There is one week left for entries in the PixSylated ‘Exciting Light’ photo contest. The winner will receive a free ticket to any stop on David Ziser’s 58-city ‘Digital WakeUp Call’ tour. Entries will be judged next Friday (March 27). Read the details on how to enter at the end of this article. Not feeling competitive? Still want to save $20 on admission? Get the PixSylated discount code here.

The tug-o-war between copyright and the public domain continues. Creative Commons, which serves as ground-zero for free thinking about the interface of copyright and the public domain, recently wrote: “Creative Commons has spent a lot of time over the past year or so strategizing, and worrying, about the current state of the public domain and its future. In particular, we’ve been thinking about ways to help cultivate a vibrant and rich pool of freely available resources accessible to anyone to use for any purpose, unconditionally…. Our copyright licenses empower creators to manage their copyright on terms they choose. But what about creators who aren’t concerned about those protections, or who later want to waive those rights altogether? Unfortunately, the law makes it virtually impossible to waive the copyright automatically bestowed on creators.” Read the entire article here.

Chris Orwig launched a blog recently. You’ll find ‘Flipside‘ here. If you don’t know Chris, you should. He is one of the most insightful instructors I’ve ever met. Fortunately, you don’t have to attend Brooks Institute to get Chris’ pearls of wisdom and latest techniques. His tutorials on Photoshop and Lightroom at Lynda.com are fantastic. You should also check out his monthly newsletter – which I’d consider a must-read if you’re journeying in the realm of Ps and Lr (who isn’t?). What I really admire about Chris are his insights about creativity and living life as a photographer.

PixSylated recently joined the legions of blogs on photography at Alltop. [Warning: clicking here will cost you a lot of time. You'll be zoomed over to Alltop's Photography News page which carries the lastest five headlines from dozens of blogs on photography. If you go looking for PixSylated, you'll find it way at the bottom. Along the way, you'll come upon loads of great blogs on photography that you've never heard of. You'll click links. You'll read great articles. You'll see great photos. After a few hours, you'll wonder "how did I get here?" Hopefully, you'll remember that it all started because you clicked something on PixSylated marked "here".]

Joe McNally’s latest exposé, ‘The Hot Shoe Diaries’ was published last Friday, The 13th (               …) < fill in your own snide comment ’bout that. A few days later it rose to #9 for all books sold on Amazon. (O.K. now take back your snide comment…). If you’ve just got out of solitary or recently crash landed on our planet, you should know that I’ve gone on record as saying this is the best book on flash photography ever. It’s pure McNally. Beautiful images. Great stories. Loads of “how-to” info. If you still need to order your copy, click here.

Work with Joe McNally in person. Paso Robles Workshops still has a few seats available for the Joe McNally and David Hobby workshops in April. McNally will teach ‘The Hot Shoe Diaries’ workshop April 20-24. Hobby will teach a ‘Strobist’ 5-day workshop April 27 – May 1. Px has confirmed that the mayor of Paso Robles will order extra bulbs for the bat-signal during those two weeks. Head to the Paso Robles Workshops site for more details (on the workshops, not the mayor).
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