Hello, Digital Image and Video enthusiasts,

Please take a minute to watch the DIG Chamber of Commerce ribbon cutting video described in item 3 below . . . the link is http://www.digitalimagegroup.org and was created by Douglasville CitiTV professional videographers . . .

We ask that you keep Lois (Lesa) Volper-Wills in your thoughts and prayers as she goes through a lengthy recovery adventure after having a near-fatal bicycle accident on October 1st. Lois, along with Susan Morris is a Digital Image Group ambassador to the Douglas County Chamber of Commerce. She is currently undergoing intensive physical therapy for a crushed leg and broken shoulder and has been placed in the Golden Living Center – Kennestone located at 613 Roselane Street, Marietta GA 30060. She is in Room 102 and the visiting  hours are basically “anytime.”

Second, FREE WATERMARKING SOFTWARE, TODAY ONLY . . . if you are reading this on the day I send it out, Monday, October 27^th, there is a $49 PC program being given away for free TODAY ONLY at www.giveawayoftheday.com. The program is called Watermark Factory 2.0 and is geared towards helping you batch watermark large groups of photos all at once. It is fairly easy to learn to use. However, you must get it before 3 a.m. Tuesday morning or it will not allow you to install it. After that it costs $49. Also, you must unzip and run the ACTIVATE.EXE file first before you install the program in order to register it, otherwise it will be the demo version. If you have more than one computer you can put it on as many computers as you want provided you do it tonight.

Third, we would like to thank the crew at the City of Douglasville’s CitiTV25 including Kellie Hunter, Jason Post, Steve Jones and Nathan Todd for creating a Douglas County Chamber of Commerce Ribbon Cutting Video about the Digital Image Group. The video was lensed over at Jerry Leath’s “The Great Frame-Up” on Highway 5 in the Publix Shopping Center here in Douglasville on August 12^th of this year. Thanks to all of you who attended – you might be in the video somewhere or in one of the pictures taken that day by Amber Wilburn of the Chamber.

We have linked the video into the front page of http://www.digitalimagegroup.org temporarily.

You can see many other videos by the CitiTV crew on the City of Douglasville website at My CitiTV Live including recordings showing the Mayor and City Council meetings, the City Manager and our favorites, the Special Features section.

Happy 80^th birthday to DIG member John Fuller!

At our October 16^th meeting of DIG we had 24 attendees and 11 presentations. There were 7 people who attended for the first time, bringing our current membership up to 61. You become a member by attending one or more meetings and membership is free. We received $15 in donations, which exactly covers the monthly rental of our meeting space. Thank you very much for chipping in!

For the first time this month, we have placed many of the DIG members’ presentations consisting of images and PowerPoint files from the October meeting up on the DIG website at www.digitalimagegroup.org in the Galleries section . We appreciate all of you who gave presentations, and a special thank you to those of you who are graciously sharing your work over the Internet with the rest of the members and future attendees who couldn’t make it to our October event.

The purpose of sending you these DIG Minutes is to show you the work of others and to help motivate you to get out and create new digital content! Then bring it over for next month’s “show and tell.”

In attendance at the October 16^th meeting were:  Alan Cordrey, Bob Adams, Caprice Lengle-Spicer, Diana Paradise, Frank Karycinski, Gene  Spicer, Gina Wilson, James Campbell, Jane Cupp, Jerry Leath, Jim Enterkin, Jim Gardner, Jim Sims, John Fuller, Ken Paradise, Kent Owings, Larry Harper, Michael Toles, Norma Nichols, Rebeka Calhoun, Richard Nichols, Steve Taylor, Susan Morris and Timothy Hale.

Our presenters for the evening included the following (follow the links to see the images):

1. Alan Cordrey presented “Collection of Old Stuff,” a group of random images including a huge hotel in San Diego, deer and fawns, tombstones, beach scenes, fall leaves in Connecticut, and some bridge scenes. Click on the links to view each person’s images.
2. Steve Taylor presented a PowerPoint presentation entitled “Stock Photos.” He showcased www.alamy.com to demonstrate a stock photo agency that gives the photographer 65% of each sale. There is a possibility for any photographer to make money provided that they have correctly exposed images, no dust spots, and the minimum size of an image is 48 megabytes. The amount you make will depend upon usage, file size and market. You can view Steve’s presentation by clicking here. Part of Steve’s presentation had to do with how to upsize your images to make them compliant with Alamy.com’s requirements. Alamy.com provides a plug-in which allows a photographer to drag and drop images up to their website. Upsizing your images without losing quality requires either setting up a Photoshop action to continuously upsize an image by 110 percent, then 110 percent more etc. until it is the size you want it, or you can use Alien Skin’s BlowUp plug-in in your image editing program.
3. Kent Owings showed his “Western North Carolina Images.” His images consist of Nature pictures, waterfalls, animals, misty waterscapes and people in a festival crowd.
4.  Photographer John Fuller entitled his presentation “Miscellaneous Pictures.”  He showed pictures taken from September Saturdays, Atlanta Cityscapes, bird pictures including a baby cardinal, and deer. 
5. At break time, we held a birthday party for John Fuller who is 80 years old yesterday, October 26^th 2008. He blew out all 8 of his candles.
6. Professional Photojournalist Tim Hale presented “Sports & Photo Sales.” He showed pictures from his sports assignments and discussed his photo sales successes. Due to professional & contractual restrictions we can’t include his photos on the DIG website. Tim gave a demonstration of how he uses his flash equipment.
7. Richard Nichols presented a video frame-grab enhancement demonstration entitled “Topaz Moment Video Enhancement.” Topaz Moment, from Topaz Labs, is frame-grabbing software for Videographers. Topaz allows a videographer to grab a frame of video and turn it into a high-resolution still photograph by capturing 3 or more adjacent frames and combining them to provide up to 16 times more image information. The software then adjusts the contrast, saturation and sharpness to present a finished picture of incredible quality. In addition, Topaz Labs creates  amazing image enhancement software plugins for Photoshop, Adobe AfterEffects and Final Cut Pro.
   Richard’s presentation included video cuts from bluegrass band “Peachtree Station” showing how he combines Topaz still images with video as part of the video editing process. You can see for yourself by clicking on the link or visiting www.douglaspix.com .
8. Gene Spicer of Cartridge World-Lithia Springs gave a presentation in the kitchen area of St. Julian’s parish hall entitled “Photo Paper Preferences.” Click on the link to watch the video. Gene sparked discussion about the wide variety of substrates that image makers use when printing. He asked a variety of questions of the audience concerning what they find to be the best type and quality of paper for their artwork.
9. James Campbell showed us ten minutes of “Cell Phone Images.” James, presented special effects created inside his cell phone, portraits and a going-away party given him by his co-workers at UPS, , pictures of yards and landscapes, etc. It is great to see his interest and early work.
10. Ken and Diana Paradise presented “Paradise Pics.” Although they say they are beginners, Ken and Diana’s image making shows serious effort. They shared a wide variety of images made during their many travels including nocturnal cityscapes, wild animals, birds, flowers, landscapes, seascapes, winter scenes, nature, and insects. They plan to purchase a monopod in the near future to aid in maintaining image sharpness at low light levels.
11. Rebekah Calhoun’s show was entitled “Outer Banks, North Carolina.” Her imagery included pictures made at Kitty Hawk where Wilbur and Orville Wright tested their first airplanes. Beach scenes, seascapes, dolphins, ships, sea birds, and museum artifacts dominated her presentation.
12. Tawanna Wilson was unable to attend. However, she sent a number of images she created early this summer at the Milwaukee County Museum and the Milwaukee County Zoo. Her imagery sparked a discussion about dioramas. Dioramas are three dimensional  models depicting events, objects, scenery and activities, usually encased in glass in a museum. Often the models are shown against a painted two dimensional panoramic backdrop and/or floorground.

According to the Wikipedia,  “the first dioramas were invented by Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre (1787–1851), formerly a decorator, manufacturer of mirrors, painter of Panoramas, and masterly designer and painter of theatrical stage illusions. Daguerre would later co-invent the daguerreotype, the first widely used method of photography.”

Tawanna’s images included dioramas of Native Americans, herds of (stuffed) wild animals, live zoo animals, architectural details and stained glass, flowing water and atmospheric conditions. 

For the benefit of those receiving this message who haven’t already heard this, the Digital Image Group’s mission and vision statement is as follows:

“The Digital Image Group (DIG) is a Douglas County GA-based non-profit visual arts education and social organization. It is comprised of people interested in image-making using digital still photography, multimedia, videography and computer graphics. We meet and show our images and digital videos, give feedback, participate in visual education discussions, and provide demonstrations, seminars, workshops and courses."

We are proud members of the Douglas County Chamber of Commerce. We meet the 3^rd Thursday of every month from 6:30 p.m. at St. Julian’s Episcopal Church in Douglasville. Our motto is: Show, Tell, Listen, Learn, and Collaborate! Visit http://www.digitalimagegroup.org for more details.

We would like to thank our founding members and our corporate sponsors, without whom this group could not be possible.

Our corporate sponsors include:

St. Julian’s Episcopal Church are providing us the place to meet. We thank them for their service to us and to this community.

The Douglas County Chamber of Commerce are sponsors through their support of our activities and ongoing promotion of the DIG organization.

Jerry Leath of The Great Frame-Up provides special frame pricing for anyone associated with DIG. If you need framing, go see The Great Frame-Up on Highway 5 in the Publix Shopping Center.

Gene and Caprice Spicer of Cartridge World-Lithia Springs provide a number of special services to this group. Cartridge World sells some of the best and longest lasting printer cartridges money can buy. As evidenced by this month’s presentation, they also sell a wide variety of high quality photo printing papers. 

Tim Collins, the publisher of the Chapel Hill News & Views, provides magazine space and printing when it is available to show our work to an audience of 40,000 or more and help us attract talented visual artists in this area while we entertain the masses.

Norma and Richard Nichols of Art on Disk Corporation provide the computer and video equipment, publicity, secretarial duties, website and marketing labor to help make this group successful.

An anonymous sponsor provides the projection equipment.

Come join our monthly visual arts celebration! If you haven’t created new images lately, express yourself—or  plan to come see what everyone else is up to.

Our next meeting will be on Thursday evening, November 20^th starting at 6:30 p.m. Each month our library of image making information will increase . . .

Thanks!

Richard