Publications of LA Images, A Product Advertising Company

Ok folks lets get serious here, if you need plumbing service, auto repair, or even a new hair do, you call a professional. So, why try and create your own web site. The concept sounds challenging and easy, with all the great software floating around in Cyber space it’s even tempting to give it a go.

When a critical service is needed, most informed people do not attempt to brave the unknown. They save themselves, migraines, a lot of wasted time, money and the embarrassment of creating a big mess by hiring a professional. Attempting the almost impossible feat of creating your own website is a very noble undertaking. It sounds so impressive to tell your employees, or coworkers and friends, you’re going to build the new company website.

You’ve done your homework, researched good html practices, purchased a copy of FrontPage 98 and Adobe Photoshop. Perhaps you’ve even collected the images to use, scanned and saved them as jpegs. Now you’re ready.

A good website has multiple ingredients. Good graphic design, html coding, page layout, images and pages sized for fast loading. The site developer needs a thorough understanding of how search engines work, various image and file formats. An artistic eye, page balance and good symmetry. Also, but most important, knowledge of how to effectively market the subject matter to the Internet audience of your industry.

Lets face it most, computer programmers are very knowledgeable with creating meta tags, how search engines work, and html coding. However, possess no marketing skills. Most graphic artist or administrative secretaries are very familiar with page layout, color coordination and the appropriate fonts to use. Not a clue about the workings of the Internet. And most marketing executives are neither good at html coding, graphic design, nor knowledgeable at how search engines work, or care for that matter.

Finding a team or person possessing all these skills is a find. It usually takes a collaboration to bring together all these skills toward the development of an effective website. Since everyone likes to get paid for his or her efforts, the team approach means a costly website. It is not the most efficient approach either since too many cooks spoil the stew! The team approach is not always appropriate.

One person is usually assigned to web development on a single project. It is usually the systems administrator— who is usually behind locked doors or in a closet somewhere in the company. The systems administrator is a busy person, working long hours trying to keep a company’s computer systems working. He or she has no patience to deal with graphic artists, marketing executives or administrative secretaries sanctioned to work on the project. Most computer programmers consider html child’s play consequently they can take forever to complete a site. Or worst yet, charge an exorbitant amount time and money for the work.

Do yourself and your company a favor. Hire a professional web developer. CLICK ON LOGO to visit. www.meteng.com/laopen.html

New Age Art
Laser induced microscopy licensed to the consumer products industry. High-tech images created at the speed of light!

Does sleepy Hampton Roads
have an eye for art and fashion? If you ask Milfred E. Thomas, president of L.A. Images in Hampton Virginia, he'll tell you,

"Most certainly the people in this community have an eye for fashion and art".

Especially new-age and high-tech art such as LID Art, an acronym for Laser Induced Damage (LID).
However, beauty is often found in the smallest places, says Thomas, LID Art Images are created by an intense pulsed solid state laser. As part of destructive evaluation testing of coated and uncoated laser optics, microscopy is performed on the damage sites to determine if damage has occurred. Since the sites are only the size of a pin head ~ 1.0 millimeters in diameter, magnification of 150x is required to view and photograph these sites.

Lid Art slide timed exposure session

Thomas isn't the first to notice the innate beauty of these non controversial images. Timothy J. Rosio, M.D. Epstein Photomedical Institute, at the Marshfield Clinic in Marshfield Wisconsin noticed them as well. Specializing in laser therapy such as removal of portwine stains and skin lesions, the Marshfield Clinic has permanent exhibit of laser art. Displayed at the exhibit, noted from the article by Kathy Kincade published in LFW magazine, was eye catching laser art photography and sculptures by artist such as Trix Rosen and Michael Tanteri. Mr. Tanteri and Ms Rosen both of N.Y. city have been using lasers to produce a variety of special effects for photography used for advertising and marketing of art to CD, and album jackets.

You can also ask Steve Seitel and Ed Teppo, V.P. and president of Big Sky Laser in Bozeman Montana or Michael Thomas of Spica Technology in Nashua NH, both commercial companies specialize in laser induced damage testing of optical surfaces. Dr. Steve Seitel says,

"Milfred isn't the first person to see the beauty of these images, just the first person to see how to make money using them to develop a line of consumer products".

L.A. Images has an exclusive license agreement with Spica Technologies for distributions, sales and licensing of LID Art Image photography.
Similar to a snow flake, these images will never repeat the same pattern. This is due to the unique nature of each laser, which is slightly different from the rest in power and beam quality.
The interaction between the laser and materials, variations in the surface finishes, coating, contamination and atmospheric conditions lead to chaos at the moment of impact with the laser pulse and optical surface. This means, statistically the damage sites are almost impossible to duplicate, which also contributes to their unique quality and high resolution appearance. The type of equipment used to magnify and photograph these images also yields the vivid color variations with sharp image contrast.

manipulated image of Kim Harris

Polarizers in the microscope allow the same image to be photographed with a myriad of color combinations, this gives such diversity to the images as a new marketing tool to sell consumer products, says Thomas.
L.A. Images plans to introduce these images to many sectors of the consumer product marketing industries, not just neckties.
To date, only microscopy images produced by the Magnetic Imaging Laboratory in New Mexico and Molecular Expressions have capitalized on using microscopy images to sell neckties.

Thomas plans on developing the market for L.A. Images to touch consumer product categories such as novelties, paper goods, homedecor, product packaging and print advertising, pop displays, backdrops, and container labels.
Through collaborations with various leading producers, L.A. Images also plans to develop a line of sporting goods and apparel, taking advantage of the current nostalgic era in clothing and the very fast growing snow and surfboard industries.

"Thomas also says, with the emergence of the information super highway, advertising on the web offers L.A. Images customers the opportunity to view, pick and even grade images for a certain application or product category".

In December of 1995 L.A. Images hosted a pre-Christmas image grading party with a focus group of Hampton Roads residents to gain valuable marketing information. The results were overwhelmingly positive. Sixty-five raw images and fifteen timed exposure images with live models were graded. The focus group was racially and gender diverse, from middle to upper class backgrounds. The results were tabulated statistically and aid with determining which industries to market the raw images versus image manipulation prior to releasing. An image may have no public appeal in its natural state, however with computer manipulation the same image can be very appealing.

"Thomas also says, the European, Central American, Mexico and third world markets will be even more lucrative than the domestic markets, because they are not as conservative as the American Markets".

By introducing these new high-tech images to the consumer markets, the term laser art truly applies, these images are only created utilizing lasers. The company's first slogan was, "Creating images from destruction". In this case beauty is in the eye of the technician viewing the image through the two eye pieces of a stereo Nikon DIC microscope and hopefully by the buying public. Our new slogan has been rewritten by our staff calligrapher to increase brand identity with an Internationally appealing slogan, "Creating images at the speed of light!"

Sometimes, you don't even look me in the face, try to meet my eyes with yours. Sometimes you just see my complexion and turn away. I keep my eyes trained on your face hoping for the chance, your eyes would meet mine, so I could greet you. Sometimes our eyes never meet, you never gave me the chance to say Hello. Sometimes your eyes never meet mine. There is a soul and a spirit of a very loving and caring human being inside this Black Body! Return to L.A. Images main page.