Furniture and Appliances for the Kitchen & Bath at Discount Prices!

Many homeowners realise that it pays to be budget savy when it comes to kitchen and bath remodeling projects. One way to do this is by discount stores such as KitchenLav.com. Specializing in Kitchen and bath product sales, this online store is a great help to homeowners, architects and professionals with small to large project responsibilities. Besides offering very reasonable prices, it also has staff to assist consumers with product questions by calling the company\’s toll free number.

KitchenLav.com offers deep discount product promotions. These special sales run for a limited time period and new product sales offerings are available every three months. Homeowners will find a wide range of bathroom vanities, from 24 inch to 78 inch wide and a good selection of styles, from contemporary to traditional designs.

No Space. No Problem. Compact Kitchens are here to stay. Compact Kitchens, or Kitchenettes are made in several sizes, color finishes and with just about any appliance combination, depending on the manufacturer and available models. Large selection of sizes and colors on Kitchen units with electric or gas burners are very affordable and the small size of these utility kitchens make them a great selection for projects with a limited floor plan. Compact kitchens are sometimes referred to as combination kitchens and combine a small undercounter refrigerator, range top with two cooking burners, a stainless steel sink and faucet, such as the ones sold at www.KitchenLav.com. Efficiency kitchens are ideal for assisted living facilities, apartment complexes, student accommodations, offices, motels and cottages. Kitchen units are available with matching wall cabinets. KitchenLav also carries a Huge selection of bathroom sink vanities. Visit us at www.KitchenLav.com. Call us toll free at 888-550-1198 for more information.

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From Kitchen, left


Image by thepatrick

A second body


Image by smcgee
Refurbished, bought in an online auction. I was curious how many exposures would be on the "like new" camera and was pleased to see it was only 1100. I would have loved to have upgraded to a d80 or a d200, but the price was right for this one for now.

Anyone need a kit lens?

The Sausage Kitchen 2


Image by dugspr — Home for Good
They can no longer offer six free if you buy six (of whatever). This is the result of another ridiculous City ordanance. Now you have to buy the full amount but they will give you the discounted price that you would have paid with the old system. I love this City.

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201 East Chestnut


Image by seeChicagorealestate.com
deepdishrealestate.com/2010/02/201-east-chestnut/
THE SURPRISING SUBSTANCE OF 201 E. CHESTNUT

She may not be the prettiest one in the neighborhood. Or the flashiest. Or even the youngest. But she definitely has a quality that will capture your imagination.

This is the allure of 201 E. Chestnut, a modestly-designed but well-loved building situated in Chicago’s Streeterville neighborhood. The building’s location is near-perfect: kitty-cornered from the John Hancock Building, across the street from Water Tower Place and one block from Northwestern University Medical Center. The shopping mecca of Michigan Avenue is just one block west.

What the condo homes of 201 E. Chestnut may lack in youth and pizazz, they make up for in sheer size. One-bedroom condos are over 1,000 square feet. The bedrooms alone are a cavernous 17’ x 11’ with adjoining walk-in closet. A family of five could live comfortably on the spacious balcony that also comes with each unit. Other amenities include an indoor pool, party room and coin laundry. In-unit washer/dryer hook-ups may be permitted with board approval. All parking spaces in the building are leased at a Discount to residents at 5.

“Big” is also an integral facet of the building’s pet policy: there is no weight limit on dogs. Only a handful of Streeterville buildings have such a pet-friendly policy. Of course cats are welcome here, too.

What’s NOT big about homes at 201 E. Chestnut? The price tags! One foreclosed unit in the building was listed last fall for 7,263 (that was some funky asking price). In a highly atypical move, the building’s association exercised its right of first refusal and eventually purchased the unit for 6,000.

The lowest-priced one-bedroom is currently for sale at an amazingly low 9,000. The parquet flooring in the living/dining room, kitchen was redone with fresh cabinet fronts , new counter tops and appliances. The bathroom and kitchen have been nicely updated with new tile and cherry cabinets. This home has only been listed for a few weeks. At this price there’s no doubt it won’t be on the market much longer.

The lowest-priced two-bedroom unit is listed at 9,900. This is a stunning sixteen-hundred-square-foot showpiece on the sixteenth floor, with an open floorplan to die for.
201 E. Chestnut offers an exceptional value for the neighborhood in comparison with its newer, flashier condo neighbors. If you’re looking for a real estate investment in a building that has much to offer, contact Ted Guarnero at Baird & Warner, (312) 810-6693.
Streeterville real estate

If you like 201 East Chestnut you might also like 200 East Delaware real estate

33647 Ophir Rd, Gold Beach, Oregon, 97444


Image by Gold Beach Real Estate
Noteworthy price reduction for proudPROW O/V A-Frame w/detached GUEST HOUSE. lodge-style w/lots of wood embellished w/redwood features. Clean/maintained. New roof. Upper large loft Master suite. Main level Great Room, dining area, kitchen, 2-beds/bath. Lower entertainment/bar/family room. Skylights. Built-ins. Wrap around deck. Level-acre/towering shore pines. Circular drive

Azalea Ln


Image by Gold Beach Real Estate
THE PRICE IS RIGHT. Delightful single-level bungalow with peek of ocean view. Open floor plan kitchen/dining/living w/ lots of windows. Over-sized Master bedroom. Newer roof. Cute woodstove. Walk-thru laundry area. SW sun exposure. Close to town and sandy beaches.

THE PRICE IS RIGHT. Delightful single-level bungalow with peek of ocean view. Open floor plan kitchen/dining/living w/ lots of windows. Over-sized Master bedroom. Newer roof. Cute woodstove. Walk-thru laundry area. SW sun exposure. Close to town and sandy beaches.

Some cool kitchen prices images:

“A ship on the beach is a lighthouse to the sea” Project 366 2008 – June 7, 2008 ~


Image by turtlemom4bacon
159/366 – Project 366 2008 – June 7, 2008 ~

~Dutch Proverb

Sandy Hook, New Jersey ~

In 1764, the eight-year-old child prodigy Mozart was entertaining in Europe’s royal courts, Beethoven’s birth was still six years in the future, Thomas Jefferson would not pen the Declaration of Independence for a dozen more years, and the oldest lighthouse that is still standing in the United States was put into service.
The first landmark discernible by sailors approaching New York Harbor is the Navesink Highlands. Extending from the base of the headlands is a low-lying spit known as Sandy Hook, which stretches over four miles into the Atlantic and poses a serious navigational hazard for vessels seeking safe harbor.

Records show that a lighthouse at the tip of Sandy Hook had been suggested as early as 1679, but it wasn’t until several shipwrecks occurred in the first three months of 1761 that decisive action was taken. On March 13, 1761, forty-three prominent New York merchants successfully petitioned Caldweller Colden, President of His Majesty’s Council of New York, for a lighthouse to mark the entrance to New York Harbor.

Lotteries are apparently not a recent invention as one was proposed to raise funds to acquire land on Sandy Hook and to pay for construction of the lighthouse. By virtue of an Act of the Colony of New York, passed on May 19, 1761, a lottery was established to raise £3000. 10,000 tickets were to be sold at a price of 40 Shillings(£2). 1,684 tickets were to be “fortunate,” 8,316 blank, and 15% of the lottery sales would be retained for the lighthouse. The winning numbers were published in the October 5, 1761 edition of the New York Mercury.

The profit from the first lottery proved inadequate for the entire project, but it did at least fund the purchase of four acres on Sandy Hook from Esik and Richard Hartshorne. A second lottery, held on June 14, 1763, was authorized to raise £3000 to see the lighthouse completed.

Originally called the New York Lighthouse, the tower on Sandy Hook was built of rubblestone under the guidance of Isaac Conro, a mason and builder from New York City. The beacon was first lighted on June 11, 1764, and a week later an article in the New York Mercury announced the lighting and described the lighthouse.

On Monday Evening last the New York Lighthouse erected at Sandy Hook was lighted for the first time. The House is of an Octagonal Figure, having eight equal sides; the Diameter at the Base is 29 Feet and at the top of the Wall 15 Feet. The lanthorn is 7 Feet high; the circumference 33 Feet. The whole constructure of the Lanthorn is Iron; the top covered with copper. There are 48 Oil Blazes. The Building from the surface is Nine Stories; the whole from the Bottom to Top 103 Feet.
As the lighthouse’s primary purpose was to guide vessels into New York Harbor, Jonias Smith, clerk of the Master and Wardens of the Port of New York, was authorized to collect three pence a ton from ships passing the lighthouse and entering the harbor. The money collected was then used to pay the keeper and purchase supplies like oil, tallow, and coal required at the lighthouse. In the first year, £487 was collected, easily covering the year’s expenses of £431. It seems the Port of New York had a self-sustaining venture as £451 was collected the next year, while the expenses were only £407.

The tall lighthouse on the low-lying sandy spit was easily seen by mariners, but being the only structure of any height for several miles, it apparently was also susceptible to lightning strikes. In June of 1766, the New York Mercury reported:

The 26th Instant, the Lighthouse at Sandy Hook was struck by Lightning, and twenty panes of the Glass Lanthorn broke to pieces; the chimney and Porch belonging to the kitchen was broken down, and some people that were in the House received a little Hurt, but are since recovered. ‘Tis said the Gust was attended with a heavy shower of Hail.
Early in the Revolutionary War, the New York Congress resolved that the lighthouse should be destroyed or the lighting apparatus dismantled lest it fall into enemy hands. Major William Malcolm received orders in a letter dated March 6, 1776 to “take the glass out of the lantern, and save it if possible; but if you find this impracticable you will break the glass. You will also endeavor to pump the oil out of the cisterns into casks, or not being able to procure casks, you will pump it out onto the ground. In short, you will use your best discretion to render the lighthouse entirely useless.” Major Malcolm’s mission must have been partly successful as a letter to Colonel George Meade dated March 12 states: “Received from Wm. Malcolm eight copper lamps, two tackle falls and bocks, and three casks, and a part of a cask of oil, being articles from the lighthouse on Sandy Hook.”

Less than three months later, the British had the lighthouse repaired and back in operation. Next, a daring attack was led by Benjamin Tupper to destroy the lighthouse with cannon fire, but after an hour of volleys, he “found the walls so firm that the cannon fire could make no impression.” The stout lighthouse would remain under British control for most of the war.

Following the war, a feud over the lighthouse broke out between the states of New Jersey and New York. This disagreement was quickly defused when the Act of August 7, 1789 gave control of all lighthouses to the federal government, stating that "the necessary support, maintenance and repairs of all lighthouses beacons, buoys, and public piers erected, placed or sunk before the passing of this act, at the entrance of, or within any bay, inlet, harbor or port of the United States, for rendering the navigation thereof easy and safe, shall be defrayed out of the treasury of the United States."

In compliance to the Act, a lot of about four acres "at the point of Sandy Hook, in Monmouth County," was ceded to the United States by the State of New Jersey on November 16, 1790, and on March 1, 1804, the State of New Jersey "consented to the purchase of a lot on the north point of Sandy Hook, for the purpose of erecting a beacon." Over the years, several minor beacon lights have been placed on the spit, some paired with the main lighthouse to form a range light, to further help ships entering New York Harbor. In addition to maintaining the lighthouse, the keeper at Sandy Hook was also responsible for the smaller beacons. One of these, known as the north beacon was moved up the Hudson River in 1917, and is now known as the Jeffrey’s Hook Lighthouse.

In 1852 the Lighthouse Board reported "The tower of Sandy Hook … is now in a good state of preservation. Neither leaks nor cracks were observed in it. The mortar appeared to be good, and it was stated that the annual repairs upon this tower amount to a smaller sum than in the towers of any of the minor lights in the New York district. The illuminating apparatus is composed of eighteen 21-inch reflectors, and Argand lamps which were fitted new, according to the best information on the subject, in 1842." A fixed, third-order Fresnel lens was installed in the lighthouse in 1856 and remains in use.

In 1857, the lighthouse underwent a major refurbishing. A red brick lining was installed to reinforce the rubblestone walls, and a spiral iron staircase replaced the worn, wooden one. The keepers received the present dwelling in 1883, when the old dilapidated dwelling was razed and a new "substantial double frame dwelling with ample accommodations for the principal and assistant Keepers” was constructed.

In the 1890s, the peaceful life the keepers enjoyed on Sandy Hook was changed forever when Fort Hancock was created near the lighthouse and massive concrete gun batteries were placed nearby to defend the entrance to New York Harbor. The Sandy Hook Lighthouse has witnessed the progression of weapons firsthand, as first canons and later Nike missiles were deployed nearby.

In its bicentennial year, Sandy Hook Light was designated a National Historic Landmark, and a commemorative plaque was mounted on the tower as part of a celebration held at the site. Ownership of the lighthouse was transferred to the National Park Service in 1996. Unlike the situation at other lighthouses, shore erosion is not a threat at Sandy Hook. Originally standing 500 feet from the tip of the hook, Sandy Hook Lighthouse is now over a mile and a half away. The patriarch of America’s lighthouses remains in good condition, and with proper upkeep should be around for several more centuries.

Grilled Chicken Sandwich


Image by savorytart
For The Husband.

Grilled chicken leftover from Sunday’s picnic on artisan bread from the Price Chopper bakery with Bibb lettuce & Stonewall Kitchen’s blue cheese herb mustard.

Recipes for grilled chicken & devilled egg blogged @ savorytart.blogspot.com/2010/06/chicken-egg.html.

Goldman Jumps Shark, “Fundamentally” Shifts Its “Bearish” Outlook On Economy: Goes Bullish, Hikes Outlook
Here comes the kitchen sink: just in case there was a chance the Fed’s historic disclosure had a chance of pushing the market lower, almost to the dot at noon Goldman has completely sold out and has released a surprising (in its own words) report, changing its outlook on the US economy from bearish to bullish. Goldman’s take on the dramatic nature of its perception shift: “This outlook …
Read more on Zero Hedge

Tiramisu Treasure in Normal Heights
Mamma DiMille wouldn’t have it any other way.
Read more on NBC San Diego

Dining Out: Find eclectic setting, fab homemade food at Christine’s
Christine LaRocca is a Youngstown native who moved to Lake County eight years ago and fell in love with the neighborhood.
Read more on The News-Herald

Save energy and money this winter by weatherizing your home
Rich Gadacz from Real Services says putting a little money into weatherizing your home can go a long way in saving money down the road.
Read more on WNDU 16 South Bend

Holiday Helper Comes In A Little Packet
Holiday helper comes in a little packet Kitchen novices looking for an assist in the gravy-making department this holiday season have several packaged, powdered options. Some are pricier than others, few wowed our tasting team of from-scratch gravy-makers. But in a pinch …
Read more on Hartford Courant

Not Cooking: A pre-made Thanksgiving
There’s no shame in buying a pre-made feast. Why risk ruining your holiday and everyone else’s if you’re not a cook?…
Read more on Charleston City Paper

A few nice kitchen prices images I found:

veldt


Image by Jared Zimmerman

Ray Bradbury. The Veldt

"George, I wish you’d look at the nursery."
"What’s wrong with it?"
"I don’t know."
"Well, then."
"I just want you to look at it, is all, or call a psychologist in to
look at it."
"What would a psychologist want with a nursery?"
"You know very well what he’d want." His wife paused in the middle of
the kitchen and watched the stove busy humming to itself, making supper for
four.
"It’s just that the nursery is different now than it was."
"All right, let’s have a look."
They walked down the hall of their soundproofed Happylife Home, which
had cost them thirty thousand dollars installed, this house which clothed
and fed and rocked them to sleep and played and sang and was good to them.
Their approach sensitized a switch somewhere and the nursery light flicked
on when they came within ten feet of it. Similarly, behind them, in the
halls, lights went on and off as they left them behind, with a soft
automaticity.
"Well," said George Hadley.

They stood on the thatched floor of the nursery. It was forty feet
across by forty feet long and thirty feet high; it had cost half again as
much as the rest of the house. "But nothing’s too good for our children,"
George had said.
The nursery was silent. It was empty as a jungle glade at hot high
noon. The walls were blank and two dimensional. Now, as George and Lydia
Hadley stood in the center of the room, the walls began to purr and recede
into crystalline distance, it seemed, and presently an African veldt
appeared, in three dimensions, on all sides, in color reproduced to the
final pebble and bit of straw. The ceiling above them became a deep sky with
a hot yellow sun.
George Hadley felt the perspiration start on his brow.
"Let’s get out of this sun," he said. "This is a little too real. But I
don’t see anything wrong."
"Wait a moment, you’ll see," said his wife.
Now the hidden odorophonics were beginning to blow a wind of odor at
the two people in the middle of the baked veldtland. The hot straw smell of
lion grass, the cool green smell of the hidden water hole, the great rusty
smell of animals, the smell of dust like a red paprika in the hot air. And
now the sounds: the thump of distant antelope feet on grassy sod, the papery
rustling of vultures. A shadow passed through the sky. The shadow flickered
on George Hadley’s upturned, sweating face.
"Filthy creatures," he heard his wife say.
"The vultures."
"You see, there are the lions, far over, that way. Now they’re on their
way to the water hole. They’ve just been eating," said Lydia. "I don’t know
what."
"Some animal." George Hadley put his hand up to shield off the burning
light from his squinted eyes. "A zebra or a baby giraffe, maybe."
"Are you sure?" His wife sounded peculiarly tense.
"No, it’s a little late to be sure," be said, amused. "Nothing over
there I can see but cleaned bone, and the vultures dropping for what’s
left."
"Did you bear that scream?" she asked.
‘No."
"About a minute ago?"
"Sorry, no."
The lions were coming. And again George Hadley was filled with
admiration for the mechanical genius who had conceived this room. A miracle
of efficiency selling for an absurdly low price. Every home should have one.
Oh, occasionally they frightened you with their clinical accuracy, they
startled you, gave you a twinge, but most of the time what fun for everyone,
not only your own son and daughter, but for yourself when you felt like a
quick jaunt to a foreign land, a quick change of scenery. Well, here it was!
And here were the lions now, fifteen feet away, so real, so feverishly
and startlingly real that you could feel the prickling fur on your hand, and
your mouth was stuffed with the dusty upholstery smell of their heated
pelts, and the yellow of them was in your eyes like the yellow of an
exquisite French tapestry, the yellows of lions and summer grass, and the
sound of the matted lion lungs exhaling on the silent noontide, and the
smell of meat from the panting, dripping mouths.
The lions stood looking at George and Lydia Hadley with terrible
green-yellow eyes.
"Watch out!" screamed Lydia.
The lions came running at them.
Lydia bolted and ran. Instinctively, George sprang after her. Outside,
in the hall, with the door slammed he was laughing and she was crying, and
they both stood appalled at the other’s reaction.
"George!"
"Lydia! Oh, my dear poor sweet Lydia!"
"They almost got us!"
"Walls, Lydia, remember; crystal walls, that’s all they are. Oh, they
look real, I must admit – Africa in your parlor – but it’s all dimensional,
superreactionary, supersensitive color film and mental tape film behind
glass screens. It’s all odorophonics and sonics, Lydia. Here’s my
handkerchief."

"I’m afraid." She came to him and put her body against him and cried
steadily. "Did you see? Did you feel? It’s too real."
"Now, Lydia…"
"You’ve got to tell Wendy and Peter not to read any more on Africa."
"Of course – of course." He patted her.
"Promise?"
"Sure."
"And lock the nursery for a few days until I get my nerves settled."
"You know how difficult Peter is about that. When I punished him a
month ago by locking the nursery for even a few hours – the tantrum be
threw! And Wendy too. They live for the nursery."
"It’s got to be locked, that’s all there is to it."
"All right." Reluctantly he locked the huge door. "You’ve been working
too hard. You need a rest."
"I don’t know – I don’t know," she said, blowing her nose, sitting down
in a chair that immediately began to rock and comfort her. "Maybe I don’t
have enough to do. Maybe I have time to think too much. Why don’t we shut
the whole house off for a few days and take a vacation?"
"You mean you want to fry my eggs for me?"
"Yes." She nodded.
"And dam my socks?"
"Yes." A frantic, watery-eyed nodding.
"And sweep the house?"
"Yes, yes – oh, yes!”
"But I thought that’s why we bought this house, so we wouldn’t have to
do anything?"
"That’s just it. I feel like I don’t belong here. The house is wife and
mother now, and nursemaid. Can I compete with an African veldt? Can I give a
bath and scrub the children as efficiently or quickly as the automatic scrub
bath can? I cannot. And it isn’t just me. It’s you. You’ve been awfully
nervous lately."
"I suppose I have been smoking too much."
"You look as if you didn’t know what to do with yourself in this house,
either. You smoke a little more every morning and drink a little more every
afternoon and need a little more sedative every night. You’re beginning to
feel unnecessary too."
"Am I?" He paused and tried to feel into himself to see what was really
there.
"Oh, George!" She looked beyond him, at the nursery door. "Those lions
can’t get out of there, can they?"
He looked at the door and saw it tremble as if something had jumped
against it from the other side.
"Of course not," he said.

At dinner they ate alone, for Wendy and Peter were at a special plastic
carnival across town and bad televised home to say they’d be late, to go
ahead eating. So George Hadley, bemused, sat watching the dining-room table
produce warm dishes of food from its mechanical interior.
"We forgot the ketchup," he said.
"Sorry," said a small voice within the table, and ketchup appeared.
As for the nursery, thought George Hadley, it won’t hurt for the
children to be locked out of it awhile. Too much of anything isn’t good for
anyone. And it was clearly indicated that the children had been spending a
little too much time on Africa. That sun. He could feel it on his neck,
still, like a hot paw. And the lions. And the smell of blood. Remarkable how
the nursery caught the telepathic emanations of the children’s minds and
created life to fill their every desire. The children thought lions, and
there were lions. The children thought zebras, and there were zebras. Sun -
sun. Giraffes – giraffes. Death and death.
That last. He chewed tastelessly on the meat that the table bad cut for
him. Death thoughts. They were awfully young, Wendy and Peter, for death
thoughts. Or, no, you were never too young, really. Long before you knew
what death was you were wishing it on someone else. When you were two years
old you were shooting people with cap pistols.
But this – the long, hot African veldt-the awful death in the jaws of a
lion. And repeated again and again.
"Where are you going?"
He didn’t answer Lydia. Preoccupied, be let the lights glow softly on
ahead of him, extinguish behind him as he padded to the nursery door. He
listened against it. Far away, a lion roared.
He unlocked the door and opened it. Just before he stepped inside, he
heard a faraway scream. And then another roar from the lions, which subsided
quickly.
He stepped into Africa. How many times in the last year had he opened
this door and found Wonderland, Alice, the Mock Turtle, or Aladdin and his
Magical Lamp, or Jack Pumpkinhead of Oz, or Dr. Doolittle, or the cow
jumping over a very real-appearing moon-all the delightful contraptions of a
make-believe world. How often had he seen Pegasus flying in the sky ceiling,
or seen fountains of red fireworks, or heard angel voices singing. But now,
is yellow hot Africa, this bake oven with murder in the heat. Perhaps Lydia
was right. Perhaps they needed a little vacation from the fantasy which was
growing a bit too real for ten-year-old children. It was all right to
exercise one’s mind with gymnastic fantasies, but when the lively child mind
settled on one pattern… ? It seemed that, at a distance, for the past
month, he had heard lions roaring, and smelled their strong odor seeping as
far away as his study door. But, being busy, he had paid it no attention.
George Hadley stood on the African grassland alone. The lions looked up
from their feeding, watching him. The only flaw to the illusion was the open
door through which he could see his wife, far down the dark hall, like a
framed picture, eating her dinner abstractedly.
"Go away," he said to the lions.
They did not go.
He knew the principle of the room exactly. You sent out your thoughts.
Whatever you thought would appear. "Let’s have Aladdin and his lamp," he
snapped. The veldtland remained; the lions remained.
"Come on, room! I demand Aladin!" he said.
Nothing happened. The lions mumbled in their baked pelts.
"Aladin!"
He went back to dinner. "The fool room’s out of order," he said. "It
won’t respond."
"Or–"
"Or what?"
"Or it can’t respond," said Lydia, "because the children have thought
about Africa and lions and killing so many days that the room’s in a rut."
"Could be."
"Or Peter’s set it to remain that way."
"Set it?"
"He may have got into the machinery and fixed something."
"Peter doesn’t know machinery."
"He’s a wise one for ten. That I.Q. of his -"
"Nevertheless -"
"Hello, Mom. Hello, Dad."
The Hadleys turned. Wendy and Peter were coming in the front door,
cheeks like peppermint candy, eyes like bright blue agate marbles, a smell
of ozone on their jumpers from their trip in the helicopter.
"You’re just in time for supper," said both parents.
"We’re full of strawberry ice cream and hot dogs," said the children,
holding hands. "But we’ll sit and watch."
"Yes, come tell us about the nursery," said George Hadley.
The brother and sister blinked at him and then at each other.
"Nursery?"
"All about Africa and everything," said the father with false
joviality.
"I don’t understand," said Peter.
"Your mother and I were just traveling through Africa with rod and
reel; Tom Swift and his Electric Lion," said George Hadley.
"There’s no Africa in the nursery," said Peter simply.
"Oh, come now, Peter. We know better."
"I don’t remember any Africa," said Peter to Wendy. "Do you?"
"No."
"Run see and come tell."
She obeyed
"Wendy, come back here!" said George Hadley, but she was gone. The
house lights followed her like a flock of fireflies. Too late, he realized
he had forgotten to lock the nursery door after his last inspection.
"Wendy’ll look and come tell us," said Peter.
"She doesn’t have to tell me. I’ve seen it."
"I’m sure you’re mistaken, Father."
"I’m not, Peter. Come along now."
But Wendy was back. "It’s not Africa," she said breathlessly.
"We’ll see about this," said George Hadley, and they all walked down
the hall together and opened the nursery door.
There was a green, lovely forest, a lovely river, a purple mountain,
high voices singing, and Rima, lovely and mysterious, lurking in the trees
with colorful flights of butterflies, like animated bouquets, lingering in
her long hair. The African veldtland was gone. The lions were gone. Only
Rima was here now, singing a song so beautiful that it brought tears to your
eyes.
George Hadley looked in at the changed scene. "Go to bed," he said to
the children.
They opened their mouths.
"You heard me," he said.
They went off to the air closet, where a wind sucked them like brown
leaves up the flue to their slumber rooms.
George Hadley walked through the singing glade and picked up something
that lay in the comer near where the lions had been. He walked slowly back
to his wife.
"What is that?" she asked.
"An old wallet of mine," he said.
He showed it to her. The smell of hot grass was on it and the smell of
a lion. There were drops of saliva on it, it bad been chewed, and there were
blood smears on both sides.
He closed the nursery door and locked it, tight.

In the middle of the night he was still awake and he knew his wife was
awake. "Do you think Wendy changed it?" she said at last, in the dark room.
"Of course."
"Made it from a veldt into a forest and put Rima there instead of
lions?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I don’t know. But it’s staying locked until I find out."
"How did your wallet get there?"
"I don’t know anything," he said, "except that I’m beginning to be
sorry we bought that room for the children. If children are neurotic at all,
a room like that -"
"It’s supposed to help them work off their neuroses in a healthful
way."
"I’m starting to wonder." He stared at the ceiling.
"We’ve given the children everything they ever wanted. Is this our
reward-secrecy, disobedience?"
"Who was it said, ‘Children are carpets, they should be stepped on
occasionally’? We’ve never lifted a hand. They’re insufferable – let’s admit
it. They come and go when they like; they treat us as if we were offspring.
They’re spoiled and we’re spoiled."
"They’ve been acting funny ever since you forbade them to take the
rocket to New York a few months ago."
"They’re not old enough to do that alone, I explained."
"Nevertheless, I’ve noticed they’ve been decidedly cool toward us
since."
"I think I’ll have David McClean come tomorrow morning to have a look
at Africa."
"But it’s not Africa now, it’s Green Mansions country and Rima."
"I have a feeling it’ll be Africa again before then."
A moment later they heard the screams.
Two screams. Two people screaming from downstairs. And then a roar of
lions.
"Wendy and Peter aren’t in their rooms," said his wife.
He lay in his bed with his beating heart. "No," he said. "They’ve
broken into the nursery."
"Those screams – they sound familiar."
"Do they?"
"Yes, awfully."
And although their beds tried very bard, the two adults couldn’t be
rocked to sleep for another hour. A smell of cats was in the night air.

"Father?" said Peter.
"Yes."
Peter looked at his shoes. He never looked at his father any more, nor
at his mother. "You aren’t going to lock up the nursery for good, are you?"
"That all depends."
"On what?" snapped Peter.
"On you and your sister. If you intersperse this Africa with a little
variety – oh, Sweden perhaps, or Denmark or China -"
"I thought we were free to play as we wished."
"You are, within reasonable bounds."
"What’s wrong with Africa, Father?"
"Oh, so now you admit you have been conjuring up Africa, do you?"
"I wouldn’t want the nursery locked up," said Peter coldly. "Ever."
"Matter of fact, we’re thinking of turning the whole house off for
about a month. Live sort of a carefree one-for-all existence."
"That sounds dreadful! Would I have to tie my own shoes instead of
letting the shoe tier do it? And brush my own teeth and comb my hair and
give myself a bath?"
"It would be fun for a change, don’t you think?"
"No, it would be horrid. I didn’t like it when you took out the picture
painter last month."
"That’s because I wanted you to learn to paint all by yourself, son."
"I don’t want to do anything but look and listen and smell; what else
is there to do?"
"All right, go play in Africa."
"Will you shut off the house sometime soon?"
"We’re considering it."
"I don’t think you’d better consider it any more, Father."
"I won’t have any threats from my son!"
"Very well." And Peter strolled off to the nursery.

"Am I on time?" said David McClean.
"Breakfast?" asked George Hadley.
"Thanks, had some. What’s the trouble?"
"David, you’re a psychologist."
"I should hope so."
"Well, then, have a look at our nursery. You saw it a year ago when you
dropped by; did you notice anything peculiar about it then?"
"Can’t say I did; the usual violences, a tendency toward a slight
paranoia here or there, usual in children because they feel persecuted by
parents constantly, but, oh, really nothing."
They walked down the ball. "I locked the nursery up," explained the
father, "and the children broke back into it during the night. I let them
stay so they could form the patterns for you to see."
There was a terrible screaming from the nursery.
"There it is," said George Hadley. "See what you make of it."
They walked in on the children without rapping.
The screams had faded. The lions were feeding.
"Run outside a moment, children," said George Hadley. "No, don’t change
the mental combination. Leave the walls as they are. Get!"
With the children gone, the two men stood studying the lions clustered
at a distance, eating with great relish whatever it was they had caught.
"I wish I knew what it was," said George Hadley. "Sometimes I can
almost see. Do you think if I brought high-powered binoculars here and -"
David McClean laughed dryly. "Hardly." He turned to study all four
walls. "How long has this been going on?"
"A little over a month."
"It certainly doesn’t feel good."
"I want facts, not feelings."
"My dear George, a psychologist never saw a fact in his life. He only
hears about feelings; vague things. This doesn’t feel good, I tell you.
Trust my hunches and my instincts. I have a nose for something bad. This is
very bad. My advice to you is to have the whole damn room torn down and your
children brought to me every day during the next year for treatment."
"Is it that bad?"
"I’m afraid so. One of the original uses of these nurseries was so that
we could study the patterns left on the walls by the child’s mind, study at
our leisure, and help the child. In this case, however, the room has become
a channel toward-destructive thoughts, instead of a release away from them."
"Didn’t you sense this before?"
"I sensed only that you bad spoiled your children more than most. And
now you’re letting them down in some way. What way?"
"I wouldn’t let them go to New York."
"What else?"
"I’ve taken a few machines from the house and threatened them, a month
ago, with closing up the nursery unless they did their homework. I did close
it for a few days to show I meant business."
"Ah, ha!"
"Does that mean anything?"
"Everything. Where before they had a Santa Claus now they have a
Scrooge. Children prefer Santas. You’ve let this room and this house replace
you and your wife in your children’s affections. This room is their mother
and father, far more important in their lives than their real parents. And
now you come along and want to shut it off. No wonder there’s hatred here.
You can feel it coming out of the sky. Feel that sun. George, you’ll have to
change your life. Like too many others, you’ve built it around creature
comforts. Why, you’d starve tomorrow if something went wrong in your
kitchen. You wouldn’t know bow to tap an egg. Nevertheless, turn everything
off. Start new. It’ll take time. But we’ll make good children out of bad in
a year, wait and see."
"But won’t the shock be too much for the children, shutting the room up
abruptly, for good?"
"I don’t want them going any deeper into this, that’s all."
The lions were finished with their red feast.
The lions were standing on the edge of the clearing watching the two
men.
"Now I’m feeling persecuted," said McClean. "Let’s get out of here. I
never have cared for these damned rooms. Make me nervous."
"The lions look real, don’t they?" said George Hadley. I don’t suppose
there’s any way -"
"What?"
"- that they could become real?"
"Not that I know."
"Some flaw in the machinery, a tampering or something?"
"No."
They went to the door.
"I don’t imagine the room will like being turned off," said the father.
"Nothing ever likes to die – even a room."
"I wonder if it hates me for wanting to switch it off?"
"Paranoia is thick around here today," said David McClean. "You can
follow it like a spoor. Hello." He bent and picked up a bloody scarf. "This
yours?"
"No." George Hadley’s face was rigid. "It belongs to Lydia."
They went to the fuse box together and threw the switch that killed the
nursery.

The two children were in hysterics. They screamed and pranced and threw
things. They yelled and sobbed and swore and jumped at the furniture.
"You can’t do that to the nursery, you can’t!”
"Now, children."
The children flung themselves onto a couch, weeping.
"George," said Lydia Hadley, "turn on the nursery, just for a few
moments. You can’t be so abrupt."
"No."
"You can’t be so cruel…"
"Lydia, it’s off, and it stays off. And the whole damn house dies as of
here and now. The more I see of the mess we’ve put ourselves in, the more it
sickens me. We’ve been contemplating our mechanical, electronic navels for
too long. My God, how we need a breath of honest air!"
And he marched about the house turning off the voice clocks, the
stoves, the heaters, the shoe shiners, the shoe lacers, the body scrubbers
and swabbers and massagers, and every other machine be could put his hand
to.
The house was full of dead bodies, it seemed. It felt like a mechanical
cemetery. So silent. None of the humming hidden energy of machines waiting
to function at the tap of a button.
"Don’t let them do it!" wailed Peter at the ceiling, as if he was
talking to the house, the nursery. "Don’t let Father kill everything." He
turned to his father. "Oh, I hate you!"
"Insults won’t get you anywhere."
"I wish you were dead!"
"We were, for a long while. Now we’re going to really start living.
Instead of being handled and massaged, we’re going to live."
Wendy was still crying and Peter joined her again. "Just a moment, just
one moment, just another moment of nursery," they wailed.
"Oh, George," said the wife, "it can’t hurt."
"All right – all right, if they’ll just shut up. One minute, mind you,
and then off forever."
"Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!" sang the children, smiling with wet faces.
"And then we’re going on a vacation. David McClean is coming back in
half an hour to help us move out and get to the airport. I’m going to dress.
You turn the nursery on for a minute, Lydia, just a minute, mind you."
And the three of them went babbling off while he let himself be
vacuumed upstairs through the air flue and set about dressing himself. A
minute later Lydia appeared.
"I’ll be glad when we get away," she sighed.
"Did you leave them in the nursery?"
"I wanted to dress too. Oh, that horrid Africa. What can they see in
it?"
"Well, in five minutes we’ll be on our way to Iowa. Lord, how did we
ever get in this house? What prompted us to buy a nightmare?"
"Pride, money, foolishness."
"I think we’d better get downstairs before those kids get engrossed
with those damned beasts again."
Just then they heard the children calling, "Daddy, Mommy, come quick -
quick!"
They went downstairs in the air flue and ran down the hall. The
children were nowhere in sight. "Wendy? Peter!"
They ran into the nursery. The veldtland was empty save for the lions
waiting, looking at them. "Peter, Wendy?"
The door slammed.
"Wendy, Peter!"
George Hadley and his wife whirled and ran back to the door.
"Open the door!" cried George Hadley, trying the knob. "Why, they’ve
locked it from the outside! Peter!" He beat at the door. "Open up!"
He heard Peter’s voice outside, against the door.
"Don’t let them switch off the nursery and the house," he was saying.
Mr. and Mrs. George Hadley beat at the door. "Now, don’t be ridiculous,
children. It’s time to go. Mr. McClean’ll be here in a minute and…"
And then they heard the sounds.
The lions on three sides of them, in the yellow veldt grass, padding
through the dry straw, rumbling and roaring in their throats.
The lions.
Mr. Hadley looked at his wife and they turned and looked back at the
beasts edging slowly forward crouching, tails stiff.
Mr. and Mrs. Hadley screamed.
And suddenly they realized why those other screams bad sounded
familiar.

"Well, here I am," said David McClean in the nursery doorway, "Oh,
hello." He stared at the two children seated in the center of the open glade
eating a little picnic lunch. Beyond them was the water hole and the yellow
veldtland; above was the hot sun. He began to perspire. "Where are your
father and mother?"
The children looked up and smiled. "Oh, they’ll be here directly."
"Good, we must get going." At a distance Mr. McClean saw the lions
fighting and clawing and then quieting down to feed in silence under the
shady trees.
He squinted at the lions with his hand tip to his eyes.
Now the lions were done feeding. They moved to the water hole to drink.
A shadow flickered over Mr. McClean’s hot face. Many shadows flickered.
The vultures were dropping down the blazing sky.
"A cup of tea?" asked Wendy in the silence.

new notebook!


Image by i ?
got me a new hp 9008tx, bells whistles n kitchen sink included at more than half price off! PTL!

Check out these kitchen prices images:

Focus on Imaging


Image by Barry Zee
Focus on Imaging 2009, Professional Imaging Supplies, pfd, Gary Walsh

A couple of minutes before 10.00am on the morning of Sunday, January 14th, 1990, Mary Walker was getting ready to open her first exhibition, Focus on Photography.

It had taken her 18 months of hard work to get to that point but she had had tremendous support from right across the industry. As she waited for the clock to tick towards ten o’clock she knew she had succeeded in putting together an exhibition which had so exceeded her early expectations that she had had to have a marquee erected at the back of The Pavilion at the NEC to accommodate everyone who wanted to be there.

Now the only question was “Will the show attract enough visitors – and of the right quality – to make the whole thing a complete success.”

The answer, as everyone connected with the show will tell you, was “yes” and from then onwards Focus has grown in both size and, arguably more important, reputation. However, even now, as Mary puts together the final details for the 20th Focus, now Focus on Imaging of course, she takes nothing for granted and is more than happy to confess that she will still have butterflies when she picks up the microphone to declare Focus 2009, the biggest ever, open.

So much has changed in those 20 years, including the name which Mary presciently changed in 1992. So many well known names have vanished – or at least are now shadows of their former selves while companies which once had no connection with photography – or “imaging” as we now know it – are now market leaders in that industry. Film is now a sideline product. Mobile phones now routinely feature cameras whose “megapixellage” was once thought all but unachievable. The internet has become a real rival to the High Street.

Throughout this time, Focus has provided a unique platform for innovation and product launches that new and emerging technologies have helped create but one thing hasn’t changed, the unique ambience that is Focus on Imaging. Focus is large enough to have a major impact on the imaging world, it’s Europe’s biggest annual imaging industry showcase after all, yet it retains a very personal, almost intimate, persona.

Not easy in an industry where some of the biggest companies in the world hold sway but where Focus scores – and scores heavily – over other exhibitions, is that even after 20 years, it’s still Mary Walker herself who pulls the whole thing together every year. It is still very much “her” show, just as that first one was back in 1990 but Mary has no plans to sit back on her laurels. Indeed with Focus 2010 already demanding her attention she’s already looking at ways of making that “coming-of-age” show even more of a success than its predecessors.

It hasn’t been an easy 12 months for anyone since Focus 2008 and the imaging industry has not been immune to the problems affecting the rest of the economy but one thing is clear from this year’s Focus exhibitors’ list – there’s a determination among both the giants and the giants-to-be of the industry to project a positive, “business as usual” message to the 33,000 or so visitors expected to make their way to the NEC over the four days the show is open, Sunday, February 22nd to Wednesday, 25th.

So, what can those visitors expect to see? First of all, a great many of the products which were unveiled at Photokina will be getting their UK debut, some of them indeed getting their first full debut in production rather than pre-production form.

They will be able to say “we were there” to share the excitement as a flurry of new companies set out the kind of thinking which allowed George Eastman to take the Kodak concept from his mother’s kitchen table to international status.

They will able to listen and learn as some of the best known names in the industry show how they do it, how they turn a fiver into fifty quid, how they use their computer as much as their camera to turn a perfectly acceptable photo into a top class Photo with a capital “P”.

And they will leave with their bags full of show special offers and end of range bargains, brochures about products they will want to investigate further, samples of different types of paper they can use at home, quite possibly with that special new lens they have been saving for or with the complete paperwork for the purchase of a new dry minilab or studio lighting system or wide format printer for delivery immediately after the show.

Memories are precious, says photo album specialists, Bob Books, but the rapidly increasing use of digital cameras has meant that the age-old delights of family photo albums are declining. Photographs are now stored in the memory of our computers, yet the desire for the emotive, tactile experience of photographs remains – and this is where Bob Books comes in.

From your computer simply download the Bob Books software. Use the formatting options to choose your desired layout, add your text and images to personalise your book; then just wait for delivery – it’s that simple.

The quality of our binding sets the benchmark, says Bob Books, which claims to offer the highest available production standards from its bookbindery in Switzerland where the company enjoys a reputation as one of the world leaders in bookbinding production.

The stand will also feature some brand new software but for now Bob Books will only say: “You’ll have to wait to the Focus doors open to see exactly what it does.”

Broncolor claims to have long set the benchmark by which all other lighting manufacturers are judged and says its new Scoro range sets a new level to which the competition must aspire, as it sets no less than four world bests.

With the new Swiss-built Scoro power packs, you can let your artistic imagination run free. With their uniquely convenient control systems, you can deal with even the most complex lighting setups easily every time. No other flash system gives you so much creative capability – and no other holds so many world records.

A recharging time of 0.6s at 1600 joule and 0.4s at 1200 joule, a 10 f-stop control range with stable colour temperature, adjustable colour temperature (at 200 K intervals), and three independent channels with exactly the same colour temperature – with Scoro, broncolor has set no fewer than four new world records, and remains the industry benchmark in modern flash technology. With its versatile and unparalleled capabilities for power distribution with consistent light quality, this new power pack is the ideal light source for digital photography.

Creativity Backgrounds will be offering 10 percent off all orders taken at the show. A great opportunity to stock up on your Arctic Whites and Blacks and to try one of the 50 colours. Why not go for a Carnation pink for children or wedding photography, or stimulate your imagination with a chromagreen backdrop. This show they will be highlighting the fact that they deliver direct to your studio or any location in the UK for only £5 (or £8 for next day). As a preview have a look at www.creativitybackgrounds.co.uk . This is a brand new website, which makes ordering dead easy. The company is also running a prize draw for a full-length 2.72mx11m roll per day. It’s free to enter, just put your card in the box or fill in a form on the stand for the chance to win.

Digital Photo Solutions, one of the UK’s leading suppliers of large format printers to the photographic and fine art markets and an authorised specialist dealer for over 30 digital imaging brands, will be demonstrating leading print to finish workflow solutions at Focus on Imaging 2009.

Visitors to the company’s stand will also be to test drive and compare the latest large format printers from Epson and HP, learn how to move seamlessly from image to print to finish to frame in less than 30 minutes, ensure your monitor’s colours are displayed correctly and match the output you are looking for with Datacolor’s industry-leading range of Spyder 3 monitor and printer profiling hardware calibrators.

They’ll also be able to see the latest version of the acclaimed Shiraz Focus software, explore the extensive range of DPS specialist media and see how you can increase your profits in the photographic, fine art and canvas printing markets, discover how to enhance your print service with the HotPress JetMounter and dind out how to protect your inkjet canvas prints and stretch them on to frames faster than ever before with the DPS QuickMate.

Dunns Imaging Group will be showing their new flex workflow, a complete production and web hosting solution specifically designed for shools and nursery photographers. There will also be demonstrations of their new innovative album creation software Creative Albums. Both products are set to play a major role in Dunns product offering during 2009

If you visit the Extensis stand N8, you’ll find a team of experts showcasing Portfolio Server 8.5, the latest version of their digital asset management solution. Portfolio Server 8.5 provides the core set of capabilities you need to keep your images on-the-move—for routing to other users/departments, for final delivery to clients, partners or vendors, or for secure archiving. Included with Portfolio Server 8.5, Project Sync for Adobe CS3 seamlessly integrates with Adobe CS3 to offer powerful database searching, flexible archiving and automated web delivery—all from within the Creative Suite environment.

Some photographers jump from lab to lab searching for the lowest prices, reckons Portuguese company, Floricolor, adding that others search for a lab to work with them in partnership, to ensure quality, fair pricing and short delivery times.

Floricolor claims to have been pioneers in the protection of digital albums through lamination, and has recently introduced varnish UV protection, pointing out that this is the best system of protecting photos against heat, humidity and scratches, while maintaining the unique touch of photographic paper. Floricolor combines the best in two worlds, the highest technology of digital print (Frontier, two Durst Theta 51s, Laserlab 76, Fuji and Kodak Professional0 and the hands of skilled craftsmen with many years of practice.

“The number of new costumers we have attracted indicates that we are on the right track,” said a company spokesman. “We are looking at the future with optimism because innovation is an inseparable element of our work philosophy.”

Fujifilm UK has expanded its range of professional inkjet media, with additions that include a popular new satin finish canvas type and an outstanding genuine fibre base gloss baryte. Satin Canvas 350gsm is one of two new canvases introduced by Fujifilm UK. Satin has become the canvas finish most favoured by US consumers, a trend the UK is expected to follow. The other new Fujifilm canvas is Fine Art Natural Canvas 290gsm, a single-weave natural matt.

But, says Fuji, the big news in Fine Art must be that two completely new baryte type papers have joined the Fujifilm range of large format print media. The extensively tested new papers are available in gloss and matt, the base paper is genuine fibre based baryte media.

The new Fujifilm baryte papers have a premium look and feel, wide dynamic range, luminous neutral whites, and hold deep, rich blacks, even have the scent of traditional baryte papers, and they give exceptional, museum standard, archival life.

Fujifilm UK have also introduced Boxiprint, an innovative instant canvas wrap box frame product, aimed at retail applications. Boxiprint box frames are supplied as single sheets of high quality satin canvas mounted on carton board. They come pressed and scored with a patented scheme of ingenious folds, enabling each board to be simply folded by hand into a finished box frame canvas, just minutes after printing on an inkjet printer.

Boxiprint instant canvas box frames can be printed on most professional inkjets that have a straight paper path and a ‘board’ setting, allowing them to accept boards up to 1.7mm thick. This includes all Fujifilm Epson Stylus Pro printers supplied as GreenBox bundles, as well as many other printers. The product is ideal for retail photo labs, and is also suitable for portrait studios, art and framing businesses, and the gift and card sector. Boxiprint is easy to use, but for added peace of mind the product is supported with ICC colour profiles for many Fujifilm Epson Stylus Pro printers, and print templates for Fujifilm

Graphistudio is to launch Graphiware, a new design of software created to give photographers an amazing tool in today’s competitive and highly creative market at Focus 2009.

It’s powerful, yet easy to use. You can gather your images and design your own layout with the option to use Graphistudio’s renowned multi-award winning templates, modify them to suit your needs or even design from scratch your own. The simple drag and drop logic of Graphiware will enable you to design stunning layouts in minutes, adding effects, re-touching elements with Photoshop and much, much more.

At the same time, Graphistudio has created a new on-line ordering system, dedicated to making production faster, efficient and more cost effective Gone are the days of hand written or typed orders. Now with a few taps of the keyboard the huge choice of sizes, orientations, covers and copies can be chosen and directly loaded into the system live at the same time as you upload your order or it will await delivery of your disk, negatives or prints.

Very few companies worldwide can look back with pride over such a long and rich tradition as Hahnemühle. Since its founding in 1584 Hahnemühle in Dassel has demonstrated its superb mastery of a traditional craft, creating uniquely beautiful papers from pure spring water and premium cellulose.

Using this rich experience enables the company to be at the forefront of the ever evolving digital inkjet market as well as the realm of traditional artists paper. Recent technological advances such as its true Baryta papers which enable photographers to recreate darkroom prints digitally, newly released papers available in a 64 inch format to match the latest Giclee printing technology and environmentally friendly papers made from highly renewable resources such as bamboo and cotton rag.

To celebrate its 425 year anniversary Hahnemühle will release an exclusive Anniversary Collection Box. This Anniversary Edition consists of an elegant cotton rag paper with a particularly smooth texture for Fine Art images as well as other special anniversary products. It’s all packaged in a unique presentation box designed exclusively by Prat, Paris.

There is another exciting new addition to our environmentally friendly range of products. Hahnemühle Sugar Cane is made from 75 percent sugar cane fibre. The organic by-product of sugar cane processing is used to make a pulp. This pulp or “bagasse” is an eco-friendly renewable resource endorsed by environmental organizations. Cotton fibres extracted from recycling our own paper surplus make up the remaining 25 percent of raw material used to produce the paper. The result is a natural white Fine Art paper extremely resistant to ageing. The premium inkjet coating guarantees Fine Art images rich in contrast and detail, and the texture of this artist paper has a wonderful feel to it. Hahnemühle Sugar Cane is ideal for warm toned colour and monochrome prints of Fine Art photography and art reproductions. This Paper will have its UK debut as an exclusive preview at Focus.

Luminati says that once again it will be setting out to capture photographers’ imaginations, delivering a range of acrylic frames which are said to push the boundaries for the professional image maker.

Clear2C Professional with its diamond polished flush fronted finish and unique magnet back panel, has been a great success following its launch at Focus on Imaging 2008. Launched as a 15mm thick frame, the range was extended to include the sleeker 9mm thick Impression range. Following customer feedback Luminati also introduced a range of panoramic formats.

This year sees Luminati extend the Clear2C range further with their Capture, and Snap frames. A unique front image holder allows images to be mounted and changed with ease, whilst the frame hangs on the wall. The Clear2C Professional, Impression, Capture, and Snap frames are available in a range of colours, and in single aperture, multiple aperture, and panoramic aperture formats. Luminati experts will be on hand to demonstrate the range, but are just as keen to discuss visitors’ needs, and would welcome discussions regards the need for unique sizes and formats.

Middlewall remain one of the few British wedding album manufacturers who continue to produce quality hand made, non imported traditional albums, ranging from size 5×5 to 12×12.

They have extended their range of Digital Albums with various styles and sizes including silk and aluminium finishes and see the latest ‘Triangle’ Digital Album.

The Oxford (sticky!) album can be designed to any specific requests with a choice of adhesive or non adhesive pages, embossed photo relief frame, a vast choice of material finishes, personalisation and corners.

Middlewall have recently launched MacLab Limited a new sister company, which specialises in digital printing with full photographic prints on Fuji Crystal Archive paper, up to an astounding 24ins x100 ins.

This year for Focus onOne Software will be showing new products, including the brand new PhotoFrame 4 and the new plug-ins for Adobe Photoshop Light Room and Apple’s Aperture, along with many of its existing highly successful software products.

Every day of the show visitors will be given the chance of winning Lastolite equipment worth £250 if they buy an onOne software product. When the customer makes an onOne software purchase they will be given a raffle ticket and entered in to the draw, all they have to do is return at the end of the day with their raffle ticket and their receipt as a proof of purchase and wait for the winner to be called.

On show will also be the new Essentials for iPhoto. This is very similar to the Essentials for Elements, as they both have “Make it better” (the ColourTune half of PhotoTune), “Frame it” (reduced version of PhotoFrame) and “Enlarge it” (reduced version of Genuine Fractals). The difference between the two is that Essentials for Elements has “Cut it out” (reduced version of Mask Pro) and Essentials for iPhoto has “Blur it” (full version of FocalPoint). Not forgetting products such as Genuine fractals 5, Mask Pro 4 and PhotoTools 1.0, PhotoFrame 3.1 and PhotoTune 2.2 these plug-in favorites are still going strong and will be making an appearance at Focus

There’s also the all-new PhotoFrame 4 which comes in two editions – Professional and Standard – and new plug-ins for Lightroom and Aperture

The Open College of the Arts is a creative arts college specialising in distance learning, with courses, which can be entirely studied at home, spanning a wide range of disciplines, and including three new ones, People and Place, Creative Digital Film and Visual Studies. The OCA’s Photography courses have been written by Michael Freeman, one of the world’s most widely published photography authors. Course materials are practically based and set out clear programmes of work that develop practical expertise and stimulate critical and formal awareness.

All OCA courses are supported by one-to-one tuition. OCA tutors are experienced teachers and practising artists in their fields. This combination of professional expertise with a strong background in teaching means you can be confident in your tutor’s ability to help you develop your skills and to provide supportive and constructive feedback.

OCA courses are open to anyone and you can enrol at anytime. You can study with us for pleasure, to explore your creativity, to learn new skills or to gain a degree.

New Eco-Flo systems for the new Epson R1900 and R2880 will come under the spotlight on the Permajet stand along with a new addition to the Portrait family of papers. Portrait Velvet 310gsm has a 100 percent white cotton rag base with an ultra smooth surface that has all the characteristics of Permajet’s popular and successful Portrait 300 and Portrait White 285 product.

“The moment you pick up this beautiful velvet smooth surface,” says the company, “you immediately appreciate the paper for what it is, a wonderful fine art product that exhibits an extremely high Dmax making it ideal for monochrome as well as colour reproductions.”

The stand, which will feature a number of special show offers, will also showcase a range of photoBooks developed for the artist, photographer, graphic designer, educational market and others. They’re described as ideal for photographic/fine art work, personal portfolios, photo books, albums, school projects and much more and “best of all,” adds Permajet, “no heat binding is required.”

As well as offering live quotes Photoguard will be giving visitors the opportunity to photograph a professional model, something which was well received last year with many professional and budding photographers scrambling to get a good picture.

Photoguard will also be offering a free-prize draw, worth up to a value of £500. No need to answer any difficult questions, simply fill in your contact details and drop your entry into a box for a chance to win.

In addition, the stand will be offering 10 percent off the cost of policies to all those who take a leaflet, so when it’s renewal time test our quote and find out how we fare. “We’re so confident in our prices we offer a price guarantee of double the difference if you find a better deal elsewhere,” says Photoguard.

Photomart will once again be featuring “loads of exciting new products” on their Focus stand. Alongside the UK’s leading "nanobook" press, the Imijit, exclusively by Photomart, in the limelight will be latest retail solutions from Sony including the new "Super" Snaplab and Sony kiosk, Mitsubishi Electric’s new EasyPhoto consumer station and their high volume drylab solution or "MPU", Fujifilm’s Frontier DL-410 and Silverlab’s ML-9000 drylab solution. Fomei, the people who helped develop bandw multicontrast paper emulsions, will have their range of wide format media on display as well as their latest retail offering, the MicroLab system. On the studio side, some of the biggest names in photographic studio lighting will be featured with live lighting demonstrations by top photographers and models. There will also be demonstrations of the “amazing” PhotoRobot. This heralds in a revolution in product photography for the web allowing the viewer to see a product from any angle by manipulating the image along any three-dimensional axis with the mouse pointer.

First time Focus exhibitors at Focus, Premier Ink and Photographic is a family-owned photography retailer, based in Leamington Spa, founded seven years ago, and still run by the original core staff. Its stand will be packed full of “Show Specials”, with something of interest for all photographers, professionals, amateurs and enthusiasts alike.

There will be a huge range of photographic consumables on display, and available to buy on the day, including: square filters, circular threaded filters, DSLR camera batteries and battery grips, memory cards, inkjet papers and inkjet cartridges. There will also be “Show Deals” across our entire range, with products from many manufacturers, including Epson, Canon, HP, Ilford, Kood, Cokin, Energizer, Hahnel, and Sandisk.

Praktica’s back at Focus again, this time with a more prominent stand which will help the company place special emphasis on developing links with independent high street retailers. National sales manager David Grandison will be on hand to show current and prospective trade and retail customers the company’s 2009 range of digital cameras, digital frames and binoculars.

With over 20 years experience in the UK recording, broadcast and film-making industries, Protape is a provider of quality blank recording products, offering a wide range of digital data storage, video and audio formats to customers throughout the UK. Established in 1989, the business is located in London’s West End.

Protape supplies a wide range of quality blank recording products that come directly from the UK branches of the world leading manufactures such as Sony, Fuji and Panasonic and are stored in the Protape’s local depot to ensure a swift delivery. The products include digital data storage, hard drives, memory sticks and accessories, audio and video tapes, making them perfect for a wide range of customers, and they are available for purchase online and over the phone.

At Focus it will be offering a range of recording products at discounted rates, together with a range of consumer hard drives, CDs, DVDs, memory sticks, Blu-ray discs and other popular formats.

Bob Rigby’s will be showing their range of imported lines, including Acratech Ball Heads, Wimberley Gimbal heads, Pinhole Cameras and the Shutterbeam system. A full range of tripods and heads from Gitzo, Manfrotto and solutions for computer work from Wacom tablets and OnOne software. There will also be a range of accessories for all photographic needs, be it digital or traditional

SRB-Griturn is a manufacturer of adaptors and supplier of camera and photographic accessories. It will be introducing its very own slide copier for use with DSLRs and compact digital cameras, as well as showing its better known, filters, adaptors, stepping rings and much more. The company also has its own specialist manufacturing service, which it will be happy to discuss with Focus visitors.

Towergate Camerasure is one of the UK’s leading providers of insurance to the photographic, video and multi media industries, and offers competitive quotations whilst providing one of the most comprehensive policies within the market.

It will be offering exclusive Focus 2009 rates across the whole range of products available and, once again, there will be the Towergate Camerasure Free Prize draw where a year’s free insurance up to the value of £1500.00 can be won.

“Be inspired this Focus” is the message from Annabel Williams’ Contemporary Photographic Training with Catherine Connor and Jane Breakell hosting informal sessions for photographers needing training advice and support. Sessions are completely free and will give advice on which is the best training route, in order to meet both photographic aspirations and educational needs. The CPT stand will host a team of experts, dedicated to ensuring those that visit the stand gain the best form of insight and direction.

Zund UK will be exhibiting for the first time at Focus 2009. It will be showing one of its digital cutting systems complete with the appropriate tooling to show all aspects of finishing. With its modular tooling concept the system can be configured to X/Y trim roll or sheet fed media such as photographs, posters, banners and so on. A simple tool change is all that’s needed for the system to produce photo mounts or even rout thicker substrates such as acrylic, Perspex and so on.

Sometimes companies invest heavily in equipment such as digital printers without any consideration as to how the printed product will be finished, thus causing a bottleneck and inefficiencies in the production process. The Zund range of products is said to fit perfectly into the workflow eliminating these scenarios.

Focus on Imaging 2009 takes place as usual in Halls 9 and 10 at the NEC. It opens on Sunday, February 22nd, and runs until Wednesday, February 25th.

Check out the Focus on Imaging website to find everything there you need to know and a whole lot more as well about Europe’s biggest annual imaging event.

Trade, business and professional visitors can pre-register for free admission via the website. Admission for non-trade or non-professional visitors, including amateurs, who are also very welcome, remains at £6.00 but they can save time on the day by registering in advance via the Focus website.

Church notes
Animal blessings The Unitarian First Religious Society on Pleasant Street will hold a “Blessing of the Animals” service on Sunday, Oct. 3, at 10:30 a.m. Adults, children and well-behaved animals are welcome, as are photos of animals that can’t be present. Living and departed animals will be blessed. For information, call Vicki Dyer at 978-465-0602, ext. 401.
Read more on The Daily News of Newburyport

Calling All Cookware Catastrophes!
ITASCA, Ill.—-When kitchen cookware is so old, banged-up and worn out that it looks like it didn’t survive the kids’ last science experiment; it may be time for a cookware intervention.
Read more on Business Wire via Yahoo! Finance

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