Recently in Eye Candy Category

There are lots of things to look forward to at this time of year. Among my favorites are the year-end photo compilations posted online by paper and ink media. Time magazine has a flash slideshow with some of its most memorable 2008 images at its Web site.

In contrast to Time's strong, silent approach to presenting its eye candy, MSNBC has jazzed up its year-end review with music and sound clips. The result is powerful and dramatic, as well as a great example of how to make a slideshow sing.

Vanity Fair had so many great photographs this year, it split its 2008 wind up into a part one and a part two. Those familiar with the magazine know its imagery can be startling, although, to me, it sometimes seems to be the photographic equivalent to ficiton. The slideshow player at the site leaves something to be desired, too. It exhibited some bizarre behavior in Firefox.

If you're a lover of good photography, you'll love the look-back galleries Time, MSNBC and Vanity Fair are offering at their Web sites.

As a kid, one of the highlights of my week was the arrival of Life magazine. Its photos were like rocket fuel for my imagination and a whisk for my emotions. So you can understand what a thrill it was to hear Google's announcement today that it had cut a deal with Time Inc. to post Life's entire photo library--some 10 million images--online in a searchable database. Not only were there some great moments captured in the magazine--Martin Luther King speaking from a podium, Bobby Kennedy sprawled on the floor after his assasination--but it also served as a stage for great photographers like Alfred Eisenstaedt, Gjon Mili, Nina Leen and Margaret Bourke-White.

"We're excited to announce the availability of never-before-seen images from the Life photo archive," Software Engineer Paco Galanes wrote in the Official Google Blog. "This effort to bring offline images online was inspired by our mission to organize all the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

Amazingly, some 97 percent of Life's library has never been seen by the public before.

"Only a very small percentage of these images have ever been published," Galanes observed. "The rest have been sitting in dusty archives in the form of negatives, slides, glass plates, etchings, and prints. We're digitizing them so that everyone can easily experience these fascinating moments in time."

Initially, only 20 percent of the library has been uploaded to the Google site, but more photos will be added incrementally over the coming months. If you're looking for some real eye candy, go with all due haste to the Life Photo Archive Hosted by Google.

Anyone who has ever spent time in a subway car during a service outage doesn't have to be told about the meaning of terror. There's something about being trapped in a confined space underground with a bunch of strangers that touches something in our psyche that we'd prefer remain untouched. That fundamental fear is tapped into this week by multimedia artist Kevin Banks. Banks, whose forte is photo collage, has crafted a series of tongue-in-cheek horror tableaux that might give some of us pause before we descend below the streets of the city for our next commute. Banks' tricks with pics, published by the Boston Phoenix, is a treat worth looking at.