The Original Lensbaby is a flexible camera lens that creates an area of focus surrounded by a graduated blur, with greater versatility, convenience, creative control and new effects. The unique imagery is particularly attractive for portrait, wedding, product and fashion photographers.

An image created by a Lensbaby has a circular area of sharp focus. The photographer can move the in-focus area by bending the flexible lens tubing in any direction. The farther from this sharp area, the greater the...

As fate would have it, we were in production on this issue of PhotoMedia — the one time every two years that we focus on the subject of travel photography — when, on Dec. 26, 2004, a natural disaster of immense proportions occurred, which would dominate the news for weeks to come. The early reports of the South Asian tsunami could only give a hint of the magnitude of the resulting destruction, death and injuries.

At press time, the total deaths were approaching 300,000 and still counting. In my entire life, I can’t remember another naturally occurring event that even comes close to the scale of this catastrophe in terms of immediacy, devastation to life and infrastructure, and number of countries involved. The rapid response by world governments, businesses and individuals to provide aid has been truly encouraging...

Printroom.com has expanded its customization services. In addition to its web-ready storefront capabilities, photographers can customize how they present and sell images by creating original storefronts, customized team and player posters, and event- or organization-specific templates. The services can be implemented directly by the photographer or by designers with Platinum Digital, a newly formed partnership with Printroom.

PDS offers full site design, incorporating Printroom.com galleries, for as low as...

Epson’s newest flatbed scanners incorporate a higher Dmax for greater dynamic range and a larger transparency unit than predecessor models. The Perfection 4990 Photo and Perfection 4990 Pro scanners both have built-in 8x10 transparency units with moving carriages and lamps optimized for film scans. The TPU is almost 50 percent larger than the predecessor models. It includes film holders that support eight 35mm mounted slides, four 35mm film strips up to 24 frames, and three to six medium-format frames or two 4x5 frames. It also has an 8x10 guide for transparencies and proof sheets without film holders...

Destinations: Mount St. Helens, Roddy Scheer captures the volcano’s explosive beauty. As I rounded the curve in my van, there before me, in all her majesty, stood Mount St. Helens, aglow in the golden morning light. I pulled into the Bear Meadow turnout, parked and walked over to the spot where unemployed taxi driver and amateur photographer Gary Rosenquist had risked life and limb 25 years before to shoot those famous time-lapse photographs of the mountain in mid-eruption.

On the cover: A yellow Mustang convertible on the twisting Kula Highway on Maui, Hawaii, captures the sense of adventure and excitement found in the travel photography of Colorado’s Blaine Harrington, profiled in this issue. 

Cover photo: Copyright © Blaine Harrington

Nothing heralds the advent of spring like a romp through a sunlit front yard. "Hula Hoop Dancing," by freelance photographer Manuello Paganelli, captures the joyful anticipation of the warm days to come. The idea for the image came spontaneously during a shoot for a Vespa scooter ad near Paganelli's home in North Hollywood, Calif. While taking a break from photographing a model in various poses on a scooter, one of his assistants suggested that Paganelli experiment with some of the playful props they had brought to the shoot, including a number of colorful hula hoops. As the model struggled to smile at the camera and keep all the hoops spinning at once, Paganelli started photographing with his Mamiya RZ67 and 90mm lens, using reflectors to enhance the available early-morning light...

Tamron USA has ceased sales of Bronica ETR-Si, SQ-Ai, SQ-B and GS-1 cameras and accessories in the United States market. Takashi Inoue, the company’s president, cited the advent of digital photography for the decline in medium-format sales. The current sales volume cannot sustain the production of Bronica SLR products, he said.

Tamron will post a list of dealers with substantial Bronica inventory and suggests that photographers contact these dealers to purchase equipment. The Bronica RF645 Medium Format Rangefinder will continue to be...

Olympus has released the next generation in its Stylus series: the Stylus 500. The camera features a 2.5-inch HyperCrystal LCD, 5 megapixels of image resolution and a compact, all-weather body.

The lens provides the equivalent of 35-105mm, f/3.1-f/5.2 in 35mm photography, with 12x combined total zoom (3x optical and 4x digital). A super macro mode captures fine details.

The LCD, with 215,000 pixels of high resolution, has a 160-degree view radius and...

HindSight has released Version 5 of its popular image and business management software, InView and StockView. New in Version 5 are a number of digital capabilities, including the ability to read and write meta tags, batch-convert file types and sizes, batch rename and assemble digital submissions with PDF trails. The built-in HTML generator allows users to create thumbnail galleries. License tracking alerts users when licenses are...