snowman-collodion, originally uploaded by Luckychair.

Merry Christmas everyone! Enjoy my snowman, shot with a digital SLR camera and processed with the Wet Plate effect in Alien Skin’s Exposure software.

Great news! Photoshop User Magazine has just published their April/May 2011 issue and they’ve given Smashing Photoshop CS5: 100 Professional Techniques by Sue Jenkins of Luckychair.com a 4 star review! Perfect timing too, because readers can now download all of the files used in the book from the publisher’s website.

Peter Bauer wrote:

Smashing Photoshop CS5: 100 Professional Techniques

“‘Smashing’ in this case is along the lines of “Georgy girl, you look smashing tonight,” rather than a sledgehammer making contact with your PC because Photoshop locked up again. The book includes 100 techniques appropriate for designers looking for a spark, or self-promoters who need a hand developing their advertising materials. As befits a book associated with Smashing Magazine, the opening techniques are Web development related.  The author also often defines color using hexadecimal values (that text field to the right of the number symbol [#] in the Photoshop Color Picker). In addition to the various Web and design related techniques, the author covers such topics as image distressing, retouching, and restoration. The author also provides links to free textures, fonts, patterns, and other useful bits and pieces. There is an assumption of at least basic knowledge o Photoshop in many of the techniques, so this book isn’t for newbies.”

– 4 stars – Photoshop User Magazine, April/May 2011

To read the rest of the reviews, head on over to the NAPP website and sign up now.

Though I’ve never really been a collector of things per se, I have always greatly admired the forms of certain objects (think Plato’s theory of forms). Chairs, of course, I love (thus the name, Luckychair), but I really dig the shape and feel of spoons too. These plain jane cuties are from the 1970s and shot on my sweet 1960’s Formica counter top. Makes ya hanker for a spoonful of Bosco or Ovaltine, right? Or maybe you’d rather have a hot cup of instant Sanka? For more nostalgic food references, check out the 20th Century by Decades Foods List at the FoodTimeline.

These old brides shoes were in a display case at a shoe repair shop that had seen better days.

If anyone ever asks you whether working full time, going to grad school full time, and taking care of a family household is too much work for one person, tell them I said “yes”!

All that work keeps me away from blogging to you, but the semester ends soon! In an effort to get back here more regularly, I’ll be uploading photos a few times a week, interspersed with news and other musings.

Here’s your first welcome back photo of a farm near Hershey, PA. And yes, the air does smell like chocolate there.

March 2011 is Dummies Month as well as the 20th Anniversary of For Dummies books!

To celebrate, all month long Amazon customers can get a $5 mail-in rebate when purchasing any For Dummies book between March 1 – 31, 2011. Even better, you can save 50% on select For Dummies Guides too! Luckychair recommends Web Design All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies by Sue Jenkins and Dreamweaver CS5 All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies by Sue Jenkins.

Web Design All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies
by Sue Jenkins
Published by Wiley
ISBN-10: 0471781428
840 pages

Written by a professional designer, this full-color book walks readers through designing a site for a specific audience, building the look of a site, adding navigation elements, testing for usability, and keeping a site updated. This book covers creating a checklist of what a design needs to include on a site, identifying an audience, gathering content, and building a site. Learn about crafting the look and feel of a site and getting content ready for the Web. The final chapter reviews search engine optimization tips and techniques.

Dreamweaver CS5 All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies
by Sue Jenkins
with Richard Wagner
Published by Wiley
ISBN-10: 0470610778
864 pages

Whether you’re a seasoned pro or a Web design newbie, here’s just what you need to get up to speed on Dreamweaver CS5. Each minibook covers a particular aspect of Dreamweaver, so whether you want to learn more about mastering the basics and designing effective Web pages or configuring database connections and working with Spry Effects, it’s all here! The nine minibooks that make up this guide cover getting started with Dreamweaver CS5, creating and publishing great sites, making pages dynamic, building Web applications, and much more, including all the upgrades in the newest version.

See our other suggestions for Instructional Books and Adobe Training Programs.

For the past few weeks I’ve been thinking about what color to paint my house when the time comes. Though that might not happen for a few more years, I still like to think about the possibilities. I’ve always considered myself more of a blue house person than a yellow or green houser. One thing’s for sure; I’m definitely not beige! While I’m partial to the pale olive green house with burgundy trim around the corner, the bright yellow with the turquoise trim next door, and the dark blue gray house with white trim and yellow accents a few blocks away, this particular yellow house keeps calling to me. My house looks nothing like this, but I love how square this one is!

What color is your house? If you could paint it any other color, what would it be? I need a base color, trim color, and accent color. Send me your suggestions!

Soho Photo Gallery

by Julie McLocklin
Journal entry for class
Women in Photography
Empire State College

Entering Soho Photo from the rain and cold outside was a pleasant experience. Larry, one of the gallery’s member artists, welcomed me inside and explained to me that Soho Photo is unique in that it is the only non-profit cooperative photography gallery in New York City. It is completely supported, directed and operated by its member

photographers who number over one hundred. He encouraged me to make myself at home, assured me it was ok for me to photograph inside the gallery when I asked, and sent me first upstairs to the mezzanine. Here they were presenting the winners of their first Small Works National Juried Competition, a showing of fifty photographs in a wide range of media, none larger than six inches square.

It is only in still water that we can see © Sue Jenkins, First place winner

I was impressed with the diversity and the originality of the photographs and I enjoyed taking my time up close to absorb the works and feel the intentions of the artists. I thought the first place winning photograph by Sue Jenkins was well deserved. The picture is of a young girl floating in shallow water with her eyes open, a dreamy expression on her face, hair billowing around her head, limbs floating calmly, her whole being at rest. The colors are very luminous, the green and blue hues of warm tropical salt water and the work is beautifully titled “It is only in still water that we can see.”  I felt the artist’s intent before I read the title. The word “reflection” came to mind for me in a dual way – the imagery of the water and the girl’s state of consciousness. In the girl’s dreamy gaze I saw a childlike clarity, not mucked up, wise in its purity and innocence.

There was so much talent among the twenty-five chosen artists that I cannot even touch upon my thoughts and feelings on each. There were some photographic processes that were new to me and consequently peaked my interest. Helena Kaminski had a wet plate collodion tintype photograph of debris along the shore of a salt marsh that I loved – the resulting image from this process reminded me of enameled jewelry – very beautiful.

Welcome–No Photos © Larry Davis

On the main floor of the gallery four member artists were exhibiting their work. I was intrigued by the work of two of the artists for the same reason. Whispers by Myra Hafetz and Welcome–No Photos by Larry Davis both drew the viewer’s focus to what was not seen in the image, but merely suggested, inviting the observer to imagine. Myra’s photographs had a sense of nostalgia in commonplace objects like teacups and old saucers. Only the outlines of the objects are visible in the images, the canvas is mostly white, inviting the viewer on a journey back in time to fill in the story behind the image. Larry Davis’ photographs were shadows of artwork and other objects taken in museums where photographing the art directly is not allowed. He captured shadows on floors, walls and around doorways. Soft-focused and sepia toned, these images were intriguing and very complex in that there seemed to be overlapping shadows upon shadows coming from multiple light sources. I leisurely took my time contemplating the angles and imagining what the actual object looked like. It was fun and I realized later, rather ironically that the Larry who greeted me upon my arrival and assured me it was fine for me to photograph in the gallery is this very same artist – the one who titled his series of pictures “Welcome – No Photos.”

“Measure: Sue Jenkins” is a solo exhibition of 10 color archival digital prints that explore the concept of measuring time, nature, and entropy. In this series, the artist focuses on places where nature overtakes structure. The digital grid serves to accentuate the human drive toward order and nature’s disregard for this type of effort. This, the artist hopes, will inspire viewers to reconsider their personal spaces and immediate environments.

This exhibition can be viewed in the first floor lobby to the Mahady Gallery in the Shields Center for Visual Arts at Marywood University. The show runs concurrent with the exhibition “Passages: Robert Griffith” in the Mahady and Suraci Galleries. The opening reception for Passages takes place on Saturday, Feburary 19th, 2011 from 6:00 to 8:00 pm. This event is free and open to the public. Both shows will run from February 19, 2011 – March 20, 2011.

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