The Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, Calif., has announced plans to celebrate the school's 60th anniversary throughout the remainder of 2005, and is seeking alumni to be part of the celebration.

In addition to other anniversary activities in Ventura and Santa Barbara over the coming months, the celebration will culminate with two major events on the weekend of Oct. 20-22. Brooks will host an alumni reception at the 2005 PhotoPlus Expo in New York City on Friday, Oct. 21. The following evening, a gala will be held at the Fess Parker Doubletree in Santa Barbara. The event's theme will be the 1940s, when Brooks was founded by professional photographer...

Since the first flatbed scanner debuted in 1994, the market has seen many innovations. Among the creative service fields, planned investment in both digital cameras and desktop color scanners is at record highs, according to a new report from TrendWatch Graphic Arts.

Although both of these technologies have trickled down to the consumer level, the extent to which the graphic art markets have benefited is less clear. The advent of digital ad delivery has done more to impede the market for scanners among magazine publishers and their printers than has digital photography, the report noted.

At most, only 15 percent of print and prepress firms have ever planned to invest in color scanners in any TWGA survey. Web design, development and production firms say that their preferred scanner investment is in the $500 to $1,000 range. In a similar study conducted last year, 23 percent of print and prepress firms planned to invest...

The Heart Gallery is a New Jersey charitable organization dedicated to helping foster children find families. The project makes portraits of foster children who are at least 3 years old or are in sibling groups, and then places those portraits on exhibit. The goal of the project is to inspire people visiting the exhibit to get involved as mentors, adoptive parents, employers or volunteers.

The 2005 exhibit features 60 portraits by 27 project photographers, all of whom donated their time. The exhibit recently appeared in various sites around Puget Sound, and opened June 12 at the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, N.J. A sampling of the portraits is available at dshs.wa.gov.

The Prentice and Paul Sack Photographic Trust has promised to give nearly 800 photographs from the Sacks' private collection to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

This group of photographs joins their 1998 gift of nearly 1,000 works.

This summer, SFMOMA is presenting an exhibition drawn from the Sack photo collection. "Taking Place: Photographs from the Prentice and Paul Sack Collection" is one of the largest ever mounted at SFMOMA, celebrating an unparalleled collection that spans the history of the medium from 1840 to 1975.

Santa Fe Workshops has established a scholarship fund in memory of Westlight stock agency co-founder Craig Aurness, who taught at the workshops in the early 1990s. The Craig Aurness Memorial Scholarship Fund, sponsored by Corbis, will provide two $1,250 scholarships annually to talented and deserving emerging professional photographers who wish to attend the weeklong workshops in Santa Fe. More information about the scholarship program is available at santafeworkshops.com.

PixelGenius, makers of the PhotoKit series of Adobe Photoshop plug-ins, has launched a new blog site, PhotoshopNews.com, dedicated to all things Photoshop. The project is the creation of the group of Photoshop experts who formed PixelGenius: Martin Evening, Bruce Fraser, Seth Resnick, Andrew Rodney, Jeff Schewe and Mike Skurski.
PhotoshopNews aims to bring the Photoshop community the latest news about Photoshop, with topics such as...

Science Faction recently announced that its image collection is available for licensing through Getty Images. Founded in 2004 by Roger Ressmeyer, a photographer of space and science and a former executive in the stock photo industry, Science Faction represents imagery that captures the universe of physical and natural sciences, high technology, medicine and space.

The collection includes work by science photographers and artists such as Tony Hallas, Fred and Randi Hirschmann, Nancy Kedersha, Chad Kleitsch, Yoav Levy, Flip Nicklin, Louie Psihoyos, William Radcliffe, David Scharf and Henry Schleichkorn.

For more information, contact Caren Brinkema at 206-232-2300, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

A couple of weeks ago, I stopped by Samy’s Camera in Santa Barbara [Calif.] to check out their new location. After examining a new camera bag, I went over to pick up some product literature when the Spring [2005] edition of PhotoMedia caught my eye. I don’t know if it was the large format of the magazine or the eye-catching cover photo, but I pulled one off the rack for a look-see. I had never seen a copy of PhotoMedia before, but this one was going home with me, that was for sure.

I headed over to the checkout counter to pay for it, but pulled up short when I noticed it was free. I went out to my car — my wife was patiently waiting for me — and began to look over the photos of the tsunami disaster. We paged through the magazine together, and each page brought another great story or picture.

I’ve never been moved to write to a photo magazine, but I wanted to let you know I think you’re doing a heck of a good job with this publication. I subscribe to Digital Photo Pro and Popular Photography, and I receive complimentary copies of Rangefinder, Electronic Imaging (until they went under), Government AV Video and few others. From a pure content point of view, PhotoMedia is right up there with the best of them. There is more meat in this Spring issue than in most magazines four times its size. I also liked the idea of actually being able to see the cover photo without most of it being obscured by type and advertising. The photo reproduction is excellent. I don’t know all the technology behind that, but the tonal range and fine detail are evident on every page. I’m no expert on laying out a magazine, but I know a good one when I see it. Thanks for a great publication, and keep up the good work.

Dennis Fisher
Optical Systems Manager
Western Test Range
Vandenburg Air Force Base, Calif.

In collaboration with Getty Images and photographer Nicholas Prior, FareStart has designed a project to depict the realities of homelessness in the Seattle area. The project, "Home," was unveiled April 14 at the Henry Art Gallery with a talk by Prior about the ethics of photographing subjects in despair, as well as the privileges and responsibilities of having a home.

After its debut at the Henry, the exhibit will travel to galleries, companies and organizations in the Seattle area through March 2006. Putting "Home" on display in multiple venues around Seattle is intended to raise awareness of the challenges faced by the city's homeless population and to publicize FareStart, a job-training and placement program for homeless men, women and youth in the Seattle area.

FareStart is in the final year of its $8 million Futures Rising capital campaign, having purchased a new facility at 7th and Westlake avenues in July 2004. The new facility will allow FareStart to double the number of homeless individuals...

The American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP), the Advertising Photographers of America (APA) and Adobe Systems have formed an alliance to simplify the hiring of assignment photographers. The Adobe Photographers Directory will provide a searchable list of professional photographers, accessible directly from Adobe's products for creative professionals. ASMP's general members will be charter members of the directory, as will members of the APA.

Users of the directory will be able to search the listings by geographic location and photographic specialty, and view portfolio images. The photographers' experience and competence will be evidenced by their membership in the partnering organizations.

Further details about how ASMP general members can participate in the directory are posted at asmp.org/adobe.