Upde Designs

The image above is of my friend Dave Tabor.  He is the one on the right.  Without a doubt one of the finest gentleman I have had the pleasure to know and call my friend.  We were at a bait shop in McGregor, Iowa as Dave wanted to pick up some smoked salmon.

I looked around the store and saw nothing of interest to me so I went outside.  I was looking at all the stuff on the building  when the person in the middle of this image came up to me and asked me if I knew where some little town was.  I told him I didn’t but that my friend probably did.  Sure enough Dave had an idea where the town was but he walked the half block to his truck, retrieved his map of Wisconsin showed the couple where the place was and then gave them the map to boot.  That’s how he rolls always looking for ways to help others.

After leaving the bait shop I saw this train sitting at a crossing apparently waiting for clearance to proceed.  I like trains and since we were not on any kind of a schedule I asked Dave to pull over and I made some images of this train.  I had a friend who lived in Ames and worked out of the Des Moines office of the same company I worked for many years ago.

He was an avid photographer and shot mostly trains and landscapes.  His office had at least 50 framed images of the different trains he had captured over the years.  Tragically he was killed in a small town in Western Kansas walking across the street and was hit by a speeding car.

Finally, this elephant has no artistic value, but I had never seen a large pink elephant or for that matter a representation of one so I thought it was necessary to at least make one image of it.  I’m ashamed to say I shot it from the car window as we were stopped at a stop light.  Don’t tell Andreas that I did that.

Still a lot of photos from the adventure to process and show.  I had a real treat yesterday.  A friend had asked me sometime ago to make some images of her Father’s farm and some of the landmarks that were special to him.  She took my images and framed them for her Dad for Father’s Day.

Her and her husband just had another little girl and she asked me if I would take a family portrait of them.  Her Mother, Father, and younger Sister were also there.  I took about 145 images of different groupings at their farm.  The lighting wasn’t very good and it was too windy to use a light stand so I’m not sure how they will turn out but I was honored that they asked me to do it.

Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your weekend.  There are only 52 of them a year and each one is very special.  Be careful.