In the last issue of Red Dog News, I mentioned several photographers whose work I had reviewed at the recent Photo Lucida. As I mentioned above the response to their links was tremendous! So, carrying on in that soon-to-be tradition, in this issue I would like to highlight the work of a photographer whose work has recently caught my eye in a very positive manner, Mitch Dobrowner. I have been aware of Mitch for a little more than a year, and can tell you that his work is some of the best black-and-white landscape work I have seen in quite a while: call it Ansel Adams on steroids. His ability to locate first the scenery and then to be able to print the work in such a manner that it compels you to look closer, and closer, and closer yet at the print, speaks volumes about the integrity of his photographs.

We are coming down to the wire on our first-come, first-served special price for enrollment in Dreamscapes II, to be held October 3-5, 2008. If you sign up before August 15, you will be able to sign up for $700, a savings of $250 dollars off our regular workshop price of $950.

As we have mentioned before, The Bonanza Creek Movie Ranch (3:10 to Yuma, Lonesome Dove, Silverado, and Kid Nation were filmed there) is our primary location, while a very secluded private residence near Cerrillos, NM with many shooting opportunities, will be our base of operations. Sharpen your nude photography skills, while photographing One Model Place models Ashley Rae, Rose, Christie, and Rachey P. For the limit of ten photographers who sign up, the fee includes lodging, food (home-cooked meals), model fees, transportation, and snacks. Go to the official website to find out more. There is a $250 discount if you sign up before August 15, 2008, or if you have previously taken a Rio Grande Workshop.

British photographic artist Alan Jaras doesn't need a camera to create stunning works of art. These works, called photograms (photographs require the use of a camera, of course), come from exposing small amounts of light directly to film in a darkroom environment, turning the room into a giant camera obscura. Jaras uses textured glass instead of a lens, and captures the beautiful effects of light refraction, which are familiar to anyone owning a copy of Pink Floyd's classic Dark Side of the Moon. Click below to access Jaras' flickr page.

The Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona has announced the lineup of events for August 2008. Exhibitions include the ongoing "Edward Weston: Mexico," running through November 15, 2008 at Phoenix Art Museum, http://www.phxart.org/. The Center's exhibition "Accommodating Nature: The Photographs of Frank Gohlke," opening August 16 (reception on September 5) and running through November 2, 2008, examines the ever-changing relationship between man and nature, evidenced in the immense grain elevators of the Midwestern breadbasket, the devastation wrought by Mt. St. Helens in Washington State, and more. The Center has also assembled a new selection available in the Print Study Room: "Ansel Adams in Arizona: 1950-1968."

In an ongoing photo blog series, photojournalist Steven Hirsch waits outside of the Manhattan Criminal Court in New York to hear the "Courthouse Confessions" of released defendants. The photographs are informed by Hirsch's extensive freelance experience shooting for the New York Times, the New York Post, and many others. The stories of the defendants are presented verbatim in long, winding sentences. Despite having been released (or perhaps because of it), the crime alone is communicated with startling honesty within these sometimes rambling, sometimes dubious personal stories.

Dennis Hopper, star of screens big and small, has also captured many iconic images as a photographer through the 1960s and beyond. The Dennis Hopper and Le Nouvel Hollywood exhibit and film festival opens October 13, 2008 at the Frank Gehry-designed La Cinémathèque Française in Paris. The exhibit features video footage of Hopper, a selection of the actor's photographs, and works from Hopper's private art collection, including those by Andy Warhol, Basquiat, Julian Schnabel and Ed Ruscha. The festival will also feature screenings of Hopper's films. The schedule is listed at the festival website, the link to which is below. The exhibition will run through January 19, 2009.

On July 31, 2008, J.D. Power and Associates released the 2008 edition of its Digital Camera Usage and Satisfaction Study, which measures customer satisfaction with current digital cameras on the market. Canon, Fujifilm, Nikon, Panasonic and Sony camera lines were highlighted as having the best results. The most desired features for owners of future cameras are built-in weatherproofing and memory storage features. Cameras were tested in four categories: point and shoot, premium point and shoot, ultra slim and digital single-lens reflex (DSLR). For full rankings, click the link below.

Fine art landscape photographer Mitch Dobrowner has been awarded first place in the Prix de la Photographie Paris (PX3) Public Choice Awards 2008. Px3 is now offering two new calls for entry. "Water," an environmentally-themed juried exhibition to run in New York in 2009, will offer awards ranging from $500 to $2000, and feature the top 20 photographs at the exhibition. Deadline is October 15, 2008. The Px3 Photo Competition, to be exhibited at the annual festival in Paris, will be accepting entries until January 16, 2009. Click below to view all 2008 winners' photography galleries.

Julian Faulhaber, an architectural photographer specializing in modernist/minimalist spaces and vibrant colors will be exhibiting at New York's Hasted Hunt gallery from October 30 to December 13, 2008, with a reception on November 20. Faulhaber made his U.S. debut during this year's first New York Photo Festival. The exhibition, titled "Lowdensitypolyethelene," is named after the synthetic substance used in making plastic lunch trays, Lego pieces, and other brightly colored odds and ends of the modern era.

Nikon Inc. has unveiled six new models of Coolpix cameras, each designed to make shooting, sending, and sharing photos simple for photographers of all kinds. Among point-and-shoot cameras, the Coolpix S60 offers a new 3.5 inch touch-screen interface; the Coolpix P6000 integrates a built-in GPS unit; and the ultra-compact Coolpix S610 features immediate response and a record-setting startup time of .7 seconds. The Nikon Coolpix S560 has a unique Scene Auto Selector mode which selects the right mode for specific settings. The Nikon Coolpix S710 boasts a 14.5 megapixel sensor and advanced ISO capabilities. The Coolpix S610c provides a Wi-Fi service from Wayport, allowing easy sharing of images and videos.

The Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago presents a trip through America with the works of legendary photographers. The exhibition, titled "On the Road," runs from September 5 to November 1, 2008. In celebrating the 50th anniversary of Jack Kerouac's novel, photographs by the Farm Security Administration, commissioned by the US Government during the Great Depression, will be presented, along with "The Americans" by Robert Frank, "Rough Beauty" by Dave Anderson, and the photography of Dorothea Lange. The centerpiece of this campus-wide celebration of the Beat Generation will be the original manuscript of On the Road.

At the Bumbershoot music festival in Seattle, WA, Benham Gallery will present "Power of One-Turn Yours On!" August 29 to September 1, 2008. The theme of the exhibition, the power of the individual to change the world with modest acts of selflessness and devotion, will be expressed in the black-and-white photography series "Portraits of Conscience" by Jackie Renn, portraying the anti-war demonstrations in Seattle during 2002; a series of portraits from the developing world titled "Women Empowered" by Phil Borges; "Back from Iraq," a series by Nina Berman comprised of the photographs of wounded Army veterans; and "The Other Globalization" by Katherina Mouratidi, is a portraiture series of social and political activists from around the globe. Information on other exhibition features can be found at the link below.

The New Orleans Photo Alliance, an artist-run nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting Gulf-area photographers, has announced a juried exhibition titled "Odd Works," to be juried by renowned curator David Rubin. The theme of the competition emphasizes photographic artwork created using unexpected materials, including (but not limited to) paper, cloth, wood, metal, leaves, etc. The exhibition will take place in October and November 2008 at the New Orleans Photo Alliance Gallery and the competition deadline is August 25, 2008.

Two journalists working for the Russian edition of Newsweek have been killed in the capital of South Ossetiaon August 11, 2008, a mere three days after the start of the invasion. Alexander Klimchuck, photojournalist and member of Lightstalkers, was only 27 years old. He is the first photographer to be killed in the conflict. He and his fellow journalist, Teimuraz Kikuradze, according to Reporters Sans Frontieres (Reporters Without Borders), were killed when their vehicle was fired upon by Ossetian pro-independence fighters at a checkpoint. Below is a link to the full story.

Filter Forge Inc., developers of Filter Forge, an innovative Photoshop plug-in allowing its users to create their own custom filters, has reached a milestone of 5,000 user-created filters at its online Filter Library. The Filter Forge plug-in was introduced in 2006, and users have shared the products of their Filter Forge experience online. The wide array of filters includes in excess of 5,000 seamless textures, visual effects, distortions, patterns, backgrounds, frames, and more.

The Long Now Foundation has announced plans for a 10,000 Year Clock monument, to be installed on a mountaintop property in Nevada. Built to last and run for ten millennia, the clock may have competition in the form of a proposed permanent art gallery with works made with durable materials. Photographer Edward Burtynsky made the formal proposal, suggesting a "carbon transfer print"-a process using ground stone in magenta, cyan, and yellow instead of ink. Kept in archival condition, such prints could last through the clock's running time. Read more below!

Stone arches are majestic natural phenomena, and have long been a beloved subject for adventurous nature photographers like John Annerino, who has had to rappel and climb to capture such amazing rock formations in America's National Parks. Wall Arch has always been one of the easiest to access for photographers and sightseers, on the other hand. Sadly, it is no more. A neighbor to the Landscape Arch (fortunately still standing), the rock formation collapsed the night of August 4, 2008. It was discovered and named by Lewis T. McKinney in 1948, and was 71 feet wide and 33 1/2 feet high. It ranked 12th in size among the more than 2,000 known arches in the park.

The art of thinking and communicating visually is a vital skill to more than just photographers and artists. Advances in technology, particularly where it applies to PR and visual presentations online and in the board room has made the mastery of visual communication more important than ever. Aimed at anyone on the corporate ladder or in the private or public sector in need of education, slide:ology by Nancy Duarte, President and CEO of Duarte Design (credits include Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth), teaches how to transfer ideas into a visual medium. Retail price is $34.99. Watch the book trailer and order below.

Kingston Technology Company, Inc., a world leader in digital camera memory cards, has unveiled its new 32GB Elite Pro SDHC Flash card. The new card is optimized for use in recording high quality video with High-Definition video camcorders, as evidenced by the impressive memory space, twice that of previously released Elite Pro cards. The card can store hours of HD video, or more than 6,000 still images with a ten megapixel camera. Suggested retail price is $308.

Phase One has released a new update to its popular Capture One workflow software, which helps photographers bring the best qualities out of their RAW format image files. One of the features being touted in this new version is extended lens correction support using Lens+ and Focus+ technologies, in which lens artifacts and imperfections are removed, and color correction is more accurate than ever. Purple fringing, the all-too-familiar phenomenon often occurring in a high-contrast setting, can be swiftly eliminated with the software, as opposed to hours of post editing.