Last Friday evening the Maquoketa Chamber of Commerce held its inaugural Gala Celebration.  Normally the Chamber holds its annual meeting at a breakfast event but we wanted break up the Winter doldrums a little bit so we decided to have a Gala and hold it at the True Restaurant, which is in the Maquoketa Country Club.

The Gala featured a wine tasting event and a silent auction.  After the auction a wonderful meal consisting of grilled steak and chicken was served to the attendees. After the meal the Executive Director’s Award, President’s Award, Young Entrepreneur  Award, The Above and Beyond Award, and the Volunteer Award were given.

The awards were followed by a live auction of a variety of merchandise.  One of the items was a night scene of the Maquoketa downtown with the Chamber Christmas tree in the image.  This was the same image we used for the formal invitation to the Gala.  it was the image I made back in early December.  I matted and framed it and I was flattered when the bidding reached over $100.  🙂

After the auction the attendees were treated to some wonderful 50s Rockabilly music from The Fast Clydes.   They are a local band that play all around this area and have several bookings in Dubuque.  If you get a chance to hear them do so as you will really enjoy their performance.

I believe the Gala was a huge success.  We had 135 attendees, which was all we could handle with the venue.  Everyone seemed to have a great time.  The Mayor and the County Supervisor gave a state of the city / county.  I heard a lot of people saying they hoped we would do this again next year and that certainly is the plan.

I didn’t take very many images.  The newspaper was there and they were taking pictures so I just enjoyed myself and occasionally had to present an award, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

That’s it for today.  I hope you enjoy your middle of the week day.  Supposed to have a Winter storm today.  Hope it bypasses us.  Thanks for stopping by and be careful.

I have been in such a creative funk this year (and I’m not sure why) and that has put me into an even deeper funk.  I’ve looked back at what I have shot so far in 2013 and 99% of it sucks.  I am beginning to believe that the 365 project is really not in my best interest from a creativity standpoint.  Having said that I am determined to complete the project but my images really do seem to be getting worse.

I only bring this up because a friend at work asked me yesterday what was going on?  He said that I haven’t been blogging of late and he was worried that something had happened.  Nope, just in a fog right now.  Everywhere I look I see the same things I’ve shot and can’t seem to figure out a new approach.

I attended a funeral yesterday.  I had never met the individual although his son is my friend.  As I was sitting there watching the video slide show run of his life, I thought about the same question that has always bothered through out my life and it always seems to occur at funerals.  “What is the point?”  I watched a person’s life from baby to old man on the slide show and thought how many times since humans set foot on the planet has this scene played out.  It reminds me of the song “Is that all there is?”

I raised the question to a friend who also attended the funeral.  He had a reasonably good answer and quoted some of his favorite verses from the Bible.  But it still left me with the same nagging question.  Not really something you want to discuss on a photography blog but I tend to write what I feel and think about.  If you’ve got any good answers I’d like to hear them.

That’s it for today.  Make the best of this day as it could always be the last one we have.  So be careful.

I had a late afternoon / evening meeting at one of our banks yesterday so on the trip over the sun was starting to set and the light was becoming soft and warm.  I have photographed this old school before in the Summer time but when I went past it I notice how the light was bathing the front of the school so I had to turn around and capture some images.  I’ll admit I didn’t spend a lot of time on this image.  It was cold and the wind was blowing.  So as we know from our past discussions I have a pretty high wimp factor and a low tolerance for bitter cold. 🙂

A little further down the road I saw a deer crossing the road.  I know from experience on this road that there are a lot of deer and they always seem to come in pairs so I slowed way down as I approached the area.  Then another couple of deer darted across the roadway followed by another one.  I thinks to myself is there something going on here?

I still had my camera on the floor from the school shoot and on a hunch I eased up a little closer and this is what I saw.  All total there must have been 20 deer crossing the road.  I still had the camera set up for the first shot so I ended up with a little motion blur on the deer.  After rattling off 15 images I noticed that the shutter speed was down to 1/25 of a second and my f-stop was at 10.  Too late to make changes as the crossing was over.  I thought about coming around this corner in the night-time at normal highway speed and seeing this sight.  Ugh!

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

Good Day.  Happy Hump Day.  I had yesterday off and went out in the frigid weather to see if I could capture some worthy images.   I went to my favorite place (the 16th Street Basin) and down in the lower corner of the basin there were about 20 ducks in what little open water there was.  I shot a few images of them and then went to the river.

I don’t remember ever seeing so many Eagles in one place before.  They were everywhere.  In the trees above the dam and at any given time there we 10 – 15 eagles circling over the dam looking for fish.  Now the L&D at Dubuque doesn’t offer the best vantage point to shoot eagles but braving the cold temperatures I got as close as I could.  Some of them even flew over my head so close I could have hit them with a rock.  I shot about 285 images and never kept a single one.  I was demoralized, dejected, and depressed.  My lens would keep freezing up and just shoot a bunch of black frames.

When it did focus (and that was rare) it was always out of focus.  Certainly some of the problem can be attributed to my lack of abilities but not all the problems.  You could tell there was a flying object in the images but that is all you could tell.

I think I have about had it with long lens photography.  There are so many other areas of photography that I enjoy I’m not going to continue to frustrate myself with trying to capture a quality eagle image.  I will just enjoy Burt’s and Andreas’ eagle pictures and shoot barns.  🙂  At least they are big enough I can get a good focus on them and they don’t move. 🙂

The image above is from Monday when Angie and Josh stopped over.  Josh was really feeling bad as his cold came back and he wasn’t very happy.  But he did get as close as he ever has to making friends with Maggie.  He still keeps his distance, which is probably okay with Maggie as well.

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

Okay I’ll admit it.  I’m a wimp.  Pure and simple there it is.  I told Jeanne last night that I was going to go to the river early this morning and photograph the sunrise.  Getting up early is a normal thing for me so that was no big deal and I figured what the heck might as well get some early morning light.  Then I went out to get the paper and changed my mind.  I’ll capture a sunrise on the river when it is 50 or warmer.  🙂

Then I had an email from my good friend Steve who lives near DeWitt.  He said that a couple of friends of ours were going to be ice fishing on his pond this morning and maybe I’d like to come down and photograph that event.  I thought about the hour-long drive and standing out in the sub-zero weather taking photographs and then driving another hour to come back.  Then it occurred to me that Angie and Josh were thinking of stopping by this morning.  Let me think a minute…  Okay I’ll pass on the fishing and opt for the visit.

So instead I decided to show you this image I took a few days ago.  It was cold (not below zero) and there was snow on the ground.  So maybe the “wimp” factor can be mitigated a little?  Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your day.  I’m off today and tomorrow so enjoying a 4 day weekend.  Be careful.

A couple of images for today’s post and a couple of random thoughts.  Not necessarily connected with the images.   I had another early morning meeting yesterday so I didn’t have time to shoot any images on the way to work and then had a lunch scheduled with some friends at work therefore no time during the noon hour.  I was pleasantly surprised to see the above image on my way home.  I left the office at 5:05 pm last night and this is a mile from my office.  The really good news of this post is there was enough light at ISO 400 to take this image handheld.  I did darken the foreground a bit more than it actually was to add some more drama to the sky.

The other reason I was happy about this image is because on the way down the sunrise was reflecting on some low hanging clouds and it was a beautiful color of soft orange and pink.  I really wanted to stop and take some images of that sky but if I did I would be late for my meeting so, sigh!

A few miles down the road I saw this image.  This is very close to the image I could have taken in the morning so I felt good that I could capture it in the evening.  I had to push the ISO to 800 but very little noise in this image.

Jeanne and I went to a new restaurant (new to us anyway) last night called Europa.  It was not a great experience for me but let me quickly say it was not the fault of the restaurant.

I had a stressful day at work and what I really wanted to do was just have a nice meal and relax.  So we walk into this restaurant and the first thing you notice is it is tiny.  You set at small tables and if you don’t know the people on either side of you before dinner you will by the time dinner is over (I’m talking intimate.) 🙂

The restaurant has been open for several months and started out being open for breakfast and lunch only.  It is located near a lot of offices in the Office Park.  A few weeks ago they dropped the breakfast and started opening in the evening. It is owned by a family from the Ukraine.  We had the best waiter I can ever remember having.  He was attentive and very helpful.

Anyway I digress.  So I’m in the mood to relax, have a few wines, eat a nice meal and decompress.  Well I can’t do that in this setting and even though I have a hearing impairment I can hear a lot of the conversations around me, so talking about my day or anything else is going to be told to the whole restaurant.  Next I do not recognize anything on the menu and the few things I do see that I know have a lot of things added to them that either I don’t like or have never heard of.

So now I’m in a mood!  Then when I order my second wine the waiter tells me they only have enough for a half glass because they are out.  😦  So my poor wife had to endure my boorish behavior, which is just one of the thousands of reasons she is destined for Sainthood.

Now for my review.  The food was fabulous.  Actually what ever is a better adjective than that, that is what it was.  The food was well presented and the portions were just the right size.  The service was superb.  So if you are looking for an intimate dinner with friends or family and go with the proper expectations you will be delighted with the experience.

Normally If a server does a good job it is my habit to not only tip well but to tell them they did a good job.  I said that to our waiter last night and I thought he was going to hug me.  He bowed slightly and shook my hand heartily and thanked me profusely.  I have never experienced gratitude like that before.

Well that’s it for today.  I didn’t start with this long bloviation in mind but that’s where my thought took me so thank you for hanging in.  Enjoy your day.  I have a 4 day weekend so my intention is to do some serious shooting over the next 4 days.  We’ll see what I can come up with.   Thanks for supporting my blog.  Be careful.

Happy Thursday.  A short blog today as I have a really early meeting this morning and then a late meeting this evening.  I have to leave at Zero Dark Thirty Hours to make my meeting but I’ll be on time as long at the deer leave me alone.  🙂  Yesterday I was coming through the little town of Welton, Iowa.  I remember when highway 61 went through the middle of town.  In my previous life I had to go to Davenport about once a week and I always managed to stop at this Dairy Treat and have a cone.  They had wonderful soft and hard ice cream cones.

The roof is all caved in now and the brush and foliage is starting to take over the building.  When I drove by it I saw a black and white image in my mind so I pulled over and walked back to grab the shot.  I was half expecting someone to question me about what I was doing or why was I taking a picture of this building but no one did.

Since I was processing in black and white today I took another look at some of the macro images I shot Tuesday evening.  I didn’t like them much in color but when I finished them off in black and white I found them more appealing.  I was reading a blog yesterday and the writer (a well-known photographer) said that in this digital age we have gotten to hung up on the cameras, lens, and other equipment.  His comment was the when you distill photography down to its basic level it is nothing more than a camera, lens and light.  Obviously there is more to the image than that.  You have to have a subject that is compelling or interesting.

He had hung up his digital SLR and had gone back to an old 8 X 10 box camera.  One camera, one lens and the light.  At $20 per shot he is thinking through his shots more carefully now and is paying attention to the basics.  He felt that DSLR photography has promoted sloppy work by some photographers.

Certainly one opinion.  I keep coming back to my 365 project.  Is it helping or hurting my photography.  The debate rages on inside my feeble mind.  Stay tuned.

Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your Thursday.  For those of us who have to work it is one day closer to the weekend, which for me happens to be a 4 day weekend this time.  🙂  Be careful.

Oh yippee another Eagle in a tree.  I know you are probably sick of seeing them but it’s what I have for you today.  I was on my way back from a meeting at one of our banks and came up over a hill to find two Juvenile Eagles feeding on a dead deer at the side of the road.  I pulled onto the shoulder as quick as I could but they flew off and didn’t come back.  This mature Eagle was sitting about 100 yards away from the deer and after I snapped a few shots of him he flew off as well.

I waited around for awhile but they didn’t come back.  I saw three more Eagles sitting in trees along side the road today.  It’s wonderful to see so many of them out and I will never pass up a chance to capture an image of an Eagle even if it’s just like the other several hundred I already have.  Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your Tuesday and be careful.

Happy Monday.  I hope you had an enjoyable weekend.  My plan was to bake some bread with my Christmas gift from Angie and Ben but I never got around to that.  Jeanne and I had some errands to run and then we called Angie to see what she was up to.  Her and Josh were hanging out as Ben was at the Hospital.  So we stopped over for a visit and enjoyed seeing Josh’s new room and big boy bed.

We spent some time looking at some of his toys that he got for Christmas and then he wanted to sit on my lap and look at his calendar that his Uncle Dave got him for Christmas   He would take some of the dials off the clocks and then asked me to put them back on.  Great time with them.

Then we all decided to go to Quiznos for lunch.  I had not eaten at Quiznos for quite some time and I was really impressed with their menu and the quality of their food.  After lunch it was time to part ways and Josh was sad.  He was not ready to say goodbye to us but it was time as he was ready for a nap (or so Angie hoped) and we had projects to complete.  Wonderful weekend.  Not much shooting got a bad case of the lazies.

Hope you enjoy your day.  Thanks for stopping by and be careful.

Good Day and Happy Friday.  I had a very early meeting yesterday morning so no blog on Thursday, but some of you already knew that.  🙂  Today I have some (I think anyway) interesting patterns to show you.

The image above has not been altered in Photoshop (I’ve been known to do that.) On my way to work earlier this week I noticed these horses and thought it might make an interesting image.  When processing the first thing I thought of was the 5 on the side of a dice. (According to the dictionary common modern usage allows the use of the word dice when describing one or more numbered cubes.)

Golf carts lined up and buried in snow at the Meadows Golf Course is a reminder that summer is still some time away.   Many of the lessons I’ve taken about photography teach looking for patterns and converging lines.   I just thought it showed the bleakness of winter.

Yesterday I grabbed a box of chicken nuggets from Mickey D, and decided to use my entire lunch hour in search of photos.  I drove a lot of back roads and went through some small towns but I just didn’t find anything that compelled me to make an image.

I saw things that I would like to shoot but it would have required I go places that one should not go in a suit.   For example I found a very interesting pattern in a snowdrift along a fence-row.  To shoot it so that the pattern was apparent would have required getting up close and personal with the fence.   I know I should have made the sacrifice.

I know, this is the dreaded butt image, however as I was coming back to town with an empty photo card I went past the farm service grain collection facility.   These guys looked like they are watching a sporting event.   Okay maybe that’s a stretch.  I don’t know if they eat corn.  Maybe they’re hoping for some spillage. 🙂

That’s it for today.  I’m glad it’s Friday.  It has been a long week.  Hope you enjoy your day.  Thank you for the visit to my ramblings.  Be careful.