We received a press release from the IMAF 2006 announcing the call for entries for their upcoming competition and exhibition. The festival is going to take place this November in London. Here are the details:

As Oman celebrates its 36th Renaissance Day today, we would like to express our gratitude to the leader of Oman’s civilisation and the constant source of our inspiration, the Sultan Qaboos bin Saed.

In celebration of Oman’s Renaissance Day next week, the Omani Society of Arts will hold a photography exhibition in Hayy Al Sarooj displaying 60 photographs showing scenery of the heritage and nature of Oman. The opening of the exhibition was postponed from the 23rd of this month to the 25th as the former was announced a national holiday for the public sector.

Printaholics is a promising new project to be established in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as an online printing service and a photo sharing community, the first website of its kind in the Gulf area. Upon its launch in August, Printaholics will provide its customers with various printing services including t-shirt, mug, and card printing. The service of Printaholics will be fully online as the user would be able to make payment online to receive his prints via delivery, however it is still unknown if the website will feature any international services.

Even before its official launch, Pintaholics started its first photography competition titled ‘Faces from the Gulf’ which could entitle you to win a Canon EOS 350D SLR. The deadline for submitting entries for this competition is July 30th. You can learn more about the competition from this page.

We are excited to hear about such a project in the area and we do wish our dear neighbours in the UAE the best of luck with Printaholics. You can visit the Printaholics website at http://www.printaholics.ae.

“Elephants Dream” is the world’s first open source, the movie was made using Blender (a 3D open source software). This project was initiated to show that open source can compete with other known commercial 3D & animation software. The movie took 7 months to make and 125 days to render.

To get download the movie, and the source files of this movie, go to http://orange.blender.org/

ACDSee is giving out a trip to World Cup 2006 at its new photography competition. The participants are simply required to upload their photographs to the contest’s website to qualify for the grand prize and some other weekly and monthly prizes as well. You can learn more about this competition from here.

Freej is the title of the upcoming Arabic 3D animated series to be aired on Dubai TV starting Ramadhan 2006. Freej means ‘Neighbourhood’ in the Khaleeji dialect and would tell the comic story of four old ladies living in a small traditional neighbourhood in the outskirts of the city of Dubai. Read our latest feature at this link.

As an opening activity for “Muscat – The Arab Cultural Capital of 2006″ event, Oman International Exhibition Centre is hosting a fine arts international exhibition featuring the works of artists from the US, Germany, Japan, and other countries from all over the world. The exhibition has started on the 4th of January and will last until the 8th.

Gulf Photo Plus has once again started working on the biggest photography event in the area: Gulf Photo Plus photography Workshops & Lectures. The 2nd Gulf Photo Plus event that is being sponsored by HP, Apple, Adobe, and Emirates Models will feature workshops and lectures by seven highly acclaimed photographers including Bryan Peterson – author of three best selling photography books on Amazon. The event will feature workshops and lectures on various photography topics including lighting, night photography, macro photography, using adobe photoshop, and marketing photography. The event that will cater both ametures and professionals will take place from the 9th to the 18th of February 2006 in Dubai Knowledge City. Tickets for the event could be purchased directly via and the website and there are early bird discounts offered for a limited time period.

You can learn more info and read details on the previous event from the Gulf Photo Plus website.

Idividuals that submitted their details at the official website of Adab Al-Pixel should have received an email today informing them that their copy of the magazine would be dispatched to their specified address once they verify it. The homepage does not have any new information though and it seems that interested individuals may still be able to order a free copy of the magazine.

You can view the official website of Adab Al-Pixel at this link.