Lyndie Benson, a photographer who specializes in naturalistic portraiture of children, recently signed a representation and marketing agreement with FogStock, a stock photography agency based in Portland, Ore. Benson, who lives in the Seattle area, studied under Herb Ritts and counts among her credits a portrait of Bill and Hillary Clinton's dog Buddy.

Ramsay de Give, a second-year student at Brooks Institute of Photography in Ventura, Calif., received a third-place award in the Picture of the Year International competition, sponsored by the University of Missouri School of Journalism, for his photographs of the Southern California wildfires of late 2005.

Camille Licchtenstern, a participant in the Academy of Art University, San Francisco's Saturday Art Experience, has won first place in Artwire.com's Celebrity Deface Off competition. Licchtenstern, a San Francisco resident, reinterpreted Marilyn Monroe's subway grate scene from "The Seven Year Itch" in an image featuring rock celebrity Marilyn Manson.

After reading Roddy Scheer’s article on “Microsoft’s Rich Media Group” (Spring 2006), I’m wondering how much MS funds your publication. There’s a lot of “Vista will have” while Vista doesn’t even exist at this time, and maybe not until 2007 or later, if at all. And to state that PCs are cheaper to buy and maintain is a joke. Comparable PCs are more expensive to purchase than Macs, and the cheapo PCs are not adequate for image processing...

Software Cinema has released a Finelight Video DVD set featuring the late Dean Collins, one of the most celebrated educators of lighting and camera techniques in the industry. "The Best of Dean Collins" covers fundamental and advanced lighting techniques that can be applied to standard or digital photography. In the six-hour set, Collins teaches in-studio and on location about...