Happy Hump Day to you.  Sounds like the weather is going to be pleasant today with temperatures in the 40s.   Yesterday I didn’t have any lunch meetings so I grabbed a sandwich and went looking for images.  I know that mid-day is not the optimum time for photographing landscape scenes but I have to take what I can get.  On the West side of Maquoketa near Obie’s Restaurant, is the Maquoketa dam.  It is a favorite spot for a lot of people to take their lunch and watch the water falls.

Yesterday I intended to shoot the dam with the frozen water on the spillway but got lucky and found this individual in a canoe fishing in some open water just below the dam.

I have photographed this little church before in the summertime but not in Winter.  Unfortunately I had the 70 -200 mm f2.8 lens with me and there was no way to get the entire church in the frame.  So I shot a two shot composite of the church.  I’m happy with the way it turned out.  I don’t think this church is still used.  I couldn’t see anywhere to park as the snow had not been moved.  There were no tracks leading to the front steps so my guess is that it is not an active church.

On my way back to town I saw this horse in a field digging at the snow with his front hoof.  I pulled over and watched him for a while.  He would dig at the ground and then eat the grass or “stuff” he uncovered and then move a little bit and repeat the process.  I tried to catch him digging but I was already late to get back to work so I grabbed a few images.  I tried a few different blends but like this look best of all.  Remember you can click on the image to see a larger version of the image.

That’s it for today.  Enjoy your Wednesday and thanks for stopping by.  Be careful.

Eagles really do look much better over water than a snow-covered field of cornstalks.  So when you can’t get the eagle to come to the water you bring the water to the eagle.  It was a fun project for today’s post.  Thanks for stopping ;by.

Enjoy your day and be careful.

The light late yesterday afternoon was spectacular.   So I needed to find something to photograph in that light.  I took the 500 mm lens with me even though it is not functioning properly.  It doesn’t matter which camera body I put it on it will from time to time show [ f^0 ] in the view finder and then it simply will not make an image.  The shutter will release and everything seems to be working but all I get is a black empty frame.  If I twist the lens a little it will come back to f8 or what ever I had it set too but I never know when it is going to misbehave again.  Very frustrating.

After shooting the little ducks at the 16th Street Basin I decided to put my trusty 28 – 300 mm lens on and drive over to the Dubuque Arboretum to see if there was anything worth shooting.  Lots of snow cover but when I pulled in the front entrance I liked how the sun was reflecting off of the main sign.  I was the only person in the Arboretum so I got out and walked around a little bit.  The trails were covered with snow so I didn’t venture down any of them.  Just walked around the parking lot a little.

On my way out of the Arboretum I came around a corner and saw this bench in this magical light.  I had to stop and grab an image of it.  There are a lot of these benches around but this one was on the West side of the park and was catching some golden sunlight between two groups of trees.

Nothing very exciting but some wonderful light to show.  I hope you enjoy your day.  Thanks for stopping by and be careful.

I have three images for today’s post that have no relationship with each other.  The eagle above is one of my favorites from the shoot on the 3rd of January.  I was going through that shoot last night culling it down to only 42 images and this one stood out for me.  In fact I missed it on my first look through of the images.

I’ve shown an image of this pond before but not with a fisherman and dog on the ice.  I was on my way to Clinton yesterday and caught a quick glimpse of something dark on the ice from the South bound lane.  I really couldn’t tell what I saw because there isn’t a lot of time to look at the scene at 70 mph.  So I did a turn around and came back by the pond on the North bound lane.  This loyal dog was laying on the ice watching its master fish.

I was coming into Clinton on highway 30 and saw all the smoke and steam from this plant at the West side of Clinton.  I would have like to get the image without the fence but I only brought my 24 – 120 mm lens and to get any closer I would have had to wade knee deep in snow.  I’m not opposed to doing that if the shot warrants but not in dress shoes and when I’ve got a meeting to go to in 15 minutes.  🙂

Enjoy your Saturday.  I’m trying to get the Mexican Restaurant’s website finished up.  Communication continues to be a challenge but I am going down today to shoot some more food images.  It’s still a work in progress but if you’d like to see it here is the URL  — www.lacasadepancho.com.

Thanks for stopping by.  Be careful.

A lot of the people I know and like have some sort of sinus problem or a cold.  This is the time of year for it but they still suffer a lot even if it only the “common cold.”  I had a meeting in Cedar Rapids yesterday.  I got hung up on a call at the office so I was late getting to the meeting in CR.   By the time I got there the meeting was half over.   I hate getting to meeting late and I don’t like it when people come to meetings late.  I guess it is a fact of life.

On the way to Cedar Rapids I saw a couple of Eagles sitting in trees adjacent the highway and over looking a large field.  I was too late for the meeting to do anything about them, but made a mental note to check on them on the way back.   So cruising along on the way home about 2:30 p.m.  I went by the eagles again.  This time they had found some animal to devour and they were in te process of that when I drove by.  A quick turn around and I was sitting on the road about 250 – 300 yards from them

I had the Nikon D3S and the Nikon 28 – 300 mm lens with me but that proved to be a reasonable combination to capture the action.  There were two mature eagles and one juvenile and the juvenile was pretty much dictating the way things would operate to the two mature eagles.

So sitting by the roadside I shot about 385 images of the eagles taking turns eating the “road kill” (for lack of a better term.)  The mature eagles would eat but when the juvenile came close they would both take off and keep their distance until he was finished and flew off.  I enjoyed the time I spent photographing the eagles.  I once again learned that it is not the equipment that is causing my soft photos it is the photographer.  So I’ll keep practicing.

Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy this Friday even if you .  There are only 52 and they are fun to be a part of.  Be careful.

I didn’t get home until 7:45 p.m. last evening.   Needless to say I didn’t get a chance to shoot anything during the day.  So after grabbing a quick bite of dinner (a warmed up sloppy joe) I still hadn’t captured my image of the day.  With little fore thought and even less preparation this is what I took.  Hopefully this will be my lamest of 2013.

I’ve been thinking about my goals for 2013.  I had my 2012 goals taped to my desk top and looked at them every day but didn’t accomplish any of them.  Some percentage of them but not the whole part of any one goal.  I haven’t been able to think positively about setting 2013 goals because of my miserable performance on last year’s goals.  Then at 3:47 a.m. it came to me.  “GET BETTER!”  That’s the goal.  Just Get Better!  Doesn’t matter at what because it applies to every aspect of my life.  Get Better!  It’s only been 2.5 hours since the epiphany, but I’m liking it.  🙂

Here’s an article I read this morning on one of the blogs I follow.  I’m copying it without permission.  This is some thing I’m going to practice.

~ by Darren Rowse

Grab your camera – what ever one you have handy (I used my iPhone last time I did this) and head out into your backyard (or if you’re in the middle of winter you can choose an indoor location – perhaps your living room – really anywhere will do).

Now find somewhere to sit – somewhere in the middle of whatever place you’ve selected.

Now for the next 10 minutes just sit there. You’re not allowed to take a photo for 10 minutes but rather your sole task for this 10 minutes is to observe what is around you and to plan your shots.

Observe

• Soak in your location.
• Look at the light and how it hits your surroundings.
• Pay attention to what your setting makes you feel.
• Look at the details that perhaps you’d not have noticed if you’d rushed through the setting.

During this ‘observation’ phase you may like to move around your environment to look at it from different angles – but don’t use your camera yet.

Plan

As you sit there – begin to think about your setting and the elements in it as a photographic subject and how you’ll photograph it.

• What will you shoot?
• What perspective will you shoot from?
• How will you compose the shot?
• What settings could you use to get different results?
• How will you convey the emotion of what you’re feeling?
• Picture the shots you’ll take in your minds eye.

Shoot

Now that you’ve spent 10 minutes observing your location and planning your shots you can now spend 5 minutes using your camera to capture the shots you’ve been thinking about.

I find that this kind of ratio of observation, planning and taking of shots brings about a marked improvement in the shots that I take (as opposed to the times I race into a situation to take a quick shot… or worse still a heap of shots without really much thought to what I’m doing in the hope of getting a good one).

I find taking time to observing allows me to notice details that I might otherwise have missed. Taking time to plan often leads me to photograph my subjects in more creative ways than I’d have otherwise done.

Back at it today.  Jeanne still has tomorrow off.  I worked on the Mexican restaurant website most of the morning trying to get a few stubborn features to work.  I was partially successful but there are still some snafus.  Around 3:30 p.m. we decided to go to the river and see what the eagles were doing.  Sad to say this is the only one we could find.  There were no eagles fishing or sitting around the open water.  No geese or ducks at the 16th basin.  Nothing even at the 14th street stream.  Last year there were always a lot of ducks at the 14th street stream but not today.  We went to all of our normal places and nothing to shoot.  Killer light but nothing to shoot. 😦

So back at home I decided to do a macro shoot.  I’m beginning to think I enjoy this type of photography most of all.  You don’t have to depend on the weather or the light (you create your own.)  The temperature was a mild 72 degrees inside with no wind, compared to 11 degrees with a 13 mph wind outside.  I even had a cold beverage with me.  Lighting was no problem as I set up a couple of speed lights with colored gels.  The other neat thing about macro photography is that if you don’t like the lighting conditions all you have to do is move it, not yourself or your subject.  I set the camera on the tripod so no worries about camera shake or an out of focus image.

Nikon D3 | Nikon 105 mm Macro f2.8 1:1 lens | (2) Nikon SB 400 Speed Lights | ISO 1/200 sec @ f14

Additionally If I don’t like the subject matter I just look around the house for something else to shoot.  There are a lot of advantages to shooting in macro.  Having said that do you have any idea what these last two images are of?  That’s the other cool thing about macro photography.  You can shoot something that people see every day and make it new and interesting.

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

I hope you had a safe and sane New Year’s Eve.  Jeanne and I went to the Hobbit for the 6:40 p.m. showing.  The movie is almost 3 hours long.  Hard to sit that long.  When we came out of the theater my eyes were so sore and dry with halos everywhere.  The scenery and special effects were breathtaking and I think you forget to blink often enough.  The movie could have been an hour shorter in my view and it did not have the same magic as the Lord of The Rings.  I believe it is the prequel to Lord Of The Rings.

Anyway enough about that.  I’m not a movie critic, just thought I would pass along my observations.  We got home around 9:55 p.m. and I lasted until 11:30 p.m. but never saw the New Year come in.   I was looking over the first half of my 365 project and decided that I would show the best image of the project (in my opinion) and the worst image.

Now I don’t think this image is the best just because Angie is my wonderful daughter.  Although that is a pretty compelling reason.  I like this image because I love to shoot people and in my humble opinion I did a credible job with this image.

Interestingly enough following up on our discussion from yesterday of what the down side of a 365 project is.  Sometimes you just take the shot to get it done.  Such was the case with this image taken last night.  It was 10:30, p.m. I was tired, my eyes were sore, and I didn’t have an image.  So I took a couple of shots of this prism that I received some years ago for some honor at Rotary.  Needless to say I didn’t take the time to set the shot up, nor the camera, nor the lighting.  I just lined it up in the view finder and pushed the shutter button.  It shows!

I got the shot but it’s really lame.  I feel bad about it but I can’t go back and undo it anymore than I can go back and undo the thousands of other things I’ve done that I wish I had done better or not at all.  It is what it is.  While I’m waxing philosophical I read an article yesterday sent to me by my friend Dwight Duckstein.  The article talked about the unintended consequences of setting goals.

~ …”A goal defines an outcome you want to achieve; an area of focus establishes activities you want to spend your time doing. A goal is a result; an area of focus is a path. A goal points to a future you intend to reach; an area of focus settles you into the present.

A sales goal, for example, might name a revenue target or a specific number of new clients won.  An operations goal might articulate a cost savings.An area of focus in sales, on the other hand, might involve having lots of conversations with appropriate prospects. An operations area of focus might identify areas you want to explore for cost savings.  Obviously these aren’t mutually exclusive. You could have a goal and an area of focus. In fact, one could argue that you need both together — the goal specifies where you’re going and the area of focus describes how you plan to get there.

But there is a benefit to concentrating on an area of focus without a goal.  An area of focus taps into your intrinsic motivation, offers no stimulus or incentive to cheat or take unnecessary risks, leaves every positive possibility and opportunity open, and encourages collaboration while reducing corrosive competition. All while moving forward on the things you and your organization value most.

In other words, an area of focus offers all the advantages of a goal without the negative side effects.”…

You get the idea.  I’ve sure run the gambit this day and yet haven’t really said anything.  I do wish the best for you in this new year.  May we all have prosperity, security, good health, and happiness (what ever that is.)  Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your day and be careful.