Good Day from Des Moines, Iowa.   I have been attending the annual Iowa SHRM Conference, held this year in Des Moines, Iowa.  Most of the classes I have attended have to do with employment law but there has been a significant amount of “Affordable Health Care” classes as well.

I don’t know your political persuasion but I’m telling you this is a monster of a law that will wreak significant chaos to our economy in 2014.  I think it is noteworthy that the party that passed this monstrosity “front loaded it”  with the feel good stuff (with little or not additional cost) that people like but in 2014 (well after the election) the costs of the plan kick in.  Grab your butt because the unpublicized costs are huge.

The image above is a 5 shot HDR of the iconic landmark of Des Moines the Principle Building.  I went out after my last class and took this HDR image of the building.  I didn’t have my tripod so I bumped the ISO up to 800 and leaned up against a parking meter to steady myself and shot away.

I actually got out to shoot later than I wanted to so I was losing daylight in a big hurry.  I shot a bunch of images of the Principle building and was walking to get a different angle when this cyclist came past me.    My ISO was still at 200 when I grabbed this shot so it isn’t tack sharp but I like the way it looks anyway.

It will be good to get home this afternoon.  I’ve done a fair amount of traveling over the last few weeks and even though I really enjoy learning new things I hate the travel part.  Staying in hotels and eating in restaurant all three meals and of course most of all I hate being away from Jeanne.

Another shot of city life.  I was walking back to the hotel and notice this maintenance man walking down the street with is cart going to the next office building.

I met a very nice guy at dinner this evening.  I believe his name was Les, I didn’t catch his last name.  He asked me about my camera (I stopped at lounge for dinner after my shoot.)  I probably told him way more than he wanted to know but he kept asking me questions so I kept talking.

He just purchased his first DSLR a Cannon.  I told him I didn’t hold that against him.  🙂  He is new to DSLR shooting so I answered some of his questions and told him that he is going to have a lot of fun in the coming months and years.

I invited him to visit this blog and my web site as I do have a lot of information for a new shooter if they want to check it out.  Plus on my link page I have a ton of resource websites that have all kinds of information about photography.

That’s it for today. remember you can click on the images to get a larger more detailed version of the shot.  Enjoy your Friday and thanks as always for checking out the blog.  Be careful.