If the name sounds familiar, it should. Our good friends of over twenty years, the Melendis, have suffered the worst nightmare all parents can relate to. The abduction and murder of their daughter. Shannon Melendi and my son, Ryan, shared their birthdays in the same week in October. It also happened to be the week the Professional Photographers of Miami held their annual banquet to induct new officers. Luis and I always brought the kids to the banquet and had two birthday cakes for them. We were proud parents watching them grow up.
The loss of such a lovely and vibrant life is bad enough, but to think the confessed killer could get out of prison in just a few years is shocking. Help us to keep Butch Hinton in prison for LIFE as he should be.

Here is the info to send an email to the Parole Board. It’s very important to follow the directions and speak from your heart on behalf of Luis, Yvonne and Monique Melendi.

Emails should be address to: victimservices@pap.state.ga.us

The subject line should be: GDC ID#0001201616 (Colvin C Hinton III)

The subject line is very important as it is the Georgia Department of Corrections Identification number of Hinton.

Thank you for caring and helping us keep him behind bars where he belongs.

To our good friends the Melendis, we love you and support you in this fight.

This is the Winning Creative Class Portrait we did at the Niagara School! How cool is this? This was entirely my students idea…..we just put it all together…..Thanks for the BEST Class Picture Yet!!

Any one recognize this Tough Girl??

Sometimes the trips go hard and sometimes, the trips go easy. This one was a mix…..the lack of sleep and travel were catching up with me and I was fighting a cold, but the good times and friends carried me through the week. Thanks Niagara and Friends!! SCROLL over the images for the captions.

Always thinking of something Creative, Craig Takes Photoshop Actions to new levels of processing. My favorite terrorist of Actions!

Niagara School was too much fun. You can see how tired I was, but while there I felt no pain, but instead the gain from being with warm, talented and creative people days and nights. I can’t wait to share the students paintings with you and all the fun we had. So scroll down and enjoy seeing all the students work here!

Niagara School of Imaging Painting 2006

Most of these students never painted or had a Painter class before Niagara! Isn’t their work awesome?!

My son Ryan is writing for the Oakland Tribune and he had a huge article hit the front page. Check it out: BRIDGE FIRM HID INJURIES

It started out just like any other trip. Fly in. rent a car, get to the hotel, unpack, and get to work. And that’s exactly how it began. Flying into Newark, rent a Kia Optima, and driving out to Long Island where Marilyn taught PAINTER for the week at the Long Island Photo Workshop. Great School, Great People, Great Week. To finish off this GREAT WEEK, we were meeting Marilyn’s cousins for dinner in Manhattan, Friday night. So we drove back to Jersey, emptied out the car at the hotel we were staying at for the one night, and drove back to Manhattan. The car rental office was at the hotel in Newark, so we figured we’d just drop off the car Friday night, and take the shuttle to the airport Saturday morning.

Sounds like a good plan, right?

We parked the car in a New York City Licsensed garage on West End Ave. at 7:30pm. We went back at 11:30pm to get the car, and the attendant brought out an Audi. I told him this was not our car, so he put that one back, and brought us out a Mitsubishi……BOTTOM LINE…….NO KIA OPTIMA ANYWHERE!!!! Would you believe they gave someone else our rented car. First of all…..How STUPID do you have to be, to not know that this is NOT your car, and drive away with it? And how STUPID do you have to be, to want to give me someone elses car?…………At this point, it was only logical to call the Police…..Fast Fowarding to 1:30 in the morning…….the garage people think they know who has the car……..They paid for a cab to take us back to Jersey…..Insurance claims were made…….The car was returned to it’s rightful owner on Monday afternoon……….No damage…case closed………By the way……New Yorks Finest from the 20th precinct, Officers Soto and Vanderlingh, handled this problem with perfection…..Thank you

Michael…..

ps: from Marilyn: This was so unbelievable! Only to US would this happen!!

We had such an incredible class in Long Island last week. ALL my classes touch me to my soul, but this one was a little special.
We laughed, we cried, we Painted!
You all know who you are and how you affected me!
Thank you to a great group and a special thanks to all the wonderful Long Island board of directors that helped to make this week special.

I also made some new friends while there. Craig Minielly, fabulous photographer and originator of Craigs Actions and Vered Koshlano from Canon became my close friends that week.
Vered spent the week printing our work on the brand new Canon iPF5000 printer she had at the school.
My work never looked so good!!

Craig…see you at Niagara School next week!!

Remember: No one here ever painted with Corel Painter before the workshop!!
Aren’t they all amazing?