Upde Designs

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.

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.