Monday ~ August 21, 2017

Posted by Dave Updegraff on August 21, 2017
Posted in: Daily Posts. Leave a comment

Jeanne Fay

Happy Monday

Jeanne

“When no one else can understand me. 

When everything I do is wrong. 

You give me hope and consolation.

You give me strength to carry on.

And you’re always there to lend a hand in everything I do.

That’s the wonder, the wonder of you.” 

“And when you smile the world is brighter.

You touch my hand and I’m a king.

Your kiss to me is worth a fortune.

Your love for me is everything.

I guess I’ll never know the reason why you love me as you do.

That’s the wonder, the wonder of you.”

Happy Birthday Honey.  You are my best friend, my soul mate, my lover, my life partner and I love you with my life.

Sunday ~ August 20, 2017

Posted by Dave Updegraff on August 20, 2017
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Happy Sunday!

First, a thank you to my life long friend, Diana!  Thank you for checking on me to make sure everything was all right.  I tend to get in these motivational / creative funks from time to time and it takes a while to get the energy flowing again.

Last night we celebrated Jeanne’s birthday a couple of days early.  Angie and Ben had us over for a birthday celebration and we had a wonderful time.

A couple of weeks ago I gave Josh my little Nikon Coolpix camera that I normally carry on my bike.  He has shown a keen interest in photography and so after getting his Mom’s permission I gave him the camera.  My wish is that he develops a real passion for photography and that we can spend some quality time teaching and learning from each other.

Gabby also likes to take pictures.  This is a little camera that actually takes pictures.  I don’t think you can download the images to a computer but you can see what images there are on the back viewing screen.  I’m sensing a pattern here as I’ve been taking pictures of the kids since day one and maybe Gabby will want a better camera as she gets a little older as well.

This was the birthday dessert from last night.  Angel food cake with strawberrys, whipped cream, and home-made ice cream.  I paid the price for eating this but it was worth it.  🙂

That’s it for today.  Enjoy your day and be careful.

Friday ~ August 11, 2017

Posted by Dave Updegraff on August 11, 2017
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , . 1 Comment

Happy Friday!

On the way home last night I was watching these big cumulus congestus clouds build in the sky, wondering if they would eventually turn in to a thunderstorm later down the line.  I have two images for today.

Of course I had to stop by my favorite windmill and frame it with the big clouds.

Enjoy your day and be careful.

Thursday ~ August 10, 2017

Posted by Dave Updegraff on August 10, 2017
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Happy Thursday!

I have two images today.  The beauty of a well maintained golf course is pleasing to the eye and I enjoy photographing them.   I use to have a passion for golf and played reasonably well.  Now I tend to endure golf and play lousy.  🙂

The image above is the great group of friends I played with yesterday.  Maquoketa had its annual Chamber Golf Outing, which actually has little to do with golf and more about socializing and raising funds for this wonderful organization.  Our organization is a great sponsor of the event and the Chamber.

Enjoy your day and be careful.

Friday ~ August 04, 2017

Posted by Dave Updegraff on August 4, 2017
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Happy Friday!

Indulge me a little today as my offering is not so much about photography as it is about the pride I feel for the organization I work for.

I have three images for you today about a group of young people I have had the pleasure of working with for the last eight weeks.  Every year for the last few years our organization has offered a special “Leadership Internship” to junior and senior college students.  They take a weekly leadership course that I teach and then visit various businesses and talk to community leaders learning about everything from the Federal Reserve Banking system to how to start a business on your own.  They learn about reading inadequacies, food scarcity, and the challenges faced by our farmers.  They spend time with our bank presidents and learn even more about leadership.

We require them to have a community minded project and then they present a program to our senior management team on how to attract and retain Millennials in the work environment.  In the next few years Millennials will make up the majority of the work force and they are quite different than the Baby Boomers and Generation X of today’s workforce.  In fact close to 50% of today’s workforce is made up of Millennials.

So the first image of this post is of the Interns presenting the community of Eldridge a bike repair station as Eldridge has an avid biking population.  The interns raised the money from donations and a program from our organization called “Pay It Ohnward.”  It gives our employees money to invest in projects and charities that are close to their heart.

The second image is of the Interns presenting Eldridge with $600 in “Pay It Ohnward” money.

This image is of some of the employees from our different banks that showed up to support the Interns.

A little photography talk…  This is actually two images that I tried to do a photo merge in Photoshop.  Unfortunately (and it rarely happens) Photoshop couldn’t merge the two images because they were so badly miss aligned.  (Photographer error.) 🙂

So I manually aligned the images.  If you don’t look too close and it is passable.  Lots of minutes blending, masking, and cloning here.

Enjoy your day and be careful.

Sunday ~ July 30, 2017

Posted by Dave Updegraff on July 30, 2017
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Happy Sunday!

I have three unrelated images for you today.  Well they have commonality in that they are from our Minnesota trip but other than that they are unrelated to each other.

Every evening Mark and Julia would build a pit fire and we all would sit around and watch the kids play and the sun go down.  It was a great time of the day.  On this particular night they had S’mores and I had to capture this image of Austin enjoying his.

I believe this is a Double Crested Cormorant.  I am always reluctant to identify a bird because I’m usually wrong.  I do not study birds but I do enjoy making images of them.  There were some pelicans near by so he kept his distance from them.  I did read that they spread their wings like this to dry their feathers.

The best way to end this blog is with another sunset.  I have about 600 images of sunsets for the trip.  I won’t show them all but I do have to show some of them.  🙂

Enjoy your day and be careful.