2006 - A Recap, Of Sorts...

This has been another eventful year, like 2005 we have had our encounters with nature in the form of storms, droughts and general insanity from many of the worlds nations and political leaders. North Korea tested a nuke, Saddam Hussein was executed, Israel and Hamas went to war in Lebanon and Pluto was demoted to a planetoid. For the world of digital imaging we have seen a new trend in Public Beta releases of software from many of the long standing players in Camera RAW software solutions and from Adobe with Photoshop CS3 and Lightroom. Konica/Minolta stopped making cameras, Pentax merged with Hoya and The DSLR dropped below the US$500 threshold. Anti-shake/Image Stabilization became the newest feature of choice and Leica released their M8 Digital Rangefinder Camera. We also lost several of our leading personalities, including; Slim Aarons, Tom Abercrombie, Ruth Bernhard, Warren Bolster, Peter Borsari, Roland Boyes, Bob Carlos Clarke, Raul Corrales, James Fee, Bruce Fraser, Leonard Freed, William Garnett, William Gottlieb, Masumi Hayashi, Heinrich Heidersberger, Robert Heinecken, James Hinton, Tana Hoban, Martha Holmes, Philip Hyde, Frank Lennon, Catherine Leroy, Jim Murray, Arnold Newman, K Kenneth Paik, Gordon Parks, Michael Richard, Joe Rosenthal, Anthony James Ryan, Arnie Sachs, Bill Strode, Mpozi Tolbert, Seema Aissen Weatherwax and Volkmar Kurt Wentzel. The biggest technological news was the emergence of the Intel based Mac. With Mac OS running on a platform which can also run Windows, it's going to be interesting to see what the future has to hold for creatives looking at upgrading their hardware. That's all for now ... enjoy yourselves, keep safe and have a happy new year.