I want to show you some more of the Millwork District today.  I had every intention of converting these to black and white but I liked the vibrant coloration of the bricks and trim so much that I decided to leave them in color.  I did try them both ways but I have to admit as much as I do love black and white I just felt more comfortable with these in color.

The above image is another 7 image HDR capture.  We were rapidly running out of day light when I captured this image and it just didn’t do the brick work justice so I decided to do an HDR capture.

There are a lot of creative art work displays scattered around the project.  This is one of my favorites.    When this project is completed I believe there will be around 80 – 90 up scale apartments / condos available, professional office space and there will also be retail shops in the building.  Some very visionary people have invested a lot of money, resources, and energy in this project and I am hopeful that it will be successful.

Finally as we were getting ready to pack it in and go get some dinner I noticed this bright red step-ladder in the second story window of this building.  My original intent was to do the building in black and white and leave the room with its plywood and red step-ladder in color.  But I still liked the looks of the bricks in color.  Sorry Dana.  🙂

I’m going to continue to follow the progress of this project.  I hope to shoot a lot more images there and when some of the interior is completed I’ll attempt to get some shots of that as well.

That’s it for today.  Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your Tuesday and be careful.

Wonderful Sunday.  Filled with naps and vegging.  My favorite type of day.  Sometimes when I go to work on Monday and people tell me what all they did over the weekend I wonder if I’m missing a huge part of life.  Then I think about it for about a minute and say No I guess I’m not.  🙂

I suggested to Jeanne that it would be fun to get some Dairy Queen treats and go over to Angie and Ben’s to watch Hillbilly Hand Fishing.  Now before you begin to think I’ve wigged out let me explain.

There is a very nice lady that works for one of our banks and a few weeks ago she applied to appear on the show and was accepted.  She couldn’t tell us much about the experience until after it aired, which was last night.

Anyway she and her son-in-law were flown down to Oklahoma to go hand fishing in the river complete with Cottonmouth snakes, assortment of bugs and big ole catfish that bite.  She said it was the most fun she has ever had in her life.  They filmed 42 hours of fishing to produce 48 minutes of television.

So we took chocolate malts from DQ over to watch the show.  Josh has been not feeling the best but he was in good spirits and active last night.  The image above is after his Mother had said it was time for him to take his medicine, which he really, really likes.  🙂

The very first image is one of my favorites.  He love to play with Grandpa’s watch.  Almost every time I’m around him I have to take off my watch and let him play with it.  There is one button he can push that make the watch light up with a red light.  He will do it over an over again.

We really enjoyed the show and all agreed that even for a significant amount of money none of us would be willing to do that.  There were snakes everywhere.  Just for grins, I looked up cottonmouth snakes on the Internet.  The article said “Even though they kill a few people a year they are not particularly a dangerous snake if you know how to treat them.”  Duh, I treat them by staying the hell away from where ever they tend to be.  🙂

Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your Monday and be careful.

Nikon D3S | Nikon 28 – 300 mm lens | ISO 200 7 Shot HDR @ f7.1

Thank you for stopping by.  Yesterday evening Jeanne and I went down to the Warehouse District in Dubuque.  There is a huge renovation and revitalization project going on there and some really neat old buildings are finding new life.

My hope was to catch the buildings in the golden hour with warm sunlight on the buildings.  Unfortunately there was some cloud cover so no “killer light” was available.

The image above is a 7 shot HDR image of a section of the warehouse project that is completed and occupied by a business.  We saw a concept design of what the project will look like when it is completed.  It will be amazing.

Nikon D3S | Nikon 28 – 300 mm lens | ISO 800 1/80 sec @ f7.1

Jeanne drove last night and that gave me the opportunity to look for images to shoot without having to worry about traffic.  However, she got to looking for images as well and I had to remind her a few times to watch the road.  It is contagious.  🙂

We were losing the light rapidly and since I managed to drop my tripod (thank God not the camera) after the first HDR and busted a couple of the controls I was left with hand holding the camera for the rest of my shooting.  I had to bump the ISO up as I lost light eventually ending up at ISO 1600.

Nikon D3S | Nikon 28 – 300 mm lens | ISO 1600 1/60 sec @ f7.1

One of the many neat things about the D3S is it has amazing low light shooting capabilities.  I shot this image at ISO 1600 and could find no “grain” in the image.

So after we lost the light we went to Crust for dinner.  We had not been there since the night Joshua was born.  We were greeted and seated right away but then nothing.  After 15 minutes I told Jeanne if we don’t have some service in 10 more minutes we will leave.  With 5 minutes to spare a waitress showed up with some pizza balls (like doughnut holes.) 🙂

I told her we were beginning to wonder if we were going to have a waitress and she said “Well I’m here now.”  Not in a in-your-face way just stating a fact.  From that point on it was a wonderful dinning experience (mainly because of the pizza balls.)  I had the lobster ravioli, a salad of weeds and two glasses of a red wine that was wonderful but I don’t remember the name of it.

Jeanne had some weird-looking stuff that she said was great.  My dinner was EXCELLENT!  I may have, at sometime, had a better meal, but right then I couldn’t remember when.  🙂

It was a very enjoyable evening with my bride.  Got some interesting images to share with you later on.  Enjoy your Sunday.  Rest and relax because it all starts all over again tomorrow.  Be careful.

Nikon D800 | Nikon 24 – 70 mm lens | ISO 100 1/160 sec @f7.1

Happy Saturday.  Today I complete a project.  It is my second 52 week project that I have completed.  It has been enjoyable and it is fun to look back over the last two years one week at a time through the images I have captured.  If you are interested you can click here to see the completed project.

I have a whole week to decide if I’m going to do my 3rd 52 week project.  I can tell you that, at least for the time being I am really enjoying my 365 project.  It is making me look at my environment much differently.

Nikon D800 | Nikon 24 – 70 mm lens | ISO 100 1/160 sec @f7.1

One thing that has changed is what I now look for in an image.  Before if I hadn’t got to shoot on my lunch break and I was tired at the end of the day I might just drive home and not think about photography at all.

Now I think about it every day so I take different routes home now and look for opportunities to capture an image.  One of these days I’m going to drive right into a ditch.  🙂

Yesterday evening I took an alternative road to Asbury.  I’ve taken this road 20 – 30 times in the last year but never found anything I wanted to shoot.  Last night however I went by a farm-house with this old road grader parked near an old barn.  Now I’m willing to bet the road grader has been there for a long time but I just never paid any attention to it.

Nikon D800 | Nikon 24 – 70 mm lens | ISO 100 1/160 sec @f7.1

I spent a fair amount of time shooting this grader.  Because of its location it was hard to get angels that didn’t have a lot of background clutter.  One of the things I’ve learned about shooting the D800 is that it is not as easy to remove background clutter as with a smaller megapixel file.

Anyway Jeanne and I are going on a photo shoot this evening and then have dinner at Crust.  The last time I ate there was the night Joshua was born.  I want to shoot some more images of the old Warehouse District.  So it should be an enjoyable evening.

I hope you enjoy your Saturday.  Thank you for checking out the blog and be careful.

A dear friend sent me an e-mail yesterday wondering if everything was okay because I hadn’t posted a blog.   The truth is that I slept right through my alarm and then after another hour it finally occurred to me that annoying noise was my alarm.  So no time for blogging, morning reading, taking a lesson or anything else.  Just shave, shower, shine and out the door.  🙂

After work yesterday I noticed some wonderful clouds in the southern sky and I wanted to find a scene that would allow me to include those clouds in the image.  I drove around for several minutes and decided to shoot this from the over pass on highway 61 South.

Photographs are everywhere you care to  look.  Once I shot the farm scene (first image) I notice the moon.  I didn’t take the big lens out and set up the tripod I just used the 28 – 300 mm lens and shot this image.

In many of the photography books I’ve read and on-line lessons I have taken one of the key rules is to shoot a scene from a perspective that the viewer does not normally see the subject.  So instead of shooting down on a flower, shoot it at eye level or from below the flower looking up.

That becomes increasingly difficult when (in my case) there is a high laziness factor, and a lot of my shooting is before or after work when I have a suit on, which is not conducive to crawling around on the ground.  So many times the image I take is what you would see anytime you might see the subject.

Having said all that.  The corn (we have a ton of it around Iowa) is normally viewed from the roadway moving at a pretty fast clip.  So on this same over pass that I shot the other two images I turned around and saw all this corn from a perspective I normally do not get to see.  The (almost) straight lines of the corn was what caught my eye.

If nothing else the 365 project is teaching me that images are all around and all I have to do is open my eyes and my mind.  Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your Friday. they are all precious.  Be careful.

Nikon D800 | Nikon 24 – 70 mm f2.8 lens | ISO 100 1/160 sec @f7.1 -07EV

Happy Hump Day.  Yesterday after work I went down to the Maquoketa Farmer’s Market to grab some images for the Maquoketa Chamber Newsletter.  It was HOT and after I shot some quick images I was glad to get back in the air conditioning of my car.

The Jackson County Fair starts today and so as I was leaving I thought I might as well run by the fair grounds to see what was going on and maybe grab a shot for my 365 project.  I came in the back way to the fair grounds and the first thing I notice was this wonderful old tractor.  I spent the next 45 minutes photographing it and talking to its owner.

Nikon D800 | Nikon 24 – 70 mm f2.8 lens | ISO 100 1/160 sec @f7.1 -07EV

When I pulled up I left my car running because to be honest my intent was just to grab a shot for my project and get back to the AC.  But I got lost in this old tractor (I hate to admit it but at first I thought it was a steam engine.)  Then the owner came driving up in a 4 wheeler and said hello.  So I burnt up a fair amount of gasoline but I had a nice COOL car to get into. 🙂

The owner is Mike Franzen and he is one of the nicest, most friendly people you will ever meet on this planet.  I’ve had the good fortune to know Mike and his younger brother for the past 12 years and they are wonderful people.  Mike and I visited about the tractor and a lot of other things.  He brought a bunch of older tractors for display at the fair.  He also introduced me to his Son, Scott Franzen who is an equally nice man.

Nikon D800 | Nikon 24 – 70 mm f2.8 lens | ISO 100 1/160 sec @f7.1 -07EV

I’ll have more about the Franzens and some of their tractors in a later post.  The metal sign on this tractor (stamped) says…  “Guaranteed to burn successfully all grades of kerosene used in all conditions, at all loads up to it rated brake horse power.”

It was a very enjoyable 45 minutes even though it was very HOT.  I honestly could have spent another hour with Mike but he was busy helping out others get their stuff set up.  That is something he does so much of, helping others.

So if you don’t like the technical stuff you can stop reading now but here is the information I found out on the internet about this great old tractor.  I think Mike told me his is a 1923 model but I could be wrong about that.

Rumely OilPull’s were a line of tractors built by the Advance-Rumely Thresher company of LaPorte, Indian in the USA. The company introduced its first tractor in 1908 after employing engineer John Secor to work on the engine design for them.

The 1st Rumely “OilPull” tractor was tested in 1909 and the machine became known as Kerosene Annie due to its ability to burn this fuel. The tractor survives to the present day in the Wisconsin State Agricultural Museum at the Stonefield Historic Site, Cassville, WI. Tractor production began in properly in 1910 and “Kerosene Annie” became the Rumely Model B 25-45 tractor.

The engine featured a special carburetor designed by John Secor and W.H. Higgings that injected water to help control the combustion process. The Model B featured a two-cylinder horizontal engine design, with the characteristic cooling tower using oil (not water as other makes do). the engine being a 9.5 inch bore by 12 inch stroke.

That’s it for today.  Hope you enjoy your Hump Day, it’s going to be a HOT one.  Thanks for stopping by and be careful.

Good Day.  It has been some time since I have posted any images of my camera collection.  This is one of my favorites and a very special camera to me.  It was given to me by my Father-in-Law John Andreae.

The only thing I know about it is that he got it during the war while in Germany.  John never talked with me personally about his time as a soldier and I never brought the subject up.  I do know that for at least part of his service he was in a band that traveled all over Europe and entertained the troops.

I did some research on the internet trying to find out more about this little camera.  Most of the information that came up from my Google searches related to these little cameras for sale on e-Bay and other auction sites.

So this is what I do know.  It has been called a “German Spy Camera.”   It’s full name is Sida PATENT ann D R W Z  1:8=35mm.

The cast metal 35mm viewfinder camera Sida for shooting 25x25mm images onto paper-backed 35mm “Sida” rollfilm was made in 1936 by Sida Gesellschaft fur photographische Apparate m.b.H., Berlin, Germany. The Sida Extra was a bakelite variant.

Especially bakelite variants were also made by “Sida Cameras Ltd.” in London, Great Britain and Guiseppe Pozzoli in Milan, Italy. The camera had a simple single-speed shutter with instant and bulb mode, an f8 meniscus lens, a little optical viewfinder and a red window.

The Sida company in Germany was founded by Fitz Kaftanski, but he avoided to be mentioned in official company registration documents since it was 1934 in Germany. He had to be careful because of anti-Jewish German laws of that time.

So a manager of Kaftanski’s company Minifex and another companion became the registered chiefs of Sida. 1935 the company was sold. After the war Kaftanski revived the camera Sida as Sidax which was produced in Paris, France.

You’ll note on the second image there are 8 images taken on the camera.  I have no idea when or where they were taken.  I have been tempted several times to see if I could get the film developed but then  decided that I would keep it as is.

That’s it for today.  Another HOT one in store for us.  Looks to be that way clear through the weekend.  Enjoy your Terrific Tuesday and be careful.

Happy Monday.  Blink you eyes and the weekend is over far too soon.  I wrote Saturday morning that I got to go to a wedding Saturday evening.  I did not have to go,  I didn’t get to go to the wedding but was lucky enough to go to the reception. 🙂

It was warm with all those people.  I don’t do warm very well.  Around 500 people were at the reception and I know about 10 of them.  Fortunately I had the D3S with me so all was not lost.  The wine glass was what fist caught my eye on this image.  The way it looked sitting there isolated and forgotten about while the couple converse.  I like this image a lot.

Again outside the reception I noticed this little gull walking up and down the shore line looking for food.  He would stop occasionally and dig at the water.  I really had to bump the ISO up to capture this image.  It was getting fairly dark when I took it.

I notice this little girl when we first arrived at the reception.  She had a cracker in her hand and was dancing to the music playing.    Although I did a lousy job with the composition of this image I still like it.

Why, you may ask, do I have no pictures of the bride?  That’s a fair question indeed.  The few times I actually caught sight of her she was being posed by the wedding photographers.  Other times there were just too many people to wade through to try to get a shot and finally I didn’t even know her.  If she had been wearing a different dress I wouldn’t have known she was the bride.

I didn’t know the groom either.  The only people in the wedding party I knew were the Groom’s Mom and Dad.  So that’ my wedding shoot.

I did want to share my image of the day (July 22, 2012) in case you haven’t been following my 365 Project.  I shot this using the Nikon D800 with a Nikon 105 mm macro lens.  ISO 100, 1/60 sec @ f2.8.  I used two Nikon SRB200 speed light flashes with a red and blue color gel attached, one on each side of the glass, a Nikon SU800 wireless commander to fire the lights.

I filled the small Coke glass with a (Sprite) bubbly liquid and placed it on a piece of foam-core and a foam-core for the background.  Hope you like it.

That’s it for today.  Enjoy your very warm Monday.  Thanks for stopping by and be careful.

Today, July 21st is the 43rd anniversary of when men first walked on the surface of the moon.  Quite a remarkable feat indeed when you stop and think about the sheer enormity of such an undertaking, then think they did it with the technology (more the lack of it) back in 1963 – 69.

This time of year there are a lot of WWII vintage “War Birds” that congregate at the Dubuque Airport to practice formation flying before going on to Oshkosh for the big airshow they have.

Last night on the way home I notice a four ship formation of them flying around the airport so I stopped by the observation area to capture a few images.  The sun was at an angle that made trying to shoot them in the air almost impossible.

By the time I got parked, got my camera out of the bag, dialed in what I thought would be the right settings for the shooting conditions, they were in the top formation ready to land.  So I had to settle for some shots at they came back to the hangers, on the taxi way.

The last couple of years when they’ve been practicing and especially if you happen to be there when they take off they will form up and do a nice fly by for photographers.   There were a few photographers there last night when I arrived but they were getting ready to leave and I quickly understood that the show was over.

None the less I was happy to capture these images.  I’ll take any opportunity presented to shoot these vintage airplanes.  Doesn’t really matter to me if they are in the air or on the ground.  I just love the looks and sounds of these mighty birds.

Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your day.  I on the other hand have the wonderful good fortune to be able to attend a wedding today and then a reception where 523 people are going to be.  Yippee!!  That many people in a relatively small room will, I’m sure produce an interesting evening.  😦

Be careful.

Happy Friday.  Above is an HDR (High Dynamic Range) image I took in 2010.  It was one of the very first HDR images I tried.  At the time I thought it was pretty good but now it looks not so good to me.

I’ve learned a lot since I made this image.  Candidly the software has made some improvements as well.  I shot this HDR with the Nikon D700 full frame sensor.  I processed the images using Photomatrix software, which was pretty much an industry standard for making a composite and tone mapping multiple images into an HDR image.

Yesterday on the way home, looking for something for my 365 project I decided to re-shoot the church at Otter Creek.   One, because there were a lot of neat clouds in the sky.  The temperature was down to a cool 74 degrees and the steeple had a new paint job. 🙂

A little aside for a moment.  Yesterday as part of my duties of being the Chamber President I got to tour a company that works with plastics.  It is a family owned business run by some of the most gracious, friendly, and enjoyable people I have had the good fortune to meet.  They were celebrating their 20 years in business and giving tours of the production facility.

When I arrived at the plant (in a suit of course) my vehicle thermometer was registering 91 degrees.  So I quickly ditched the coat and went inside.  I took a one hour tour of a facility where the temperature was at least 110 (they use high energy ovens to heat the plastic.)  Let’s just say I was hot and perspired a tad.  🙂 Actually I thought I might just croak.  I’ve been hot before but I can’t ever remember being hotter than I was yesterday.

Okay back to the photography.  Here is the Otter Creek Church as I shot it last night complete with newly painted steeple.  The clouds were magnificent and menacing but nothing came of it.  Unfortunately no rain.

So after about 20 -30 minutes getting all set up and testing for different exposure values I shot five different groups of 5 images for the HDR processing.  If you check out my 365 project you’ll see what I used for my picture of the day. 🙂

Thanks for stopping by.  Back into the broiler this weekend.  I have a wedding to go to tomorrow. Ugh!  Well all weekends are great.  Some are just better than others.  🙂

Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your day and the weekend.  Be careful.