While The Boston Globe's collection of image galleries called The Big Picture always sets a high standard, we try to pick out what we think are the best ones. This week was easy with a couple of outstanding image galleries from the California wildfires (yet again) and Afghanistan's Korengal Valley where Getty Images' John Moore was in the thick of the war with U.S. troops.

A Hands-On Guide to Creative Lighting, a DVD produced by Nikon USA and featuring photographers Joe McNally and Bob Krist, is now shipping. The US$39.95 DVD is chock-full of great tutorials covering the possible uses for Nikon's current crop of Creative Lighting System Speedlights.*UPDATED*

Reuters features Coffee Buzz, a gallery images that many of us can relate to as we sip our first cup of coffee each morning.

The Los Angeles Times feature an online slideshow on its front page in addition to several other galleries of images from various wildfires in Southern California.

The Canon Professional Network's Behind the lens features the work of Getty Images photographer Marco di Lauro who spent the summer embedded with British Paratroopers in Afghanistan.

Olympus has announced winners and posted a gallery of microscopic images from its 2008 BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition.

The Washington Post features a gallery of interesting and amusing images called Weird, Wild and Wacky on its online washingtonpost.com site.

In Climbing Dangerously, The Washington Post image gallery shows French daredevil Alain Robert climbing towards his goal of scaling as many skyscrapers as possible throughout the world, using only his bare hands.

Reuters has collected images from its photographers worldwide for a slideshow called Strange and unusual.

DataRescue has recently released a new version of PhotoRescue, its venerable photo recovery and memory card maintenance application for Mac and Windows. Version 3.1.7 Build 11394 improves recovery of Nikon D700 and Canon EOS Rebel XS/1000D RAW files, movies and, in the Windows version, corrects a caching problem when the program is run in 64-bit Vista. The company has also released DD, a freeware disc imaging application designed to replicate a failing memory card or other device requiring recovery.

Like The Boston Globe's The Big Picture, The Sacramento Bee now tells some of its stories with large powerful images in The Frame.

Earlier this week, Digital Railroad's liquidator announced that two possible purchasers of the company's assets had withdrawn from negotiations, and that the next step will likely be the deletion of the servers' contents - including all photos - prior to the sale of the hardware at auction.

Adobe has posted a trial version of Photoshop CS4 for Mac and Windows. The Photoshop CS4 download is the Extended version and is fully-functional for 30 days, at which time a serial number can be purchased to turn the trial version into a licensed copy of either standard or Extended.

Reuters has posted three timely online image galleries: Remember the veterans: The media is watching; and A restive border.

Globe and Mail photographer John Lehmann shares a story about an alcoholic artist who uses a log as a home with a multimedia presentation called The man behind the log.

The Boston Globe's The Big Picture features an excellent set of images from various photographers on The next President of the United States.

The Washington Post features an image gallery called The Healing Fields by Michael Williamson who photographed a three-day field hospital in Virginia where a group of volunteers provide free medical service to those in need.

Citing "market conditions" that have changed significantly since the camera was announced, Canon Canada has increased both the expected retail price and the amount the dealer will pay for the upcoming EOS 5D Mark II.

This past October was a month chock-full of news which is obvious from Reuters' Pictures of the month: October from its photographers throughout the world.

In his slideshow Believe-04-11-2008, Harlem, New York City-based photojournalist Steve Simon concentrated on quiet portraits of individuals witnessing history within the large crowd watching election night coverage in Harlem.