Digital Photography Made Easy :Learn the Secrets of Digital Photography; Email Photos, Print Quality Photos, Make Photo T-Shirts & Coffee Mugs, Make Photo Greeting Cards & Invitations, Save & Store Photos on CD, Learn to use a Scanner & Much More!

This informative program shows you how to use your computer to save, print, email, store, and scan digital photographs. You'll save time and money doing it yourself and you'll be more creative and productive. Over 3 hours of one-on-one instruction featuring Lenny Magill, one of America's leading experts on digital phtography. You'll learn to print high-quality photos that are sutible for framing! Plus, how to email photos, make custom photo T-Shirts and coffee mugs, make photo greeting cards and invitations, even how to use a scanner to import existing photos and negatives into your computer! A great value for everyone interested in printing and sharing photos.

Mother rang me to say the last session of the Bradford Camera Club was tonight! I was wanting to find out more about them so I felt obliged to go. Turned out they are a small group of friendly people, who focus on slides, prints and digital photography. They also do some competitions and exhibitions. Tonight they were giving members back prints mounted on large card that were featured in a recent exhibition. I saw a ton of great work, and was impressed by the quality of the prints. They regularly get high marks from the judges of competitions, and I could see why. But my jaw dropped when I saw a fantastic large-sized print that had come from a mere point and shoot digital camera! I'm going to see how the group works out for me when they start meeting again in September. However, they have given everybody a list of subjects to shoot before then. Better still, they are planning to meet up at a variety of interesting places over the summer, to take lots of pictures. I hope to learn from some of the members, who have a lot more experience and skills than myself. But anybody is welcome to join. And they told me they aren't all professionals, but keen amateurs like myself. Great! Only one thing - I was probably the youngest person there! Where are all the young folk?

I didn't wash up the dishes from Thursday evening [because we ate very late]. I didn't wash up the dishes yesterday all day because I simply did not enter the kitchen, mainly because I was out pretty much all day (supermarket and working in the evening til late) So I had a bit of a surprise this morning when I found a massive pile of dirty dishes waiting for me to bathe them. Seemingly they all piled up throughout the days. I don't usually have to wash up on the weekend [my brother and I alternate, I do Tues-Thurs, he does Fri-Monday, mainly cos on weekdays I'm usually in, and weekends there aren't as many dishes. Plus I cook!] But considering how I didn't wash up Thursdays and Friday's added on top of it, I guess it doesn't take a genius to work out it's my turn to wash up... But I don't mind. Because I just listen to music. And when I listen to music, everything is ok. PS: clocks go back tonight! Well here in the UK! woohoo! An extra hour in bed!

M.C. Escher, the artist who lived from 1898 to 1972, suffers from horrible overexposure. Who hasn't seen the college dorm room posters, postcards, T-shirts, and coffee mugs of such well-worn images as a hand drawing another hand or gothic buildings with never-ending staircases? The mass reproduction of these images has carved a firm place in our popular culture, yet made the work dismissible as modern art. Beyond the familiar images, though, is an immense body of work. The Magic of M.C. Escher covers in depth the graphic illustrations, woodcuts, and lithographs of Escher's career. The artist has always attracted the attention of scientists, mathematicians, and teenage boys everywhere; the popular 1980s game Dungeons & Dragons seems to borrow heavily from the systematic yet mystical quality of his drawing style. With his amazingly repetitive graphic illustration and unflinchingly control of size, shape, and shading, Escher draws like a human computer. One can only wonder what he might have done with today's graphic tools.
The book itself is creatively put together, with foldouts, seemingly endless images, and a loving introduction by the director of the Gemeentemuseum in the Hague. The minimal text selections that appear throughout are quotes from Escher himself, many taken from letters to family members. These personal musings give candid insight into what he thought about his peers, his career, and his work: "I really do feel these days like a kind of 'specialist,' and I don't want to 'depend' on my specialty alone, but I also feel it to be my duty to devote myself to that as much as possible." This remarkable book is a wonderful opportunity to enjoy the astounding work of the man who could create two-dimensional origami with a pencil. --J.P. Cohen