Upde Designs

Happy Friday.  More snow today will make for an interesting commute to work.  I also have to go to Cedar Rapids this morning so I’ll be spending quite a lot of time on the road.  Yea!  No more eagle images until I shoot some new ones and I’m sure I will as I just can’t resist trying to get the shot I have in my mind.

But today I had this barn I took a couple of weeks ago at the end of the day.  The sun light was softening a little and would soon turn more orange.  I love the look of older farm buildings.  Probably a good thing I do because there are a lot of them around and they don’t move too much so they are easy to shoot.  🙂

Enjoy your Friday and the weekend.  Hope to be out amongst them with camera in hand.  Thanks for stopping by and be careful.

I am sorry to do this but I spent 4 hours at Guttenburg on Monday and I am compelled to show you some eagle shots even if they are not the best.  If you scroll down to last Tuesday’s post the second eagle image is one of this guy just hitting the water with his talons and the images that are on this post are that same eagle with his prize catch (which is a pretty nice fish.)  These are not the images of eagles that I have in my head when I try to capture eagles but I keep trying to get better shots.

Still these images tell a story.  This guy was sitting in a tree watching the river when I notice him launch from the tree do a pirouette dive toward the water and grab this fish.  I shot about 50 images of him flying across the river with all the other eagle eyes on him and finally end up in a tall tree on the opposite side of the river where he probably consumed his catch.

Occasionally I would see (especially a young juvenile) an eagle with a fish and he would land on the ice to eat his catch.  That only led to other eagles flying over to his location and trying to share in the bounty.  Those eagles that fly up to trees to eat seem to get less competition for their food.

I could enjoy watching eagles all day long.  They are such a majestic creature and interesting to watch.  I will keep trying to capture the image of an eagle that I have in my head.  Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your day.  We’re apparently going to enjoy another snow storm.  I’m so happy.  Thanks for stopping by.  Be careful.

I saw this wagon in Guttenburg Monday and wanted to photograph it.  It was on private property and the area around the wagon was really muddy.  There was no good place to park so I only shot from the roadway.  I would have liked to explore different angles of this old wagon so I will go back when it is a little warmer and drier and see if the owner will let me photograph it.

I still have about 200 eagle images to sort through.  Don’t worry I’m not going to show them all but there are a couple that may be worthy of your viewing.  Depending on what today brings I may show some more of them on Thursday.   I have a busy week ahead of me.  I have to also be in Cedar Rapids Thursday and Friday (depending on the weather) so I may not have time to get to them.  Short post today as usual I’m running behind.

Enjoy your mid-week hump day and thanks as always for checking out the blog.  Be careful.

I had yesterday off because of President’s Day.  So after doing a few things around the house I decided to head up to Guttenburg, Iowa.  My friend Andreas had reported on his blog that the eagles were plentiful there and he had captured some very nice eagle pictures.  I’ve never tried to shoot eagles in Guttenburg so I thought I’d spend a good part of the day there.  When I left Dubuque it was sunny with some high clouds and 41 degrees.  A good day for shooting.  When I arrived in Guttenburg it was cloudy and overcast with intermittent rain.

Even though it was cloudy I still shot at ISO 200, which is native for the D3S, but I noticed a lot of noise in my images, which I do not understand.  I set a new record for me anyway.  I shot 2,053 images.  Of those 226 were totally black (lens malfunction) and 1,571 were out of focus images (photographer malfunction.) 😦

I did get some reasonable shots, but none I would enter in a contest.  Very frustrating.  It seems to be a contact problem with the lens.  The lens doesn’t seem to seat properly with the camera.  At some point the lens displays a F-0 and that is when I get the black images.  Everything seems to work well but it doesn’t take a picture.  Trouble is when I’m  following an eagle my main focus is on keeping the focus point on the bird and so I don’t see the F-0 until after the series of shots show up as black.  The other malfunction is that the focus will lag behind because it is jumping between F-0 and F-8.  When it is on F-8 it the lens will focus, when in transition to F-0 it will not focus.  I’ll take credit for some of the out of focus images but not all of them.

Enough about the lens.  There is a pretty nice place to shoot at Guttenburg.  Just a few blocks South of the dam there is a boat ramp and parking lot with a small park area.  I was able to take my tripod out on a boat ramp at the water’s edge and shoot pretty close to the eagles.  They all flew further out in the river when I first arrived, even though I took my time walking to the ramp.  They did come back after about an hour and so I had some fun watching them interact.

These little Coots were plentiful around the area and would come up pretty close to the boat ramp until I would turn and shoot them and then they would scurry away.

After I got frustrated trying to shoot eagles I drove around Guttenburg for a little while.  It has a nice looking downtown area and lots of parks.  There are picnic tables all along the river.  I was excited to see my first Robin of the season.  There were many of them around the North part of town.  I didn’t see any South of Main Street but they were very thick on the North side.

So last night I spent an hour and a half going through the shoot of the day and hitting the delete button.  It was depressing.

Back to work today.  Thanks for checking in.  Enjoy your day and be careful.

Let me start this post with an apology to Andreas and Joan Exner for this image of them.  The fault lies completely with me and I debated a lot about not even posting it but I wanted to give some representation to the very enjoyable evening we spent with them.  This image is a combination of not checking my settings, poor lighting, and several glasses of wine.  🙂

We met Joan and Andreas at L May, downtown Dubuque and had a wonderful meal and great conversation with them.  They are nice people and when you put two guys who have a passion for photography together, well you get a lot of things to talk about.  The food was very good as was the service.  I can highly recommend this restaurant if you have not tried it.

On the way home Friday I stopped and took some images of this tree.  I’ve wanted to shoot this tree for sometime but the lighting wasn’t right or there were no clouds in the sky or it was too dark.  I left work 15 minutes early Friday as I had finished up my strategic planning session a little early and by the time I would have gotten back to the office it would have been quitting time anyway.  So it gave me 15 minutes of extra light that I haven’t had this Winter.

Saturday Jeanne had obligations and I needed to get my driver’s license renewed.  There’s an experience I could fill an entire blog about.  I could write a book about customer service and why it doesn’t apply to governmental workers.  They treat you like cattle moving through the system on the way to slaughter.  I could make a nice living teaching them customer service.

I digress, sorry.  Since I was on that side of town I decided to drive down to Bellevue.  Lots and lots of eagles flying over the dam.  I did take a few shots but I didn’t have the 500 mm lens with me.  I don’t think it would have made a difference because like Dubuque’s lock and dam you just can’t get close enough to the water to get a decent shot.

Then I went to Green Island.  I only drove one canal but it was obvious there was no wildlife present.  Jeanne called and said she was home so I headed for Dubuque.  I did take an image of a small chapel (posted on my 365 project) and this image of the Chestnut Mountain Resort.  But there were a lot of miles traveled for not many images.

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

Short post today as I have much to do and not a lot of time to get it done.  Early morning training at one of our banks and then prepare to lead a strategic planning session this afternoon for the Chamber of Commerce.

I hope you had a wonderful Valentine’s Day.  I certainly did.  Above are the flowers I got for my Queen.  We had a nice dinner at home as we are going out tonight with my friend Andreas and his wife Joan.  I’m really looking forward to having Jeanne meet Joan and share a wonderful meal together.

Have a great Friday.  Enjoy the weekend and as always, thank you for checking out the blog.  Be careful.

I have a funny Ash Wednesday story that I would like to tell you.  I would like to but Jeanne always tells me that I shouldn’t tell it so I won’t.  I will wish you a Happy Valentine’s Day and hope that you are someone’s special Valentine.

I don’t know what it is about barns.  I really don’t.  I just enjoy shooting them and looking at them.  I rarely drive by a barn without giving it a glance.  I have my favorite type of barns.  Original type roof (shingles not metal) and actually the more deteriorated the building is the better I like it.  I also like the barns that have the high stone foundation.  I do like them to be red although it is not absolutely mandatory.

I have hundreds of barns in my photo files.  Most of them you have not seen.  If I were to do barns correctly I would pull into the farm driveway.  Get out  of the car, (brave the ubiquitous dog) approach the owner of the barn, ask permission to photograph the barn and then get what history I could about the barn.  Then I could publish a picture book about the “Barns of Eastern Iowa” and become a famous photographer and book author.

Of course there are a few problems for me.  One happens to be the ubiquitous dog.  They usually are big and sometimes not friendly.  Sometimes they are too friendly (remember I usually wear a suit.)  Farmers typically don’t like guys in suits coming to their door.  They think they are trying to sell them something.  🙂   Then I’m also usually late for where I’m suppose to be so all that walking, talking and dog avoiding takes time.  Time that I usually do not have.  There is also the mud thing.  This time of year most of the area around the farm buildings is muddy.  Let’s face it I’m never going to be a famous barn photographer.  😦

I was coming back from Cedar Rapids yesterday and the sun was shining and it was mild.  About 41 degrees.  Pretty nice day and I kept seeing barns.  Many of them I have photographed before and a couple of these are barns I’ve photographed before.  Maybe it was the red paint and Valentine’s day and the red paint (I already said that didn’t I.)  I really don’t know why I photographed three barns yesterday but I did.  I hope you enjoy them.  I know Betty does.  🙂

Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your Valentine’s Day and be careful who you give flowers to.  Well just be careful.

My mini vacation is over and I’m back at it today.  Yesterday was not a great day for photography.  The wind was blowing hard, which made it difficult to keep the camera steady.  It was cold with occasional precipitation, and the sky was gray and overcast.  However having said all that I decided to take my camera out and find what I could, which honestly wasn’t much.

I came across a bunch of wild turkeys feeding in a forest area.  Their dark feathers, combined with the tree branches made it almost impossible for the auto focus to lock on.  That plus the fact I was stopped on the highway (there were no shoulders or places to pull off) left me with a bunch of fuzzy birds that if you looked really hard looked like black blobs against the snow.  🙂

So really this barn was about the only image I could capture yesterday on my journey.  I did one of my first HDR images of this barn in 2011.  You can see that image by clicking here.  Quite a difference.

I watched a video on YouTube yesterday taken by some guys sitting at an outdoor bar on Bourbon Street in New Orléans.  Google it on YouTube and I think you’ll be amazed.  It certainly makes me wonder about our society.

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

Every year our church celebrates Mardi Gras Sunday.  They forgo the traditional contemporary service in lieu of a more festive jazz music Mardi Gras celebration, complete with beads, jazz band and a Cajun style lunch.  The Main Street Jazz Band (of whom a couple of the players are members of the church) perform though out the service concluding with the parade around the sanctuary to the tune of “When The Saints Go Marching In.”  

At this point into the service you can see that Josh is getting pretty much done with it and wants to get on to something else.  The church was very warm and he was hot as was I.  But he hung in and made it through the service.  One of his favorite times was when the choir sang “Joshua Fit The Battle Of Jericho.” He got pretty excited and kept saying, “Joshie’s song, Joshie’s song.”

Mama Jeanne helped pass some of the time by taking Josh up to the front of the church for Children’s time with the Minister.  But like at Christmas time, once the Children’s time was over he didn’t want to leave and wanted to explore the pulpit in more detail.  🙂

Part of Mardi Gras is also fund-raising and that is done with a silent auction.  One of the items was this little outdoor bench just made of Josh.  Once he discovered it, it was hard to get him out of it.  Angie and Ben were able to win the bid on it so he can sit on it now when ever he wants.

Enjoyable time at church today.  Great music and celebration.  Enjoy your Monday.  I have the day off and it is the last of my 4 day weekend.  Back at it tomorrow.  I hoped to do a lot of shooting today but the wind and weather may limit that.  Thanks for stopping by.  Be careful.

My birthday was a fun day for me.  I had some very special friends call me and sing Happy Birthday Day to me.  I got to do what ever I wanted to do (with in the law of course) and then I got presents.  Today, now I’m just taking up space.  🙂  It was a great day.  I went down to the river where there were lots of eagles flying around.  I actually got some pretty decent shots.  This is one of the few eagle images that I did not have to crop.  This juvenile eagle flew over the top of me.  It clearly pointed out my lack of practice and skill at shooting a moving target but I was lucky enough to get this image of him.  Notice he has lunch safely ensconced in his talons.

I didn’t get a nap yesterday because of the all the shooting I did.  That was the only thing I had on my list that I didn’t get accomplished.  I’ll have to make up for that today.  We met Ben, Angie, and Joshua at Tony Roma’s in Dubuque.  It is one of my favorite places to eat in Dubuque.  We had a great meal with an excellent server.  They were absolutely swamped and the servers were running frantically.  She was able to get our order correctly, managed good customer engagement skills and still keep my drink glass filled.  🙂  Good food,  good conversation, and good adult beverages.   I had my favorite dish, beef medallions and baby back ribs.  I also had a cheese, bacon, and potato soup that was incredible.

After dinner we went to Angie and Ben’s home for cake  and ice cream.  Jeanne always bakes me a chocolate “wacky” cake.  That was my birthday cake on my very first birthday and I’ve had it ever year since.  It is my very favorite chocolate cake.  🙂  Then Jeanne and I took on Ben and Angie in Euchre and got our clocks cleaned.  Jeanne is the best life partner any person could every have, as a Euchre partner… not so much.  🙂  Or perhaps as my friend Dave J. would say I only need to look in a mirror to see my biggest problem.

The image above is a portable monitor they have to monitor Josh.  He was in bed and sound asleep ten minutes after we got there.  He was one tired little boy.  But we sure enjoyed him at the restaurant.  Have a great Saturday.  Thanks for stopping by and be careful.