Greetings!

After almost two weeks of unseasonably cold weather (mornings in the teens and single digits), the days are warming and slowly lengthening, presaging a beautiful late winter and early spring in the desert southwest.

January was a busy month for us, starting with a trip to Carmel, CA for the opening of the 2013 Juried Exhibition at the Center for Photographic Art. Not surprisingly for one of the iconic loci for west coast photography, the opening was well attended despite temperatures in the mid-40s. Steve has two images from his Earth and Mars series include in the exhibit and one of Karen's images from her Islamic Tiles series is included in the web gallery.

On January 25th, we attended the opening of the Desert Grasslands exhibit at the Tucson Museum of Art. The photographs, paintings and installations on display are truly impressive and for those of you in the Tucson area, we urge your to find time to visit before the show closes in early July; you will not be disappointed. The show includes five of Steve's images, two selected from Sonoita Plain and three from his series, Grass Gestures (images). On January 31, Gregory McNamee and Steve presented a talk, based on images and Greg's text from Otero Mesa: Preserving America's Wildest Grassland.

Karen continued work on her series based on images of the Alhambra and Alcazar interiors, while Steve revisited images of Death Valley taken over the past 35 years: a first step in putting together a book.

February promises to be equally busy, with a week long trip to Anza Borrego Desert State Park and Death Valley. We plan to bring our beloved pup, Fitz; we'll see how well photography, hiking and a needy, though very well behaved canine mix!

Steve has just learned that two of his floral images were awarded honorable mentions in the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum's first annual photography competition. His images, along with 22 others, will be published in the spring edition of the museum's O'Keefe Magazine. Notecard sets with some of Steve's flora images are available on our Etsy store.

Landings which features Steve's images along with those of Stu Jenks continues through February 14th at ArtsEye Gallery in Tucson. The exhibit includes new images from the portfolio "Illusions of Intimacy," as well as 8 three-dimensional pieces in Japanese/Chinese screen format.

We have begun publishing selected portfolios of our images as e-books, readable in the iBook reader on iPads, in the Chrome browser with the Readium extension installed on your desktop or laptop, and in a less capable PDF version. At the moment 4 of Karen's portfolios are available in this format. The first portfolio, Illusions of Reality, is available for free download from her website. Other portfolios are available for a small charge. We will soon have some of Steve's portfolios available as well.

An overview of the retrospective exhibition at Verve Gallery has been added to Steve's website. A flattering review of the show was published in Visual Art Source. You can follow the arc of his photographic vision and view a sample of the images shown in the show and in the catalog. A catalog for the retrospective is available. The 162 page, 8 x 8" catalog includes images spanning Steve's photographic career, and is graced by an introduction written by Rebecca A. Senf, Norton Family Curator at the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson and the Phoenix Art Museum. A print copy and/or digital (PDF) version of the catalog can be ordered here. A video of Steve discussing his photography is now available on the gallery website.

Sand Mirrors, the new book of photographs by Steve and poems by Richard B. Clarke, is available either directly or through Amazon.com. Information on purchasing the print book is available on the book's website. The iBook edition of Sand Mirrors is now available through either iTunes or the book's website. The print book may also be "paged through" using "Look inside the Book" on Amazon.

We want to remind everyone that prints of the images in Sand Mirrors are available at very reasonable prices from the Image Collective in Ashland, OR, in their TIC Collection. The photographs are all printed on archival materials, 8" by 8" centered on an 11" by 14" sheet, with prices starting at $25. All images in the book are available.

Karen's new electronic book, Sticks and Stones, an alphabet book for the 21st century, has just been published by Polytropos Press. At the present time, due to the inclusion of scripting for the animation, sound and the image content, the book is available only for the iBook reader on the iPad and for the Chrome browser with the Readium extension installed. You can examine a subset of the book's content and watch a video depicting its interactive content on the book's website. You may purchase and download the book directly or >purchase it from the iTunes bookstore. There is now a Facebook page for the book. If you are on Facebook, we would appreciate your "likes." The Facebook page and the website each contain a video where you may watch the book being "read." If you would like to download a sample of the book to play with it, please do.

There is now an author page including all of Steve's books at Amazon.com. Both Steve and Karen have created Facebook pages devoted solely to photography. We have each populated a 'timeline' where you can trace the development of our very different visions. For Steve, we invite you to visit: http://www.Facebook.com/StephenStromPhoto/ and for Karen, http://www.Facebook.com/KarenStromPhoto/). You can also follow our progress and view larger portfolios of images by visiting our websites: http://www.karenstrom.com/ and http://www.stephenstrom.com/.

The complete archive of our newsletters is now available on both of our websites.

To order e-books, visit ttp://www.karenstrom.com/ebooks.html for Karen's work
or http://www.stephenstrom.com/SESebooks.html for Steve's work.
Or use the following links to visit our artist/author pages in the iTunes store:

for Karen's author page at iTunes

for Steve's author page at iTunes.

To order Steve's books click on the book cover.