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.
Upde Designs 
Hello Dave,
I’m sorry to read about your problems with the long lens again. I like to renew my offer to have a look at your lens and camera settings and test it with my camera. Unfortunately I have a customer visit on Friday in Northern Wisconsin, followed by another ice fishing weekend even further north (However, I like if I can link my business trip together with an adventure weekend 😉 ). I will be back in town Sunday night and maybe we can get together sometime during the following week. We have lots of birds here and there is no shortage of photography subjects for the long lens. Please let me know if you are interested. Yes, barns are nice too but only in good light. Don’t give up on wildlife photography! 🙂
Kind regards,
Andreas
P.S.: I tried to send you this as an email but your server rejected it as spam.
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Yes I am very interested. I would like to get comfortable with this lens or send it in for repair if I’m not the problem. Thank you very much!!!!
Regards, Dave Updegraff ³People Rarely Succeed At Anything Unless They Have FUN Doing It.² My Blog | Photography | Web Site | Genesis Process
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Dave, your server rejects any email I tried to send to you from different mail acounts of mine today. Please check your email account or its settings.
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Hi Andreas
I’m not sure what the problem is. I receive 43 emails yesterday so the account seems to be working okay. I have a second account upde1@upde.net and upde1@mchsi.com I do not check the mchsi.com account very often but you can try that one. I receive an email from the blogging site and they are all sent to upde@upde.net.
Take care.
Regards, Dave Updegraff ³People Rarely Succeed At Anything Unless They Have FUN Doing It.² My Blog | Photography | Web Site | Genesis Process
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