. Nothing like an IV of camera, right?

So,you not only get an original photo, conceived and shot, you get a nice written piece AND an original print.

What does this cost?

Depends on the day you pick. Each day goes up in price $1. starting at Jan.1, 2010.
So our day was $21.00

We just wanted to follow through and let you know how the process ended up.
Exactly as advertised.
Cool posting on the day, inventive photo, and a signed original print arrived not long after the day of posting.
This kind of creative thinking is to be applauded and supported.
Using the old left brain/right brain system, Shane Rich has made a working photographic business model that supports you, has value beyond the web, and, of course supports him. If he sells all of the days.

Take a look at Oncemany.com, and see what you think. Maybe you can buy a special day for yourself.