in a regular column on the topic for American Photographer, and as West Coast editor of Swedish magazine FOTO. In 1992, Aaland released the book Digital Photography. The book gives instruction and tips on using digital cameras to take unique photographs. He followed that with Still Images in Multimedia (1996) and then Shooting Digital: Pro Tips for Taking Great Pictures with Your Digital Camera (2003), which was named by Designer's Bookshelf as "Best Digital Photography Book of the Year for 2004." Aaland has been the co-host of the Nordic Light International Festival of Photography since 2011. Beginning in 2001, Aaland began publishing a number of guidebooks about using the computer design program Photoshop to enhance digital photography; Photoshop Elements Solutions: The Art of Digital Photography was followed by second, third, and fourth volumes. He also acted as an unpaid adviser to the development of both the alpha, beta, and final versions of the Adobe Photoshop Elements application. Photoshop CS2 RAW: Using Adobe Camera Raw, Bridge, and Photoshop to Get the Most Out of Your Digital Camera (2006) was Aaland's first of two books explaining the graphic file format RAW, which is used by professional photographers. While working as an adviser on beta tests for Adobe Lightroom, Aaland proposed a real-world test of the software by inviting professional photographers to travel to a far-off land where they would use Lightroom. The result of this was Photoshop Lightroom Adventure: Mastering Adobe's Next-generation Tool for Digital Photographers (2007), which brought professional photographers to Iceland to test the software. Aaland followed up that book the same year with Photoshop Lightroom 2 Adventure: Mastering Adobe's Next-generation Tool for Digital Photographers, which brought professional photographers to Tasmania to show users how photographers work with the Lightroom 2 software. Memoir and travel work In a diversion from photography instruction, Aaland published The Sword of Heaven: A Five Continent Odyssey to Save the World (1999), detailing the six years he spent traveling around the world documenting a peace project initiated by survivors of Hiroshima and led by a Shinto priest. During this time, Aaland dropped brick-sized pieces of a holy Shinto Sword of Heaven into bodies of water around the world to form a protective ring of kami. Aaland's most recent book, The River in My Backyard, is an illustrated memoir exploring his family history, the murder of his father, and his pilgrimage to Mount Kailash. In 1984,