Darkroom

The photography of five former Cecil Community College students will be showcased through Dec. 23 in an exhibit titled At Home and Around the World at the college's gallery, 1 Seahawk Drive, North East. The exhibit features the work of John Abrahams, Joe Gulick, Manohar Kataria, Jane Schaefer and Kathryn Ward. Abrahams, a lifelong resident of Port Deposit, has been a priest for 25 years. He is assigned to the Archdiocese of Baltimore as sacramental minister for the Prince of Peace Church in Edgewood.

WEATHER: Mostly sunny, with a high near 49 . Tonight is expected to be mostly clear, low around 36. TRAFFIC: Check our traffic updates for this morning's issues. TOP NEWS Former Oriole Doug DeCinces indicted on insider trading charges : Former Orioles third baseman Doug DeCinces was indicted by a federal grand jury on securities fraud charges, for allegedly cashing in on inside information about the acquisition of a California medical company, prosecutors said.

MARYLAND Student's death ruled homicide On the same day the state medical examiner ruled that the death of a student at the Bowling Brook Preparatory School was a homicide, the FBI said it is conducting an independent investigation into the incident. pg 1a Third county OKs Verizon TV The final obstacle for cable television competition in Baltimore County was removed last night when the County Council approved a deal with Verizon Communications. The county becomes the third in the Baltimore area with competition between Verizon and Comcast.

He'd been watching that tree for months. In the summer, the sunlight would seem to flicker through the leaves of the flowering cherry just beyond the front door of his house in Bel Air. As the weather cooled, he studied the changes in the light. By day. By night. He'd waited for the right moment."I'd been saying, 'I need to take a picture of that tree' for a long time," says Jack Riggin. "It's something you practice; it's a habit you get into. Constantly, you're looking when you go out to the car, whenever you go, you're looking for a picture.

I just purchased a new Nikon professional-quality digital camera that allows interchangeable lenses. My old camera produced great pictures right off the storage card. But now I usually need to adjust my pictures using Photoshop Elements before they look right to me. Do I have a defective camera? - Debra McCarthy I can't know, but I can offer some possibilities. First, there are more settings with a DSLR (digital single-lens reflex), so it could be that you need to spend more time with the manual and experimenting - always a good idea before shooting big moments.

Berenice Abbott, 93, a pioneer of modern American photography, died Monday of congestive heart failure at her cabin in Monson, Maine. She started her career as a darkroom assistant for Man Ray in Paris. She soon opened a portrait studio, where she made penetrating portraits of such artists and writers as James Joyce, Janet Flanner and Jean Cocteau. She was best known for her black-and-white photographs of New York City in the 1930s, in which she used the tools of modernist photographic style, including dynamically framed compositions, flattened pictorial space, high angles and detail.

Phil Grout becomes introspective as he describes the photographs that remind him of his father, Gerald C. Grout, who died in 1988."He's the one that really got me going into photography," said Mr. Grout. "He was a physician and a fine photographer. He had his own darkroom, and I used to watch him."The photographs that bring back these memories hang on the walls of the Carroll County Arts Council gallery. The photographs from 1967 to the present are in a new exhibit, "Jubilee: A Photographic Retrospective by Phil Grout," which opened yesterday with a reception.

Baltimore has been many a musician's muse over the years. Today, the indie rock group Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks release their latest album, Real Emotional Trash. Malkmus was the primary singer and songwriter for the indie rock band Pavement until they split in the late '90s. Based in Portland, Ore., the band looked to the East Coast for the title to its new single, "Baltimore." The word "Baltimore" has popped up in plenty of songs.

Part of the charm of Baltimore's arts scene is that someone is always hitting the "refresh" button. An art gallery or music club shuts down on one block, only to have another pop up a few streets over. Abandoned or underused venues might suddenly sprout a theater troupe one day, an artists' collective the next. A lot of the refreshing can be traced to a thriving DIY culture in town, a culture that has been responsible for some of the most intriguing new enterprises over the years and that helps give the city its reputation as a place where artists of every genre can find - or create - an outlet.