Happy New Year! Change is a coming

 

Well, it is the last day of year 2008!! Overall, I believe that it was a good year for me and my family.   It was a year about change for us and the United States. 

The election of Barack Obama showed the world that even the United States could finally live up to the “all men are created equal” theme of our constitution and elect our first afro-American president.   We have definitely  evolved from the equal rights movement and “separate but equal” philosophy of the 1960s and are finally attempting to judge people on things that are in their control not their gender or color of their skin.  I am hopeful that Barak will help lead us to abandon the  “us vs. them” theme that has been prevalent in American society  since 911.  I am hopeful that we will be able to understand that people are complex beings can not be judged and/or  written off strictly by stereotypes/labels such as:  “liberals” , “conservatives”, “right winged” , “left winged”, “pro war” , “pro life” , “pro choice”, “black”, “white”,  “woman” etc..  As labels such as these do not truly represent the target of the label and these labels are many times distorted in their meaning to benefit the “labeler”.    I am glad that we have the freedom in the United States  to be different.  With difference, we need to have tolerance and acceptance to ensure that we maintain our rights/beliefs and do not make everyone subscribe to our particular moral  belief systems as we could be on wrong side of the fence someday.   Can you imagine what our world would be like if everyone was exactly the same?  I would say it would be pretty darn boring …  Oops!! I am starting to get too philosophical here… :)

Anyway,  as mentioned previously,  my family has moved across town into a new house that will gradually become our home. A home is what you make it.  A house is a building where you live.   Earlier this month, I took some pictures of the family outside our new home for our annual Christmas cards.  Here are some of my favorites from the shoot.

  

Happy New Year!!!! I wish you and your family the best in the year 2009!!!

Announcing Plesha's Picks

Over the last several years, I gained much of my photography knowledge through researching photography web sites/blogs,  reading photography books, and consulting with several photographers(mentors).   These various resources have been invaluable to me in my quest to improve my photography skills.  I really do appreciate all the efforts that people make to share their knowledge with the photographer community.  I know I would not have progressed in honing my skills without their support.

Here are some critical  blog resources examples(not inclusive) for my never ending learning process:

• Strobist Blog
• Digital Pro Talk - David Ziser blog
• Lighting Essentials - Don Giannatti blog
• Planet Neal - Neil van Niekerk blog
• Sweet Life Photo blog

I check these resources almost daily for new information to improve my craft.  I started to realize that people running these sites are giving back to the photography community and I was mainly "on the take."(Sort of speak).   This did not seem too fair. 

So,  I am starting a section on this blog called "Plesha Picks" where I will be sharing information about various photography related resources/articles that have inspired and educated me.  This is done in hopes that you may find the same type of inspiration and education.   This is one way to show my appreciation for the effort by individuals to help keep the photography community  "alive and kicking." 

Why are you calling this section "Plesha's Picks" do you ask ? Please ask or at least sound interested in the answer.  :)

Well... it is a tribute to my late grandmother Viola Plesha.  She was definitely a no-nonsense and "slightly opinionated (ya.. right!)" ex-factory worker from Flint,Michigan with  a heart of gold.  She always had an opinion about everything.  Her straight-to-the-point no-holds-barred opinions became famous in our family so much that we started calling them "Plesha's Picks." 

So in her spirit, my  photography resource picks will be called "Plesha's  Picks."  God bless her wonderful soul!!

Please Stay tuned ....  

Give your images a color boost with Lab Color.

As a self-proclaimed “bird and babies” photographer, I was always interested in figuring out how reproduce that crystal clear eye popping color that I saw in many of the bird and wildlife images on the web. You know that kind of color that makes you do a double take on the image as your jaw drops.

One of the several blogs, I follow on a daily basis is Digital Photography School blog. Recently, a post Turn Ho-Hum Color into WOW! with Photoshop by guest blogger Helen Bradley caught my eye and introduced me to Photoshop’s Lab color.

I created two Photoshop CS4 actions based on her posting:

• One with 2 squares curves “a” and “b” channel adjustment
• Another one with 3 squares curves “a” and “b” channel adjustment

In essence, these actions performed the following steps:

1. Duplicate the Background photo layer(ctrl+J)
2. Select the new layer
3. Change the mode to Lab Color (Image > Mode > Lab Color)
4. Do not flatten image at this stage.
5. Open curves (Image > Adjustment > Curves)
6. Adjust the top and bottom points for the “a” and “b” channels as mentioned above.
7. Click “Ok”
8. Change the mode back to RGB(Image > Mode> RGB) without flattening the image.
9. Adjust the opacity and blend mode of the layer to suit the image.
10. Optionally, the flatten the image. (Layer > Flatten the image).

Here are couple of examples:

Original with standard processing in Adobe Lightroom 2.2:

After the “2 box” Lab Color Photoshop action:

Original with standard processing in Adobe Lightroom 2.2:

After the “3 box” Lab Color Photoshop action:

I know this just scratches the surface of Lab Colors potential. Enjoy and experiment as I will be doing !

Football Girl

Recently,  we decided to move across town here in Raleigh, NC in a quest to get our children in a better school situation especially our first grader Sophia.  So we listed our house on November 13, 2008 and sold it the very next day. Go figure with the housing market the way it is. It was off to the races for the Jackle family.  We had to find a place to live, pack our things, and move by December 19(35 days later).  Well, we accomplished this feat and now are in our new home with boxes and all.  Some said this could not be done. Well, you never tell a Jackle (especially my wife Jackie that something could not be done).  She will definitely prove you wrong.

Along with digging through boxes, I decided to look through some of my old photography.  I found this image that was taken from a school outing from my daughters previous school.  I am not really sure the name of this little girl so I am calling her the "football girl."

I hope you enjoy this shot as much as I do.  

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