In the meantime, I thought I’d say Happy Birthday to Adobe Photoshop, which turned 20 years old last week, by posting the first image I ever digitally altered. If I remember correctly, this was from back in 1994, with Photoshop version 2.5:

I used to walk past this statue nearly every day in college, and I was impressed by how lifelike its face was in every detail except for the eyes. So I brought my friend Nick with me one day while I photographed the statue, and then photographed Nick in the same light. I made prints in the darkroom and then scanned the prints. Using Photoshop 2.5, I digitally put Nick’s eyes in the statue. It almost makes the statue look like real a person wearing makeup.

Okay, so it’s pretty rudimentary. But I was young, and enjoyed playing with the new technology.

Here is the gallery at Time.com: Inventors and their Inventions

Inventor: Tami Galt
Invention: Folding wagon
Patent: No. 6,491,318
Brand Name: Fold-it & Go

Tami Galt is a mom, and her invention is sold in toy stores, but it wasn’t inspired by her kids. She was looking for an easy way to carry groceries at the market, and thought a little red wagon would be cute. Unfortunately a little red wagon wouldn’t fit in her car. So she came up with a collapsible wagon that stows away in a bag, and can easily be transported.

And here’s a video I made about Tami and her invention:

Inventor: Joe Carolan
Invention: Guidance system for rescue personnel
Patent: No. 7,196,614
Brand Name: Quick-Finders

Joe Carolan is a volunteer firefighter who has a solution for a serious problem: In a smoke-filled burning home, firefighters can’t see very well, and a stranger’s home is unfamiliar territory. Half of all home fires occur while people are asleep, and 64% of children who die in fires die in their bedrooms. So Joe invented Quick-Finders, a two-part system that helps firefighters quickly identify bedrooms. The first part is a sticker that goes outside the front door. It lets the firefighters know that your home has Quick-FInders. The second part is a reflector you stick to the baseboard on the hinged side of a bedroom door. When firefighters shine their flashlights through the smoke, they will see the reflectors (which are designed to catch light from any angle) shining back and know where the bedrooms are.

The Quick-Finders website: www.quick-finders.com

I love the feel of this photo, with all the nondescript people in their nondescript clothes.

Inventor: Tom Roering
Invention: Amphibious recreation vehicle
Patent: No. 7,329,161
Brand Name: Wilcraft

Tom Roering is an ice fisherman who invented a cool product: a lightweight amphibious vehicle that is also an ice fishing shelter. It’s called the Wilcraft (“Wil” stands for water, ice, and land). If it falls through the ice, it floats. It has room enough for two people to comfortably fish together. It can be adapted as an ice rescue vehicle. And it fits on the back of a pickup truck. Take a look:

Photos of Tom and the Wilcraft. Each image can be enlarged by clicking:

The Wilcraft website: www.thewilcraft.com

Inventor: Art Fry
Invention: Repositionable stationery
Brand Name: Post-it Notes

As told on Post-it manufacturer 3M’s website, “The idea for repositionable notes struck Fry while singing in the church choir. His bookmark kept falling out of his hymnal, causing him to lose his page. So… Fry used a portion of his working hours to develop a solution to his problem. Now the world is singing the praises of his pet project: Post-it Notes.”

You can read the whole story of Post-it history at 3M.com.

Inventor: Pam Turner
Invention: Easy-to-thread sewing needle
Patent: Pending
Brand Name: Spiral Eye Needle

About 10 seconds after Pam Turner showed me how to thread her Spiral Eye Needles, I was an expert. It usually takes me longer to thread a needle than it does to sew a button, but it really is impressively easy with Pam’s invention.

Pam says she remembers her mother having problems threading needles when she was young. Her mom used to say, “We went to the moon, why can’t somebody fix the needle?” Pam decided that if nobody else was going to do it, she had to.

Pam used to actually make the needles herself, using a grinder in her home. But now she has a manufacturer, and business is taking off.

The Spiral Eye Needle website: www.spiraleyeneedles.com

Inventor: Jerry Ford
Invention: Automatic wheelchair brake device
Patent: No. 7,066,482
Brand Name: Safe-T-Chair

Elderly people with Alzheimer’s Disease or dementia sometimes forget to use the manual brakes on their wheelchairs, which then fall out from under them when they try to stand or sit. When this was brought to the attention of crop farmer Jerry Ford, he decided to do something about it. His invention is a rather clever automatic brake system for manual wheelchairs. It’s even designed in a way that still allows the wheelchair to fold up for transport.

I met with Jerry on his farm and learned more about his wheelchair brake system and its inspiration:

Here’s a better look at the photos in the video. Each of them can be enlarged by clicking:

The Jerry Ford Company website: www.jerryfordcompany.com

Inventor: Clint Fruitman
Invention: Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulator With Hot Or Cold Thermal Application
Patent: Application No. 11/025,615
Brand Name: The Painaway Pro

Clint Fruitman is a materials scientist and biomedical engineer who holds 15 patents from his years working in the plastics, semiconductor, jewelry, and pharmaceutical industries. All of this experience has come together in his latest invention, which makes it easy to administer the pain therapy technique called Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation (more info about TENS at Wikipedia) and hot or cold therapy at the same time.

I’m trying something new with my inventor portraits. I’ve begun shooting video of the inventors I photograph and putting together a short film about each person. This is the first video in the series.

Being the first video of this type that I’ve ever done, I realized while editing what other important shots I should have gotten, questions I should have asked, microphone I should have used, etc. But I suspect that will always be the case to some extent. I have some really interesting inventors coming up for this project, and I think the videos are going to be a great new component.

Here’s a better look at the photos (click any one to enlarge):

Inventor: Michael Rosenberg
Invention: Media-Dispensing Apparatus and Method
Patent: Application No. 11/827,032
Brand Name: The Game Chamber

Michael Rosenberg’s kids have a lot of games for their Nintendo DS handheld system, at a cost of 30 or 40 bucks each. As kids will do, they sometimes let their bedrooms get messy, and games get lost or broken. Finally, out of frustration, Michael decided to invent a gadget that stores games in a way that ensures they don’t get lost: in order to remove a game from the Game Chamber, you have to put the one you’re using back in.

Here’s Michael with a Nintendo DS and his dog Busta (click any photo to enlarge):

I can’t imagine how a toy could get lost in this room:

And finally, here’s Michael in the plastic injection molding factory where the Game Chamber is made, standing among various molds for dozens of products made at the factory.

The current model Game Chamber holds 6 Nintendo DS games, but Michael is developing models that hold more games, and that come in different shapes and sizes appropriate for different age groups and different game systems.

The Game Chamber website: www.gamechamber.com

The photo of “Superman” below was chosen for this year’s American Photography 24 annual, which comes out next month.