Stars Against Aids

A photography exhibit featuring 25 well-known women from Russia and Ukraine that aims to raise awareness and reduce stigma associated with HIV/AIDS opened Thursday in Moscow, the Moscow Times reports.
The goal of the exhibit, sponsored by UNAIDS, is to promote public and private discussions about the disease, particularly among women, the Times reports. The exhibit, titled "Stars Against AIDS," will run for two weeks in Moscow at the Stella Art Foundation. The exhibit will then tour the country, and a selection of photographs will be published as a 2009 calendar scheduled to be launched Dec. 1 on World AIDS Day.
According to the Moscow branch of Russia's Consumer Protection Service, of the 28,000 people living with HIV/AIDS in the city as of January, more than 50% are women -- a 14% increase from 2007. In addition, most new HIV/AIDS cases among women occur among women ages 20 to 29, the Times reports.
Some experts said the increasing "feminization" of the epidemic in the country is a result of the changing nature of HIV transmission, as well as changes in gender-based social norms and sexual customs, the Times reports. Although injection drug use remains a primary mode of HIV transmission in the country, sexual intercourse is increasingly contributing to the spread of the virus, according to the Times.
In addition, many women cannot negotiate sex or condom use with their husbands or partners. "Some women suspect their husbands have many sexual partners but fear to be abandoned or beaten if they resist their husbands," Maria Ivannikova, head of the information department at the nongovernment organization AIDS Information Service, said. Unemployment and economic insecurity also lead some women to commercial sex work, according to the Times. Surveys conducted in various cities throughout Russia indicate that most sex workers are between ages 17 and 23 and do not consistently use condoms, the Times reports (Osadchuk, Moscow Times, 5/21).
News-Medical.Net republished this article with kind permission from their friends at The Kaiser Family Foundation. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery of in-depth coverage of health policy developments, debates and discussions. The Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report is published for Kaisernetwork.org, a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

Would you like to register for News-Medical's weekly NO-NONSENSE Medical News Letter? At the end of each week they'll send you an email containing links to the most popular articles (by page impression) from your chosen categories that appeared on News-Medical.Net in that week. You will NOT be bombarded with advertising and you CAN unsubscribe at any time. Click here for more information or click here to view News-Medical's news archive.
Picture of the day:

The Four Seasons Collection

Winter in Munich Germany - Frozen Spruce

Photography lovers who liked this also liked:

monument art
monument canvas prints
monument framed prints
monument prints
monument posters
monument greeting cards
monument photos

monuments art
monuments canvas prints
monuments framed prints
monuments prints
monuments posters
monuments greeting cards
monuments photos

basin art
basin canvas prints
basin framed prints
basin prints
basin posters
basin greeting cards
basin photos

dreamy framed prints
skyline acrylic prints
moody acrylic prints
conifer acrylic prints
ecosystem acrylic prints

Make the Best of Difficult Lighting

Use an old-fashioned darkroom trick to put more light on an underexposed, backlit subject.

A backlit scene--one in which the main light source is behind the subject so you're shooting into the light--is to photography what a 7/10 split is to bowling, or parallel parking on a steep hill is to driving a car.
The problem is that direct lighting in the back of your scene confuses your camera into closing down the aperture or shooting with a faster shutter speed, leading to an underexposed subject. But just because it's a little tricky to shoot with backlighting, that doesn't mean you can't get great results anyway.
This week, let's take a classic backlit photo and punch it up in Adobe Photoshop Elements. If you use a different photo editing program, you can get the same results; you'll just need to adapt the steps to your program.

Dave Johnson's Part 1 of a special five-part series at PC World

Photo of the day:

Arts and Crafts

Hand-Crafted Garden Art Sculpture

Photography lovers who liked this also liked:

column art
column canvas prints
column framed prints
column prints
column posters
column greeting cards
column photos

horizontal art
horizontal canvas prints
horizontal framed prints
horizontal prints
horizontal posters
horizontal greeting cards
horizontal photos

random art
random canvas prints
random framed prints
random prints
random posters
random greeting cards
random photos

great metal prints
steeples metal prints
great britain metal prints
saint metal prints
old town metal prints

Summer Photo Guide

Every once in a while Photo Reporter uses this column to toot their own horn. This is one of those times.
The next issue of Demystifying Digital: Summer Photo Guide will appear in USA Today on May 23, the Friday 
preceding the busy Memorial Day weekend. Grab an issue of USA Today and take a look.
Photo Reporter continues to publish Demystifying Digital because there is still so much confusion out there among consumers about 
the role of digital in their lives. While digital SLRs and point and shoots are “run of the mill” to those of you reading this column, for most people digital photography is still a source of confusion.
Photo Reporter's objective for Demystifying Digital, as well as their accompanying website, demystifyingdigital.com, is to "make sense 
of today’s technology" for those who are confused or intimidated. Their upcoming issue includes their editor’s picks for digital SLRs, point-and-shoot cameras and camcorders. They’ve also included an article called “Zooming In,” which discusses the advantages of longer lenses on both DSLRs and compacts. And, they have an article on scrapbooking and the many ways in which in-store kiosks can easily be used to print pictures and create other photo items.
If you’d like a copy of Demystifying Digital, or might be interested in having a quantity of future issues shipped to your store, please send an e-mail to
jerry@demystifyingdigital.com.
They’d also appreciate any feedback you might have

Credits: Jerry Grossman & Alan Levine at photoreporter.com

Photo of the day:

Desert Beauty

White Lined Sphinx Moth Caterpillar

Photography lovers who liked this also liked:

geometry art
geometry canvas prints
geometry framed prints
geometry prints
geometry posters
geometry greeting cards
geometry photos

tops art
tops canvas prints
tops framed prints
tops prints
tops posters
tops greeting cards
tops photos

shiny art
shiny canvas prints
shiny framed prints
shiny prints
shiny posters
shiny greeting cards
shiny photos

steeple metal prints
winterscapes metal prints
st metal prints
churches metal prints
church metal prints

Eden Prairie firm admits to bizarre yearbook photos

Minnesota company to pay for reprinted yearbooks

A Minnesota company - Eden Prairie-based Lifetouch - says it's taking full responsibility for altered pictures that ruined a high school yearbook and will pay to have the publication reprinted before the seniors graduate.

Students at McKinney High School - McKinney is about 20 miles north of Dallas. - were stunned to get their yearbooks this week and see that some heads had been put on other people's bodies, sometimes of the other sex, and one girl appeared to be nude.
A spokeswoman for Eden Prairie-based Lifetouch National School Studios Inc. said today that the company sometimes touches up photos to cover blemishes and the like.
"What's different in this case is that Lifetouch staff altered the images they sent to the yearbook company," spokeswoman Sara Thurin Rollin said. "That doesn't happen."
The high school in a Dallas suburb had required Lifetouch to make heads the same size and eyes at the same level in all student photos. Rollin said the request was "unusual and definitely very particular, but that's not to suggest what happened here is acceptable."
Rollin declined to say if the company fired or reprimanded the employee who altered the images. She said the alterations were "an unfortunate lapse in judgment" but didn't believe it was malicious.
Rollin said Lifetouch will bear the full price of reprinting the yearbooks, which she estimated at $75,000, and get the new books in students' hands before they leave for the summer.
Lifetouch, takes photos for 28,000 schools and had never run into this kind of problem, she said.
More than 30 students had their photos altered in the yearbooks that were handed out this week. Several heads were atop bodies wearing the same clothes. Some students' necks were stretched, one girl's arm was missing, and another girl's head was placed on what appeared to be a nude body, with the chest blurred.
Lori Oglesbee, the school's yearbook adviser, said the yearbook staff would spend the weekend rebuilding the yearbook.

via St. Paul Pioneer Press
Example photo at kare11

Photograph of the day:

Edinburgh, Scotland

Castle Entrance at Night

Photography lovers who liked this also liked:

tiles art
tiles canvas prints
tiles framed prints
tiles prints
tiles posters
tiles greeting cards
tiles photos

plane art
plane canvas prints
plane framed prints
plane prints
plane posters
plane greeting cards
plane photos

shine art
shine canvas prints
shine framed prints
shine prints
shine posters
shine greeting cards
shine photos

european metal prints
europa metal prints
capitals metal prints
vista metal prints
britain metal prints

Olympus E420 Review

Choosing a digital camera has always been an exercise in compromise.
You could plump for a compact camera with all the advantages of portability and low cost but with the limited picture quality inherent in a small sensor.
Otherwise you could go for an SLR with all the advantages of a big sensor and interchangeable lenses but the definite drawbacks that come with greater size, weight and cost.
For many serious photographers (with deep pockets) the ideal solution was to buy one of each device - a small point-and-shoot camera to carry everywhere and an SLR with a selection of lenses for Photography with a capital P.
But now there is a new breed of camera that combines much of the best of both worlds. The Olympus E420 is the trailblazer of this new class of camera and can be best described as a "compact SLR".
On first acquaintance, the E420 is almost unbelievably tiny. It tips the scales at 380 grams (which compares very favourably with Canon's "serious" compact, the G9). When teamed up with the specially produced 25mm fixed lens it's easy to believe Olympus's boast that this is the smallest DSLR yet. Some questions have been raised about whether it is too small for big hands but, while my own hands are far from dainty, I didn't have any problems.
Within this tiny package you get 2.7-inch LCD screen, incorporating live view. This allows you to frame shots and preview exposure in real time.
There is also a face-detect function and a very intuitive menu system. Under the bonnet is a 10-megapixel, four-thirds system sensor.
Image quality is superb, especially with the 25-millimetre prime lens. Digital noise is quite apparent at 800 ISO-plus but otherwise is very acceptable.
Image stabilisation would have been helpful, as would more than three auto-focus points. But, frankly, at this small price and size you can't have everything.

OLYMPUS E420
Price $799 (body only)
$899 (single lens kit)
Rating 4.5 out of 5
http://www.olympus.com.au/

Thanks to Nik Galvin at The Sidney Morning Herald for the review.

Picture of the day:

Wildflowers

Siberian Wallflower

Photography lovers who liked this also liked:

tile art
tile canvas prints
tile framed prints
tile prints
tile posters
tile greeting cards
tile photos

unusual greeting cards

deserts art
deserts canvas prints
deserts framed prints
deserts prints
deserts posters
deserts greeting cards
deserts photos

harsh canvas prints
harsh framed prints
harsh prints
harsh posters
harsh greeting cards
harsh photos

winter metal prints
house metal prints
street metal prints
birds metal prints
bird metal prints

What Are the Odds?

The Orphan Works Likelihood of Passage

As we consider the viability of Orphan Works, let's not look at the content of the bill, but rather, a statistical history of the last decade or so to fortell it's likelihood of passage this session.

The photobusinessforum blog shows a breakdown of the number of bills that were introduced into the House and Senate. Where it says "Enrolled", what that means is that, of all the bills introduced, that number is the only # that made it out of Congress to go to the President for his signature, which would make it into a law (or a revision of a current law.) The percentage of bills that make it that far are very small, and an even smaller sub-set of bills actually become law. John Harrington has included the last session under President Clinton, and all the sessions under President Bush.

* note: 110th is the number, to date.Source: Library of Congress's Thomas resource.
Hopefully, this will give you an idea as to the likelihood of passage and enactment.

Photograph of the day:

Travel Destinations

Bryce Canyon and its Natural Bridges

Photography lovers who liked this also liked:

drought art
drought canvas prints
drought framed prints
drought prints
drought posters
drought greeting cards
drought photos

death valley art
death valley canvas prints
death valley framed prints
death valley prints
death valley posters
death valley greeting cards
death valley photos

land art
land canvas prints
land framed prints
land prints
land posters
land greeting cards
land photos

view metal prints
eye metal prints
mellow metal prints
lothian metal prints
register metal prints