This weeks highlights include:

• Round Up of the Focus On Imaging Show

• Looking at the Direction of Lighting

• Do you know what 'Chimping' is?

• Photoshop Raw Plug-In Update for images captured with the Nikon D300 and D3

•  NEW  April Photographers Diary page added

• March Photographers Diary - new items for you to photograph added

• More, more,  more ........

All we need is money, must be a common cry from those returning from the Focus on Imaging Show that was running this week at the NEC in Birmingham, the major annual photographic show for professional and enthusiast photographers.  We bumped into a few of you there, and given the number of people must have missed many others, and that was only one day. Perhaps the solution is a Money Tree, the subject of this weeks photograph of the week. This was an advertising assignment we took on a while back and how it was taken, edited and creative work done is covered in a page on this. As it's going to also become a limited edition print, the first of a new range of platinum prints with a limited edition of just 30, perhaps we can harvest a few pounds from it.

If you went to Focus on Imaging, then why not compare your notes with ours, and if you didn’t get there this year, then perhaps our highlighted tour of what we saw, complete with many links, will allow you to see at least some of what we discovered. Of course it's too late now for the show offers, or is it, many will sell items at show prices if you call them shortly after the show.

With time out at the show and writing up what we saw, you may be surprised to find we have had time to do even more with the new monthly diary page, with many events you can photograph in April being added. We can't of course cover every event and as many local small events are easy to locate, what we try to highlight is the more major photographic opportunities and the more way out or unusual events that go on around our country. We have also added few more items into the March diary and some into the look ahead page. If you know or have heard of an event that we have not discovered then drop us a line, even if you don’t know the details, knowing it exists is the first stage to finding out more. This information is not available elsewhere and is gleamed from many websites with specific interests, together with following up rumours and old press reports, its quite a challenge.

Following on from some of the articles we have done before on lighting is an article looking at the direction of lighting with a link to a tool that lets you try out different basic effects.

Turning to a completely different topic ‘chimping’. Have you heard someone say a photographer was chimping or perhaps suggest you are a chimper. Are they being complimentary or critical, is chimping to be encouraged or frowned upon, let's explain more. 

Photoshop and the D300/D3. Several people have experienced problems getting their D3 and D300 Raw photographs to load in the Photoshop Raw loader. This can be overcome and we have added a Q&A on this in response to a recent email request.

Next week, we are doing something slightly different, with the first of a number of weeks spread throughout the year each based on a particular theme. So make sure you get around to looking next week, with some rock solid information, several location lists and see how we have got on with the monumental task of covering a number of major locations in detail. 

In the News This Week

Nikon have launched this week a new 'cashback' promotion called Spring Cash Back. When you buy a New D40 or D80 DSLR with at least one lens between the 25th February and 30th June 2008 you can get up to £75 cashback. See here for more details on which lenses are applicable and how to go about claiming the cashback.

Nikon have also released some updates to it's software. NEW Nikon Transfer version 1.0.2 for both Windows and Mac users. This has corrected some small errors which occurred including when in 'Transfer New Photos Only' option when the number of photos being transferred were more than 200 it would quit unexpectedly, also when the 4th character in the source folder was a number, images in the folder could not be recognised. These have now been corrected. Some new keyboard shortcuts have been added as well as support for the latest Coolpix cameras. They have also corrected a problem in the WT-4 Wireless Transmitter and a software update is available. To get either of these fixes go to the Customer Support section of the Nikon website and take the tab for Software Downloads. Full instructions on what to do are included.

The stock photography and digital media giant Getty Images has been sold for $2.4billion to a private equity firm in the US, subject to shareholder approval but it is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2008.

A European Plan to Capture Nature. A new initiative has been launched which will see 500 nature photographers travel on more than 90 assignments to every country in Europe with the aim of gathering images of the continents natural treasures. Its a 5 year project under the banner Wild Wonder of Europe and starts in May leading to outdoor exhibitions, audiovisual pictures shows, a TV series as well as photo competitions. For more information visit www.wild-wonders.com.