Leica Book Cover

    Today, I found out that one of the three images I sent to the Leica Camera Users Group was selected for the cover of their most recent book.  Okay, so it's the back cover, but hey, that's still pretty good.  The Blurb book highlights Leica's first digital rangefinder camera, the M8 which was introduced about a year ago.  The book, Many Eyes, One Camera, represents the work of nearly 80 Leica M8 photographers from around the world, who contributed hundreds of photos for consideration in the book.  The group hopes to persuade Leica Camera to agree to a world-wide distribution of the book in an effort to promote the M8 to a much wider audience.

    The  photo (below) selected was one I took last September while I was in Berlin.  I was taking a shot of one of the government buildings right near the Brandenburg Gate, when I saw this janitor walk by while pushing the "tools" of his trade.  He just seemed so out of place against the pristine building, more often the backdrop for German diplomats and government workers.  A huge letter "D" (Deutschland) which was applied to the facade sort of ties the image all together.

Madison Street Fair '08

Although I lived in Madison for several years before moving to Limestone County, I never had the opportunity to attend the Madison Street Fair. That's because it was always held the same weekend as my wife's annual business trip to Germany, a trip I enjoyed joining her on. This year, however, her meetings aren't scheduled until December, so I had an opportunity to see just went on at one of these yearly events.

Predictably, they had the usual assortment of vendors, offering a varied range of home-grown arts and crafts. I have been to enough street fairs to have developed a certain level of expectation. I was not disappointed. There were the usual array of artists, jewelry makers, people selling cakes and cookies, notions and lotions. A number of food vendors kept the crowd satisfied, even though the prices are easily double what you'd pay on any other day. The children were kept well entertained, and along with the traditional face painting, there was hat and necklace making and even an area to create one's own personalized cupcake.

Due to the timing, one thing I did notice unique to this fair was the number of political tents promoting a number of candidates, not only for local office, but for the presidential race as well. I found it a bit disturbing that one had to pay for a bumper sticker or campaign button promoting either the Democratic or Republican candidate. I thought the parties wanted you to have those things to display, and would supply them willingly to anyone who showed the least bit of interest in their candidate. Apparently, those days are over. After all, somebody's got to pay for that 700 billion dollar bailout of those credit markets.

All in all, I'd say that the Madison Street Fair was one of the better attended fairs of this type. The crowds kept building throughout the morning and early afternoon, but I did notice a slight easing up of the number of people as things approached the 2:30 pm kickoff for the Alabama-Kentucky game. That's was to be expected I suppose.

Darrell Osborn, better known as Dr. Osborn mimics the face of one of the hundreds of animal balloons he created for the throngs of kids at the Madison Street Fair.

Scanning Site a Reality

Well, this week, I finally launched my new site, White Glove Scanning.  It took a while, no doubt due to my lack of experience building web sites. I'm sure I will be tweaking it some more as we work out the bugs in the next few weeks. 

White Glove Scanning is a full-service professional scanning and digitizing service, geared not only for the photographer, but anyone who has a need for high quality scans.  We offer all the negative, slide and print scanning services anyone would ever want, and at a reasonable cost.  We accept films in sizes from 16mm through 4x5 inches and prints up to 8x10 inches.  Our scanners are truly state-of-the-art.  We have just recently added a new Nikon Coolscan 9000ED (very difficult to get) to our equipment lineup as well as an Epson V750 Pro flatbed, considered the best flatbed for imagery scanning.  This scanner has two lenses to provide optimum performance depending on the material to be scanned as well as the resolution required.  It even incorporates fluid mount capability to remove scratches and grain from black and white film.

Our scans are all done by hand.  We use no automated feeders that can malfunction and damage slides and negatives.  We feel that our prices are very competitive and turn-around times are better than most scanning houses.  We never send slides or negatives to another country as a lot of less reputable scanning houses do.  So, please check us out at  White Glove Scanning, located right here in Athens, Alabama for all your scanning needs.