HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my beautiful little girl.  I hope you have a wonderful day Sweetheart.   28 years ago today our lives changed  dramatically for the better when she was born.  I will never forget that amazing day.  Angie you have been a delight.  I have truly been blessed with my best friend and life partner, two wonderful children, two beautiful grand children, and an amazing son-in-law.

Yesterday I showed you this image of the moon in a cloudy sky.  This is pretty much what I saw on Friday morning of last week.  When I first saw the moon the cloud formation was actually more dramatic than it was here.  But by the time I got the tripod set up and the camera configured this is what I was presented with.  The human eye can detect and interpret around 8-9 levels of luminance without much trouble.  In other words, we can see shadows, mid-tones, and highlights and still see detail in each.  A digital camera cannot do this on its own.  It can only capture up to 5 levels of luminance depending on the quality of the sensor.

So to capture these wonderful clouds in a dark sky the shutter needs to stay open for a longer period of time.  It did a great job of capturing the clouds but all the detail (highlights) of the moon are blown out.  It has gone to pure white and there is no detail in pure white.

The solution is to take a second image from the same spot with a faster shutter speed.  Nothing else in the camera changes just the amount of time the sensor is exposed to the ambient light.  As you can see the shadows have gone to pure black.  There are no clouds visible, no stars , nothing but the moon.  It however is now rendering detail.  I took these two images a few seconds apart.

Once the RAW images are processed it is now a matter of taking both images into Photoshop and blending the two images into one composite image of the sky I actually saw.    So if you’ve taken a picture of a beautiful full moon and all you ended up with is a big white blob, now you understand why.  The camera will meter as best it can the ambient light in the scene and expose for the best possible picture.  The limitations of the sensor will determine the level of detail you come away with.

That’s it for today.  Hope you enjoy your Tuesday.  Happy Birthday again Sweetheart.  See you this evening.  Thanks for stopping by the blog and be careful.

Running very late this morning.  I wanted to show you an image I took early Friday morning.  I walked down to the mail box to get the morning paper and when I turned around I was greeted with a similar sight to this.  Needless to say I had to make an image of this dramatic sky.  Tomorrow, the rest of the story.  🙂

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

Sorry for the lack of activity on the blog of late.  I was under the weather for the last couple of days and mostly in bed.  Feeling much better this morning.  Nothing I like better than burning vacation days on being sick.  😦

Since I haven’t been out taking images I’ll show you some from last weekend.  This great egret was in a marshy area just off highway 52.  He let me get pretty close.  Some of his chums who were father away took off but he must have been just a little curious.  Anyway I appreciate the opportunity to capture his image.

More from my pelican shoot from Saturday.  I only took 489 images so I feel the need to use more than just the two I’ve shown you up till now.  🙂  You know it’s amazing when you’re sick and feeling really awful I can barely remember what it feels like to feel good again. I mean it was just a 48 hour viral thing but it can sure knock the wind out of you and make it difficult to think or do anything.

Finally I will leave you with this pair of Ducks. They also were at the 16th Basin on Saturday.  My friend Andreas does not like the basin because there are so many power lines that surround it and a lot of city scape as well.  Doesn’t make for the best shooting opportunities I’ll admit.  I do like the basin because there is usually a lot going on and I enjoy watching the wildlife just doing their thing.

Hope you have a great Friday.  Thanks for stopping by the blog and be careful.

Quick post today as I am running late.  Nothing new there.  🙂  We took lunch over to Angie and the kids on Saturday as Ben was working and we knew that she could probably use a break.  We picked up some sandwiches from Quiznos and then went over.  Funny how messy you are when young and then you get older (like me) and you get messy again. 

I only have about three images of Gabby with her eyes open.  I held her for about 30 minutes Saturday and she slept the entire time.  The few times she did open her eyes I was busy playing with Josh and so didn’t have my camera at the ready.  I’m going to work at getting some better images this weekend of the little Princess. 

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

Talk about the evil eye.  When I tried to approach this sitting bald eagle all I could see was his butt feathers.  I kept moving closer as slowly as I could and all of a sudden he looked through this opening and I was nailed.  I expected him to fly but he would go back to looking out towards the river and just occasionally look at me all the while looking like he would launch into the air at any second.  I couldn’t get a head on shot as I would have had to wade in the water and I’m just not that dedicated at 50 degrees.  🙂

My friend Andreas had told me about the wildlife around the Mud Lake area so Jeanne and I drove up there Sunday afternoon.  It’s a twisting, hilly road that is barely wide enough for two vehicles.  They have a small park that is at the river’s edge and we saw pelicans,  great egrets, blue herons, and lots of coots.    Most of the time they were all too far away to try to capture an image of them.  The pelicans were in the main river much to far away to reach with my lens.    All images were shot with: Nikon D800 | Nikon AF-S 80 – 400 f4.5-5.6 G ED VR Lens | ISO 400 1/1250 sec @f9

This is not a very good shot of the great egret but it is interesting.  If you’ve been outside much you’ve run across the nasty red-winged black bird.  They are fearless and will attack anything that intrudes on their self-proclaimed territory.  This egret is 30 times as big as the (RWBB) but after about 45 seconds of the (RWBB) buzzing his head he gave up and flew off.  When I was riding my bike, there was more than one occasion that these little bas#$%ds would actually hit my helmet trying to chase me off.  I have been very lucky not to have wrecked my bike because of them.

Finally I’ll finish up with these little coots.  They always seem to gather together in large groups.  When we first saw them they were out in a channel and then later when we went back they were on land.  Even though we approached slowly they scurried off to the safety of the water and out of any perceived danger.

We  gave up around 6:45 p.m. as it was getting really cloudy and the light was no good.  We drove up to Balltown and had a nice dinner and conversation at Breitbach’s Restaurant.   This was our first time in their third restaurant.  So now we’ve been in all three of them.  I sure hope this one doesn’t go up in flames.

Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your Monday and be careful.  Looks like we may actually start to warm up a little towards the end of this week.

Good Day.  Great day yesterday.  Got to see the Grand Kids, Angie, and Ben, bought a new car, and got some great pictures for the blog.  Oh and still had time for a Saturday afternoon nap. 🙂

I’ve bought my share of cars over my life time mostly used and some new.  I can tell you most of the time it was not a pleasant experience.  I have been looking for a few weeks and have dealt with a couple of dealers and while I won’t go into any details let’s just say that I was less than happy with how I was treated and their response.  Yesterday was “hands down” the best car buying experience I’ve ever had.  More on that in a later post.

So after all the shopping and visiting was done Jeanne and decided to go look for a picture of the day for my 365 project.  The light was getting orange and soft so we drove down to our favorite place, the 16th street basin.  We wanted to see if there was more water in it since our last visit.

We were blown away with what we saw.  Hundreds of pelicans, lots of ducks, blue herons, and coots.  I have never seen so many pelicans.  They all had this strange growth on their bills.  Here’s what I learned with a Google search.  “White Pelicans are one of North America’s largest birds and have an 8-9 foot wing span. They are pure white with just black wing tips and a large yellow-orange bill. During breeding season, they have pale yellow crests and a flat rounded horn-like growth on the ridge of their bill.  This growth is only found during breeding season and is shed after their eggs have been laid. Immature birds are paler with a gray to flesh colored bill, pale orange legs and a brownish color to the wing tips. They have brownish eyes and have a gray-brown patch on their heads and neck.  They resemble adults by their second year.  They are larger than the Brown Pelican and males are larger than females.”

I have lots of images from yesterday.  I’ll show some of them later in the week.  We ended up spending about an hour and a half at the basin and didn’t go anywhere else.  We finally ran out of daylight so it was time to go home.  I made about 480 images while there.  Unfortunately I only had the 28 – 300 mm lens, which is a good walk around lens but not very good for shooting wildlife.  Every once in a while we would think about leaving to go somewhere else but the light was so perfect and it was so much fun watching all the wildlife doing their thing that we just stayed and enjoyed the sights.

Finished up the day with a little Lambrusco, burgers on the grill and some brownies.  Hope you had a great day as well.  Enjoy your Sunday.  Thanks for stopping by the blog and be careful.

Happy Saturday.  What a week!  I had to go to Cedar Rapids yesterday but listened to the radio all the time on the road about the Boston events.  Finally back at work yesterday afternoon I would do quick checks on the internet.  I’m glad that the last suspect has been apprehended and life for those folks can start to settle down a  little.  What a nightmare for all of them.

Yesterday evening on the way home from work I saw this tractor sitting in a field some distance from the roadway.  I liked how it framed up with the tree and the pond.  I couldn’t get very close to it because it was on private property and I would have had to violate that and climb a fence.  The wind was blowing hard and it was spitting snow.  Basically it was very uncomfortable.  I didn’t pay any attention to my shutter speed and because of the overcast sky it had dropped to 1/60 sec shooting @ f8 and ISO of 100 I couldn’t get a sharp image.

I finally got the shutter speed up to get a couple of sharp images.  So here is the best one.  I hope you enjoy your weekend.  Jeanne and I are out car shopping today.  I absolutely hate the process but am at that stage where it needs to be done.  Thanks for stopping by.  Be careful.

Happy Friday.  I hope your basement is dry.  Jeanne and I stopped at Menards last night and purchased an extra sump pump just to have as a stand by.  Ours as been running about every 20 – 40 seconds.  When I went outside this morning to get the paper it’s snowing.  You have love the weather in Iowa.  🙂

Yesterday I have an enjoyable side assignment.  I do a lot of the photography for our organization and one of our banks publishes a monthly newsletter.  They wanted to feature the bank’s excursion agenda for the coming year and feature the people who lead the trips.  The news letter is published in black and white so the final image will be in black and white as well.  They wanted a cruise theme.  How to accomplish that in a bank?!?

I shot the image with the 24 – 70 Nikon lens as it is one of the sharpest lenses I have.  I moved the subjects about 5 feet away from the wall to do away with shadows and used one SB800 speed light with a domed diffuser and directional reflector.  I got a nice sharp image on a neutral back ground so extracting the subjects from with back ground using Photoshop CS6 and the quick selection tool plus the refine edge adjustment was pretty easy.  I learned a new technique on how to use both the quick selection tool and the refine edge adjustment, which has made a world of difference in my selections.

Finally I went to Google Images and found an image of a cruise ship and inserted the extracted subjects onto that image.  Converted it to black and white and there you have it.  A nice looking image for the article and it took a total of 30 minutes from taking the image to final product.  Like I said, fun assignment.  Of course for me anytime I can take pictures it is a fun thing.  🙂

Enjoy your Friday and the weekend.  It is supposed to be relatively dry on Saturday.  That will remain to be seen.  I’ll be out trudging through car dealerships trying to find a bargain.  🙂  Thanks for stopping by.  Be careful.

First let me apologize for the lack of quality of these images.  I shot these with the little point and shoot camera because it was unobtrusive, light weight and I didn’t have to worry about it.  Having said that there is more wrong with these images than just the camera but that is for another discussion.

I am on my second year as President of the Maquoketa Chamber.  Two years ago we embarked on a mission to develop a plan for the future of Maquoketa.  It has become known as Vision 2020.  Dubuque had a similar mission in the early 90s called Vision 2000.  The purpose is to develop a plan for what you want your community to look like at some point in the future and then develop plans and initiatives to help bring that vision to fruition.

There have been countless meetings and discussions.  Roundtable brainstorming and town hall meetings with the public and last evening from 4:00 p.m. until 9:00 p.m. the public was invited to attend a Charrette as the final input from the public at large to the Vision 2020 process.

“The word charrette may refer to any collaborative session in which a group of designers drafts a solution to a design problem.  While the structure of a charrette varies, depending on the design problem and the individuals in the group, charrettes often take place in multiple sessions in which the group divides into sub-groups. Each sub-group then presents its work to the full group as material for future dialogue. Such charrettes serve as a way of quickly generating a design solution while integrating the aptitudes and interests of a diverse group of people.”

In the first image are some of the Iowa State University Extension staff that helped with the Charrette Process.  ISU has been involved with the Vision 2020 process for about a year and a half and they have guided us to this point.  The process started with the design of a survey asking residents a variety of questions including but not limited to: What do you like about Maquoketa, what don’t you like, what would you like to see made better, etc.?  That survey was then distributed to 500 households in the Maquoketa area.

From the responses a picture of the dynamics of the community was developed and then the process moved through the Town Hall meetings and a variety of meetings, discussions, brainstorming, and feedback.  It has been an interesting and enlightening process to be sure.

Iowa State told us that if we got 100 people to attend the Charrette it would be considered a huge success.  Our team had set a goal of 200 and personally I was concerned that from 7:00 – 9:00 p.m. we would be sitting around staring at each other.  We had just under 200 people attend and we were just as busy at 8:30 p.m. as we were at 5:30 p.m.  There was also an excellent turn out of students from the high school.  It was an interesting experience and I met a lot of very thoughtful and caring people who had some remarkable ideas for the process.

The Charrette was divided into nine stations.  Each station had some preconceived ideas and asked a variety of questions.  Community members could answer the questionnaire, write their ideas on flip charts, or post it notes.  Additionally they would engage me and other station monitors in conversation.  I was at the sustainability station.

The Decker House provided free hot dogs, pop, and cookies for the public and staff who attended the process.  I met a lot of interesting people last night, some of whom I’ve met before and some I have not.  I enjoyed the conversations with all of them and I was impressed by the level of concern they have for their community.

Maquoketa has a lot of things to offer its residents.  There is some unfair criticism about the community  but I have spent the last 13 years working there and I can tell you that like most communities there are some negative things that should change but over all Maquoketa is a great community with some fantastic amenities for their citizens.  I have made some wonderful friendships there as well.  It will be exciting to see the progress from all of this work and see what Maquoketa looks like in 10 years.  Hope I’m around to see it.  🙂

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

It’s been awhile since my last blog post.  A combination of events have kept me from bloviating  however today I am back and hopefully there will be a more predictable schedule for my posts.  Above is an image of the Hurstville Duck Pond I made last August 31, 2012.  The severe drought we experienced left the marsh bone dry and exposed the young goslings and other young to the whims of a variety of predators.   It was very sad to watch the loss of the pond and the lack of wildlife.  It is one of my favorite spots to just sit and observe.

Over the last few weeks we have experienced a significant amount of rain and nasty weather.  While that has dampened some spirits to be sure it has produced wonderful results to farm ponds in general and to the Duck Pond specifically.

So as you can see from this image the Duck Pond is at full capacity (water wise) and it has a pretty healthy supply of geese, ducks, and occasionally some swans stop by.  Lots of little coots are there as well.  It has been a real treat to drive by the pond and see the abundance of water and all the wildlife that is frequenting the pond.

Many of the geese have constructed their nests and are preparing for their young to be born.  Once again the nesting mounds provide safety from 4 legged predators and it won’t be too long before there are a lot of new goslings swimming in the ponds.

On those rare occasions that I don’t have a lunch appointment it is my favorite place to be.  I usually grab a sandwich and sit in my car watching all the activity.  Grabbing a shot now and again is just a bonus.

I hope you had a good Monday and will enjoy your Tuesday.  I have a Chamber function tomorrow evening so I may not get a post done but will try to get back to a regular routine shortly.  Thanks for sticking with me.  Be careful.