Just found out that four of my photographs are appearing in a show at The Maslow Collection gallery in Scranton, PA in a show called Generations Mix and Meet, running from Feb 20th through March 28th, 2010. My work is right next to an ORIGINAL SOL LEWITT!!
The exhibition was open to all Marywood University graduate and undergraduate Art students, who were invited to look at works in The Maslow Collection and create work/s in response to works/artists in the Collection. From the works submitted, curator Bob Schweitzer made selections and organized an exhibition in conjunction with works drawn from The Maslow Collection. The opening reception of this exhibition was held on Saturday, February 20th, 2010, from 6:00-8:00pm.
The installation features work by students who created their works based on their selection of specific works in The Maslow Collection, responding to the artists’ subject matter, formal elements, stylistic approaches or conceptual devices.
Pairings in the installation:
Ryan Bossert in dialogue with Gary Lang
Lori Ann Brunetti in dialogue with Hilla and Bernd Becher
Jen Bulay in dialogue with Jasper Johns
Megan Donnelly in dialogue with Hilla and Bernd Becher
Marguerite Innes in dialogue with Hamish Fulton Sue Jenkins in dialogue with Sol LeWitt
Megan Kamosky in dialogue with alice Aycock
Timothy Meyers in dialogue with Mark Cohen
Beth Rinker in dialogue with Melissa Meyer
Enter to win one of my award-winning Adobe Illustrator Training DVDs
Three cheers to the folks at UITrends.com who are giving away a free copy of my awesome Adobe Training DVD, “Designer’s Guide to Illustrators” Valued at $79.95, this award-winning Class on Demand self-paced 6-hour instructional DVD is perfect for the visual designer looking expand their skills with Illustrator’s versatile and rich feature set. Adobe® Certified Expert, Sue Jenkins (me!!), will be your guide in this three part tutorial. Explore the interface, master shape creation and so much more.
I confess. My new favorite candy bar is the Mallo Cup.
I saw them for sale in my grocery store’s nostalgic candy rack and figured they would be worth a try. Boy was I right–these bad boys are ¡muy delicioso! Made by the fine folks at the Boyer Candy Co. in Altoona, Pennsylvania, this candy is somewhat reminiscent of the Cup-o-Gold and the Valomilk, but I think Mallo Cups are much better, especially if you likes a bit of coconut with your chocolates [sic].
If you don’t have a distributor in your area, you’ll have to find a candy website that sells them individually. But trust me, if this sounds at all like a candy you would like, you’ll be glad you bought the whole 24ct box from Amazon.
I love fan mail. It really keeps me going, knowing that I’m actually making a connection with people through my books and DVDs. Most of all, I love teaching and sharing what I know with people who want to know it. Therefore, I treat each of my books and DVDs as extensions of my classroom, speaking directly to you without any mumbo-jumbo.
Here’s an example of some recent fan mail from a designer in MA who enjoyed my award-winning “Dreamweaver For Designers” Adobe Training DVD from Class On Demand (which you can win a free copy of by entering the Dreamweaver For Designers DVD giveaway contest at UITrends.com by Feb 20th, 2010).
Feb 4, 2010 -Ms Jenkins - Wanted to say THANK YOU for the excellent work you’ve done on ‘Dreamweaver for Designers.’I'm new to DW software. I’ve been doing graphic design since 1972 & while I have tons of experience with the typical suite of Adobe products & the Mac OS, I found DW left me mystified. The several books & tutorials I was using to get a handle on DW left me feeling even more overwhelmed & confused.
One day last week as I watched yet another opaque DW tutorial the thought occurred to me: “surely someone has written a book about Dreamweaver for designers.” I did a search for that phrase & was surprised to find a product of that exact name. After reading several reviews, I ordered the Class On Demand DVD & have been working my way through the lessons all week.
You’ve done a wonderful job of making it all very accessible. Your delivery is natural & follows a logical progression. You explain things in a way that a graphic artist can understand. Great job!
THANK YOU,
mark plummer
Vineyard Haven, MA
on The Vineyard
Thank you, Mark, you made my day. And too, to everyone out there who have used my training products over the years. If you have any questions, comments, have an idea for a blog post, or just want to say “Hi” please send me an email or add your comment here.
The folks at UITrends.com are giving away a free copy of the Award Winning Adobe Training DVD, “Dreameaver for Designers.” Valued at $199.95, this Class on Demand self-paced 10-hour instructional DVD provides users with a step-by-step approach to building a professional web site. Instructor Sue Jenkins is a Dreamweaver expert, Adobe Certified Expert/Instructor, and industry renowned author.
If you make any resolutions this year, resolve to make your website the best it can be. The New Year is the perfect time to update your website, especially that copyright date in the footer of all your pages. While you’re at it, consider rewriting some of the copy on your site.
Does the homepage have important key words embedded in the text that can help visitors find you through a search engine?
Do your page titles need more pizzazz?
Would you like to add any new content or take anything down? Use this type of site cleanup as an opportunity to reconnect with your customers. Offer a special New Year discount or create some other incentive to convert your site visitors into paying customers.
Is it time to add a blog? Perhaps you need an efficient way to collect email addresses and send out newsletters.
Whatever you website and graphic design needs, Luckychair can help. Contact us at info -@- luckychair to get started talking about how to make your business better in 2010.
The other day, out of the blue, I got an email from Karon Thackston of www.CopywritingCourse.com, informing me that one of her books and one of mine were being illegally made available as a free download from a particular rogue blogspot website. I had actually known for several weeks that some of my books were being offered as free downloads, but I wasn’t sure if there was anything I could do about it.
Luckily, Karen had some helpful facts. She said that authors and publishers can (and should) use the online DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) complaint form for Blogger listed here: http://www.google.com/blogger_dmca.html when the author(s)/publisher(s) have not given permission to make that book available through the site in question. Once we make our complaints, Google contacts the offending site telling them to remove or disable access to material claimed to be the subject of infringing activity and/or terminating subscribers. Then, if the site does not comply, Google has the authority to shut that sucker down! Hooaaah!
Great info Karon!! For non-Blogger offenders, we recommend visiting the DMCA WikiPedia page to learn more about how we can all stamp out this kind of evil book pirating: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act Once you identify an offender, you can contact the web host with a DMCA complaint and they must remove the information even if the site owner doesn’t.
To find out who the website host is, follow these instructions:
In Windows, press Start > Run > to open the Run dialog
Type in cmd and press Enter
Type in “ping domainname.com” (replacing the domainname with the name of the offending site) and the command will return the IP number tied to the site.
Take that IP number and plug it into almost any Whois tool (I like using the Network Solutions WHOIS search at http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/index.jsp) and the results should tell you who ultimately controls (hosts) that IP number. This is the Abuser.
Use the Abuser contact information to file a DMCA complaint asking the host to remove the pages/sites that are in copyright violation.
Needless to say, I contacted my books’ publishers immediately, and they gave the issue over to their lawyers who promptly got busy with the process of taking those ebook pirate websites down. Thankfully I have the luxury of having my publishers’ lawyers deal with this stuff, but not everyone does. I know a lot of authors who self-publish, and knowing how to tackle ebook piracy gives them the power over their copyrights they they deserve. Keep in mind that piracy isn’t just limited to the biggest and newest publications; all writing is in danger of being pirated…we’re talking EVERYTHING that’s EVER been PUBLISHED ONLINE, including old and outdated publications.
If you’re the author of a book or other publication that you hold the copyright to, you have the right to protect your work. Thankfully, it’s now easier than ever to tackle the problem of electronic theft. The government empowering web hosts to take down individual pages or entire sites instantly upon notification is also a powerful tool in our fight. With our ability to create search engine alerts (such as Google Alerts) and quickly file DMCA complaints in just seconds, we’ve come a long way.
As a designer, illustrator, and fine art photographer, I have long admired that unique, soft, selective focus or “tilt shift” effect that certain commercial, landscape, architectural, portrait, and fine art photographers achieve in their images when using a large format camera. The large format camera, which I had the distinct pleasure of using for the first time last fall, has two image planes, each of which can be adjusted vertically and horizontally as well as tilted forward and backward. The front plane contains the lens and the back plane contains the focusing screen and cut film holder or image sensor, for cameras with a digital back. According to the Scheimpflug principle (named after the Austrian who devised it to take better aerial photographs), when the camera’s lens and image planes are parallel but the plane of focus (PoF) is not, the image will only be in focus where the image plane intersects with the PoF. In other words, when the planes are not parallel, you can create some pretty interesting images with unusual blurred areas. For instance, a tilt of the front plane combined with a large aperture on the lens can create a beautiful shallow depth of field image which can often make a normal real-life scene appear as if it were a toy miniature.
Thanks to advances in technology, many photographers in the 1960s and 1970s were able to achieve this same tilt-shift effect by using new tilt-shift lenses on their smaller format cameras. Then, a couple years ago, the folks at LensBaby, Inc introduced their selective focus SLR camera lenses, providing film and digital photographers with an even more affordable way ($100-300) to make unique images with that tilt-shift, vintage, large format feel. Even more recently, however, a new software tool was released by Alien Skin for the digital photographer who knows their way around Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, or Fireworks. Using Alien Skin’s new ‘Bokeh’ Photoshop plug-in, the coveted tilt-shift effect can now be achieved digitally with a few simple clicks of your mouse.
The Bokeh Photoshop Plug-in
Bokeh (pronounced /bo?k?/ boke-uh) is a photographic term derived from the Japanese “boke,” which roughly translates to blur or haze. In the past few years, this term has often been used to describe the aesthetic quality created by a camera lens when using a shallow depth of field. Bad bokeh, for example, refers to a lens with distracting, visually unpleasing blurred areas, especially noticeable in images when reflected light in the out of focus areas appears as donut shapes with harsh double-lined edges. By contrast, good bokeh, refers to a quality lens (like the Cannon 85mm f/1.2L) that provides creamy and visually pleasing out-of-focus areas, as well as pleasing blur circles (or other shapes) in images containing multiple points of light. In most cases, an image with good bokeh will make the foreground pop against the background. This is especially noticeable in stop-action sports shots, wedding photos and portraits, and close-up images.
An example of an image with good bokeh (above) and bad bokeh (below). Notice the quality of the white areas and reflected surfaces in the background.
With Alien Skin’s Bokeh software, not only can you easily give your full focus images good pop by adjusting the bokeh of a selected area within your image, you can also change the character of spectral highlights, adjust depth of field, simulate popular lenses, apply vignettes, and mimic a tilt-shift lens to create toy model effects.
The Bokeh software interface is fairly easy and intuitive to use, and the software comes loaded with multiple presets to help you quickly apply the desired bokeh effect to your images. Thankfully, the Bokeh filter works both with and without selections. Without a selection, the filter is applied uniformly across the entire image as defined by the position, angle, direction, and size of the radial (elliptical) or planar (linear) controls. When a selection within your image is detected, the filter is applied to the areas outside of the selection. Furthermore, with each application of the filter, you may customize the amount of bokeh along with aperture controls such as diaphragm shape, smoothness (creaminess) of the blur, rotation, and blade curvature. You can even modify highlight controls to enhance or reduce highlights within the image.
The Bokeh interface is easy to use and customize.
To apply the Bokeh filter uniformly to the entire image, simply open the desired image in your Photoshop workspace and Select Filter>Alien Skin Bokeh>Bokeh to open the Bokeh dialog box. Alternatively, to apply the filter to only a specific area of your image, make a selection in your image of the area surrounding the focal point that you’d like to apply the bokeh to before applying the filter from the Filter menu. If needed, use the Refine Edge tool to apply a feather and smooth the edges of your selection, and if you plan on reusing the selection again later, be sure to save it as an alpha channel through the Channels palette.
Once the Bokeh filter dialog box opens, choose the desired lens type from the Lens tab. Next, in the Bokeh tab, select Planar or Radial to set the desired area of focus, which sets the fall-off area for the lens. When the radial option is selected, you can adjust the focus region and focus fall off by manipulating the shape and orientation of the radial tool. In the Vignette tab, you may choose presets or manually adjust the vignette shape, color, intensity, size, and feather. All of the Bokeh attributes in each of the three tabs can be customized and previewed before the settings are applied to your image. After configuring the all settings within the dialog box to your liking, the bokeh effect can either be applied directly to the image on the selected layer in your Layers panel or output into a new layer above current layer to preserve original. To immediately reapply the Bokeh filter with identical settings on another image or layer, click Cmd+Opt+F (Mac) or Ctrl+Alt+F (Win).
If you’re looking to simulate the shallow depth of field of a large format camera and make far away subjects look like toy miniatures, use Bokeh with a radial focus region. This effect works especially well with shots taken high and far away. To further enhance the miniature effect, be sure to also boost contrast and saturation using either the Alien Skin Exposure plug-in or the Adjustments tools available within Photoshop or Photoshop Elements.
The miniature effect before (above) and after (below) applying Bokeh.
Here’s another example…
The tilt-shift effect before (above) and after (below) applying Bokeh.
Overall, I give Alien Skin’s Bokeh software two thumbs up for its ease of use, wide variety of lens and blur presets, and customizable elements. My only feature wish for this fantastic product would be to add a way to manually manipulate the shape of the radial blur edges so that users could create non-uniform out of focus areas for more unique and expressive bokeh effects. Perhaps this could be done by activating each line segment and anchor point, as one does with an elliptical shape in Illustrator. Another enhancement would be to allow users to add multiple linear focus widgets within the dialog box so that two or more linear blurs could be applied in different directions at the same time to achieve the desired results.
If you like the idea of applying sophisticated selective blurs and realistic lens effects to your digital images, take a test drive of the Bokeh software by downloading a fully functional 30 day demo before you buy. To learn more about this robust image editing software, be sure to also check out Alien Skin’s free tutorial videos, reviews, case studies, and examples. Alien Skin’s Bokeh software is available for both MAC and PC for just $199 at http://www.alienskin.com/
About the Author
Sue Jenkins is a web and graphic designer, illustrator, fine art photographer, software instructor, and writer, as well as owner and creative director of Luckychair (www.luckychair.com), a full-service web and graphic design studio serving businesses across the U.S. Sue has over twelve years experience as a professional designer and is an Adobe Certified Expert and Adobe Certified Instructor teaching courses in Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Illustrator at Noble Desktop in New York City. In addition, she is the author of several ‘For Dummies’ instructional books on Web Design, Dreamweaver, and Illustrator, and is the software instructor in four ClassOnDemandAdobe Training DVDs.
Estabilished in 1997, Luckychair is
the design studio
that specializes in web
design, website
re-design, logo
design, and illustration.
Sue Jenkins is the web designer, graphic designer, illustrator, photographer,
Adobe Certified Expert, Adobe Certified Instructor, book author, and writer
that makes the Luckychair magic.
Enter to win one of my award-winning Adobe Illustrator Training DVDs
Just found out that 
As a designer, illustrator, and fine art photographer, I have long admired that unique, soft, selective focus or “tilt shift” effect that certain commercial, landscape, architectural, portrait, and fine art photographers achieve in their images when using a large format camera. The large format camera, which I had the distinct pleasure of using for the first time last fall, has two image planes, each of which can be adjusted vertically and horizontally as well as tilted forward and backward. The front plane contains the lens and the back plane contains the focusing screen and cut film holder or image sensor, for cameras with a digital back. According to the 
