Upde Designs

Nikon D3S | Sigma 50-500mm f/4.5-6.3 DG OS HSM APO lens | ISO 400 1/640 sec @ f8.0

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving.  We certainly did.  Celebrated our 36th wedding anniversary and had a wonderful evening of dinner and a movie.  Well actually the movie was first at 4:00 pm and then dinner.

Let me rant a little on that.  We went to the 4:00 pm movie thinking it would be  a little discounted (and maybe it was, who knows) but the tickets for two of us was $20.  Okay I guess if you’re looking at 2.5 hours of entertainment $10 per person is not bad.  But then I went to the concession stand.  I got a kiddy bag of popcorn for Jeanne and the smallest (non kiddy) bag of popcorn and a small diet Coke…. $15.75.  I almost said to the kid behind the counter, “you’ve got to be sh***ing me.”  fortunately I didn’t, I just smiled and handed him $20.  😦

Nikon D3 | Sigma 50-500mm f/4.5-6.3 DG OS HSM APO lens | ISO 200 1/450 sec @ f8.0

Okay enough about that.  This is a photography blog.  🙂  So yesterday morning Jeanne and I headed out to look for some eagles that my Friend Dave said were back at the feeding trough.   There is a trapper who dumps his trapping carcases in a field and it attracts lots and lots of eagles.

When we arrived there were between 25 – 30 eagles.  Both juvenile and mature eagles were there along with some brave crows.  I was able to drive up very slowly and get into to position and the eagles were remarkably unconcerned with my presence.  There were a couple that flew away but they soon came back as the buffet was full of food.

To be honest I do not really like shooting eagles this way or at this place.  I was shooting directly into the sun (which was very bright) and we were far enough away that it was difficult to get a sharp focus on the birds.  That plus the fact that I haven’t shot with the 500 mm lens since last March made for some lousy images.

And as a friend of mine says shooting with a junk lens.  However my friend Andreas shoots with a similar lens and he produces excellent images.  He has learned to shoot around the short comings of the lens.  So it was more my technique or lack of it that accounted for the poor image quality.

Nikon D3S | Sigma 50-500mm f/4.5-6.3 DG OS HSM APO lens | ISO 400 1/640 sec @ f8.0

So I shot 687 images of the eagles, 60 survived the first round of cuts and then only 21.  Of that 21 these were the best three. 😦  So as you can see it wasn’t a productive shoot.  Having said that we got to watch eagles fight and scuffle for about an hour and a half so it made it all worth while.

We drove around a 100 miles yesterday looking for interesting things to shoot.  The scenery this time of year is pretty blah.  I took 8 images in that two-hour drive.  Just couldn’t find anything of interest.  Well maybe a couple of images I’ll show tomorrow.  🙂

Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your Monday.  I’m off today (using up the last of my vacation time) so I will get out today and look some more.  You are correct Betty, we all need to be careful.

Yesterday was the most unusual Thanksgiving in my memory.  For almost all of my married life we have traveled on Thanksgiving.  Yesterday we did our normal Saturday routine.  Jeanne was in the kitchen most of the day preparing for today’s Thanksgiving feast and I spent most of the day and evening and late night working on a redesign of the website.  😦

The only time I ventured out of my office was to shoot some images of the Turkey Trot and to take nourishment.  Other than that it was with my face pressed against the computer screen writing code and trying to make things work the way I think they should.

I have 90s skills for a 2012s needs.  Anyway since I didn’t shoot much yesterday I was looking through some of my images and came across this street minstrel from our Galena shoot.  I didn’t like it in color or black and white so I was playing around with one of the plug-ins for Photoshop and came up with this rendition.   Hope you like it.

You can take a look if you want to at about 18 hours of work by clicking here.  I’d enjoy hearing your honest feedback.  Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your Friday and be careful.  By the way, tomorrow the Queen and I celebrate 36 years of marriage.  She is a Saint and I love her so.

Happy Thanksgiving.  Beautiful day for November 22, 2012.  When Jeanne and I first moved to Iowa we lived in Waverly.  I had passed through Iowa but never spent any time in the state.  On November 22, 1977 we got 16 inches of snow and couldn’t even get out of the parking lot until the next day.

That year they had one of the highest snow falls on record.  It was so bad in Waterloo (where I worked) that you could not see at intersections and had to inch your way out.  Lot of people had their front ends hit that year.  🙂

Every year at Thanksgiving Dubuque holds “The Turkey Trot.”  I’m not sure where it starts but it goes down Radford Road, which is only three blocks from where we live.  Ben runs in the Turkey Trot and so I went down to the intersection and shot some images.  135 to be exact and that was culled to 25.

Two years ago Ben ran in the Trot.  Jeanne  and Angie sat down at the corner (in the car) with Joshua (who was only a few days old.)  I was home in bed with a Migraine that lasted about 18 days.  Ugh!

Dubuque has a lot of serious runners.  Each year at the Grandview Gallop they have several hundred participants.  Most of the runners that went by me today were all wearing timing devices and all had regulation jogging gear.  🙂  Makes me tired just watching.

Last year we were in Ames for Thanksgiving so this is the first year I’ve been able to actually go down and watch the run.  I was sitting on the curb getting ground level shots when Ben went by.   I was afraid I would miss seeing him  because I didn’t get down to Radford when they started coming through.  I didn’t miss too many.

I could hear a lot of talking coming from some of the runners and with my hearing that’s saying something.  I saw a group of 4 women carrying on a conversation like they were sitting at a table.  🙂

This lady saw me with my camera and started yelling at me, “Take my picture, take a picture of me.”  As you well know I usually hear just the opposite.  🙂  So I took her picture.

I have no idea who she was but I loved her attitude.  Thanks for stopping by.  I do hope you have wonderful Thanksgiving with your family.  My favorite Holiday as it is not about presents or other things.  Just good fellowship and an attitude of gratitude for all we have.  Be careful.

Happy Wednesday.  Actually this is my Friday.  After today I’m off until next Tuesday.  I told you about Josh’s kitchen in an earlier post and so I wanted to show it here.  He is enjoying making some food for Uncle Mark.

Last night I met with the owners of the Mexican Restaurant I’m building the website for.  There is a slight language barrier and so I wasn’t really sure what they wanted the website to look like.  So I took my best shot and built some test pages to show them.

A friend asked me yesterday how I would know if they liked it or didn’t like it.  I said if they shook their heads and smiled it was okay.  If there was silence there was a problem.  So when the website popped up on my laptop screen the silence was deafening.  🙂

So we communicated some and made drawings and I asked questions and now I go back to the drawing board.  Jeanne said “You must be very disappointed.”  I said, no not really.  I wasn’t thrilled with the design but I had no concept of what they wanted.  Now I do and so I can start to build something based on that new information.

I played around with it last night for a little while before Mr. Sleepy came up and hit me in the head.  So I am excited by the new direction I’m headed and it will be fun to test the waters again in a couple of days.

Coming home last night was a really bad experience.  The fog was as thick as I can remember.  I was only comfortable driving about 35 mph and then I could barely see far enough to feel I could stop if needed.

I got to Dubuque and the street lights made it a little better.  I call a phone call from a friend and as soon as I saw the name on the call I had a sinking feeling.  I had told him he could ride to Dubuque with me after my meeting.

I had forgotten about that as I was thinking more about the changes required in the website and the drive.  I apologized profusely but it was one of those life’s moments that no amount of apology can undo what has happened.

Had it been a normal night there would have been no hesitation to simply turn around and go back to Maquoketa and get him.  But with the drive through the dense fog I had just completed there was no way I was going to risk two more trips in that soup.

Fortunately the need to get to Dubuque was more for convenience than actual need but I still felt terrible about my forgetfulness.   Ugh, just a very bad feeling.

That’s it for today.  More fog this morning but I’d rather drive in daylight fog than night-time.  Enjoy your day.  Thanks for stopping by and be careful.

Short post today.  I didn’t have much time to work on images last night as I am still tweaking the restaurant’s website.  I show the owners of the restaurant the website I have designed for them after work today to see if they like the design.  If they do then I’ll populate the pages and it should launch shortly after Thanksgiving.

I’ve had a lot of fun working on it but I haven’t kept up with the changes in web design and I am sadly behind the technology curve and in some of the newer required skills, so it takes me longer.  For example, iPad or any Apple mobile device does not allow Flash.

Flash is a high quality graphic video and animation solution and most sites have Flash incorporated into their site.  It doesn’t take up a lot of space and it operates very well in an [HTML] (Web) environment.

So I had to find and learn the language that detects if the visitor has an iPad or “i” anything and then redirect them to a non Flash version of the website.  Sounds simple but it took me over an hour and half to get it working properly.  🙂

Anyway I realized about 9:45 pm that I hadn’t taken an image for my 365 project.  Ugh!  What to do?  This Angel was given to me by a dear friend when my Mother passed away many years ago.  She sits high atop my roll top desk and watches over me.  After all these years the battery that powers the light display inside her still worked.  I was surprised.

Anyway that’s all I have this morning.  As always thank you for checking out the blog.  Enjoy your Tuesday and be careful.

I had one of the most enjoyable evenings of recent memory.  We were invited to Angie and Ben’s home to celebrate Joshua’s second birthday.   There was also supposed to be a gender reveal of his soon to be sibling.  Art and Paula Roling (Ben’s parents) were there as was Ben’s younger brother Nick.  Mark and his girl friend Taylor were also there.

As you can see from the image above, Josh made out pretty good.  He was very interested in the presents and it was difficult to keep him preoccupied.  He would keep coming back to the treasure pile.

Finally Josh was allowed to open his presents and he had a wonderful time.  Of course after each present he wanted to play with that particular item.    It was great fun watching him tear into each new package and then be so excited with its contents.

Throughout the evening one of the underlying conversations was, “What do you think it is?”  That however did not detract one bit from all of us enjoying watching Josh enjoy his birthday.

Finally after dinner Angie brought out dessert.  These lovely cupcakes were placed in front of us with strict instructions not to bite into them or open them up in any fashion until we were given the okay.

We were also told that Josh helped his Mother bake these cupcakes.  Some inquiries to him gave us no new information.  He was tight-lipped about the whole thing.   Nick took a poll of everyone and what gender they thought the new baby would be.  It was about 80% that believed it was going to be a girl.

Ben reminded us that the dominate Y chromosome was very strong in is family and that there was a long lineage of males in the Roling family.  He said he wasn’t trying to reveal anything he just wanted those of us who were wanting a girl to be aware.

Finally we were given the okay to cut into our cupcakes and the house erupted in cheers and wahoos!!

It was so much fun and everyone was so excited about the news.  Don’t you just love it when a plan comes together.  🙂  There were high-fives, hugs, hand shakes and even a few kisses to celebrate the grand news.

Even big brother was pretty excited by the news.   Actually I don’t know if he fully realized what was going on at the time but he joined in the celebration.  I was lucky to capture this expression.

Then we were treated to a fashion show of the little ladie’s soon to be wardrobe.  Angie and Ben have been busy shopping for her.  There were several showings of new outfits.  They have been busy shopping.  🙂  I finally quit taking pictures of all the dresses.

I know the Grandma’s were thinking ahead.  There is a lot of shopping to do for this little girl.  Jeanne and Paula were already thinking about what they were going to buy for outfits.  Me, well I was thinking I need a new portrait lens.  🙂

In the end though it was still about Joshua and the celebration of his second birthday.  Grandma Roling gave him this little singing bear that had a cupcake with a candle.  The bear would sing happy birthday and had some pretty cool moves and then in the end it would blow out the candle.

Josh played it over and over about 100 times.  He would start blowing on the candle before the song was over.  So that’s it for today.  A long blog but lots to tell about a very fun evening.  I took over 100 images of the evening so I spared you a lot of shots.

Thank you for stopping by.  Enjoy your Monday.  It’s here all day today.  Be careful.

I spent the bulk of yesterday working on the La Casa website.  The thing I was struggling the most with was just the overall design or the look and feel of the home page, which sets the tone for the entire site.

I must have looked at a hundred or more Mexican restaurant websites over the last week or so trying to get some inspiration.  Finally late yesterday afternoon I settled on a design so now I can start populating the various pages.

I did take a break yesterday morning and do a short photo run.  I saw this old building sitting back in a field.  I knew when I shot it I wanted it to be in black and white.

Then on the way home I went past Heritage trail where it intersects with Clay Ridge Road.  I saw this old bridge sitting there.  It has been equipped with a wooden floor and handrails but I still like the original structure of the bridge.

I shot about 20 images of this old bridge.  The frame of the bridge is still solid but there is a lot of rust and decay on various parts of the bridge.  It probably could no longer support vehicle traffic.

Anyway after I had killed an hour of shooting a lot of blah images of streams, trees, and junk I decided to call it quits and get back to the website.

It was a nice break though.  The weather was very mild and the sun was not a big bother.  I just couldn’t find anything of interest to shoot.  That’s it for today.  Thanks for checking out my ramblings.  Hope you enjoy your Sunday.

We have a “Gender Reveal” party to go to this afternoon.  🙂  Plus we’re helping celebrate Josh’s 2nd birthday.  Be careful.

Happy 2nd Birthday to Joshua.  It sure is fun to see you growing up and learning new things.  This image was taken this past Monday when Angie, Josh, and I had lunch at Champs.

Yesterday I had a very unusual experience and had it not caught me so totally off guard I might have reacted differently.  I was in Cedar Rapids, Iowa yesterday finishing up our company meetings.  On the way back I pass through the town of Wyoming, Iowa.

I’ve been through this little town hundreds of time (without incident mind you) and have never paid more than a passing glance or two to the scenery of the town.

Coming West into town you go past the Wyoming Fire Department.  Like a lot of small town fire departments they have a bronze statue of a fireman erected in front of their building.  It looks nice.  I’ve seen it a hundred times and not once every thought about taking a picture of it.

Yesterday however around 4:00 pm the setting sun was just brilliant shinning on the statute.  So I went past it and then drove around the block and pulled in the driveway of the fire department (not blocking any fire truck doors.)

I was clicking away when all of a sudden I had this sense there was someone behind me.  I took the camera away from my eye and there was this man dressed in blue jeans, a checkered shirt and a pull over wind breaker with a baseball cap on.

He raised his wind breaker to reveal a pistol tucked into his belt and a sheriff’s badge attached to his belt.  He offered no other form of identification although he did state his name and that he was a deputy sheriff.  I couldn’t really hear or understand what his name was.

“What are you doing?”  I’m taking pictures I said.  Then he asked, “Why are you doing that?”  To which I said, because I enjoy taking pictures, is there a problem?  Does this all sound a little familiar?

I said to him.  Is there a problem?  He said, “It looks kind of unusual.”  I said look I’m an avid photographer taking pictures of things, I didn’t think that was against the law.  He said, “No, but people were just wondering.”  Then he got in his old Ford Taurus and drove away.

My guess is that he was the town cop after I thought about it.  And had I been a little quicker on my feet, I would have asked to see some identification, taken his name and number down and reported him to the Sheriff’s department for displaying his weapon in an intimidating manner.

On the way back to Maquoketa I saw this military helicopter flying around the area.  I though OMG they’ve got the secret service after me because I’ve said some less than complementary things about the current occupant of the White House.  🙂

By the time I got back to the office I was fuming.  More angry at myself for not being more assertive with this guy and his Gestapo like behavior.  It’s broad daylight, in a little town, I’m standing on public property taking a picture of a 5 foot high statue, and you have to show me your gun and ask me what I’m doing.

I tell you this photography thing is getting dangerous.  Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your Friday.  Sounds like we’re going to have pretty nice weather this weekend.  Be careful.

Another brief post today as I have another early morning meeting.  Yesterday I traveled to three of our banks to conduct benefit meetings and of course I brought my camera with me.   I found this guy on the way to Clinton, Iowa.

Then on the way to Monticello I saw the golden sun bathing this wagon in its light and had to stop for a quick snap.  Funny that the company representative for one of our benefits passed me on the way to Monticello.  He said later that he went by so quickly that he was already past me before he knew it was me.

His thought was, “What is that nut doing?”  🙂  Yep that would be me.  Anyway I liked this image.

I also saw this farm building in the golden light and thought it worthy of capturing as well.  I wasn’t late for any of my meetings and I got a few pictures to remember the day.  So it was all good.

Gotta run.  Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your Thursday.  Almost the weekend.  Be careful.

A short post today as I have early morning meetings.  I left work last evening at straight up 5:00 pm.  Twenty four minutes later I came by the Dubuque Regional Airport and noticed that the runway 18 was open and lit up.

Additionally the corn crop had been harvested over the weekend so there was an unobstructed view of the runway.  There is also an entry way to the field so I pulled into the field, set up my tripod and captured several images.

The road (Skyline Road) is remarkably busy and it is narrow with almost no shoulders.  Consequently if I find something to shoot I either have to stay mostly on the road or pull into a private drive.  Neither of which is a comfortable solution for me.  So this is a perfect place to shoot the runway.  I did hang around for awhile hoping to catch an airplane landing or taking off but the airport was pretty quite.

Enjoy your day.  Thanks for stopping by.  You can enlarge the image by clicking on it.  Be careful.