Upde Designs

I am really late getting this post done.  Many things going on today including a record-setting nap.  🙂  I love it when I hear people my age say, “I don’t know what I’ll do when I retire.”  Trust me I do know and will love every minute of it.

The good news is I still enjoy what I’m doing and still have a rather large “I want list”,  so it will be a few years before I pull the plug.

Ben was on call yesterday and had to go in on a case so Angie and Josh made a surprise visit to our home yesterday.  Josh loves to play the piano.  He doesn’t just bang on it.  He pushes one key at a time to enjoy the sound that it makes.  I asked his Mother to play a song for him.  I always enjoyed listening to Angie practice when she was at home.

Pretty soon he was tried of that and he wanted to go outside.  He ran straight for the swing.  I wanted to get some images of him playing in the leaves but all he wanted to do was to swing.  Guess who won that debate.  🙂

Angie gives him an “Underdog.”   Until yesterday I always thought an “Underdog” was a cartoon about a dopey looking dog that could fly.  Apparently I need to broaden my experiences.  Once she would do that he would laugh and giggle until he slowed down and then would ask for more.

We had a lot of fun with Josh.  He is so inquisitive and limitless energy.  No matter how busy he was though, when I would put the camera up to my eye he would point and say “light.”  He loves to push the button on my flash.

Grandma Jeanne took her turn at swinging Josh.  Always the cautious one she did an easy swing and Josh was not pleased.   There were no giggles or laughs just a quite little boy.  We had to show Grandma how to really push his swing.

We had a fun afternoon with Angie and Josh.  They stayed for lunch and then it got to be Josh’s nap time.  Jeanne and I thought about it and that sounded like a good idea.  Funny how as a child you fought tooth and nail to not have to take a nap and as an adult capable of your own decisions you look forward to them.  🙂

Sorry for the late post.  Enjoy the rest of your Sunday.  I’m off on a photo trip to see what I can see.  Thanks for stopping by and be careful.

The only consistent thing about my post today is the lack of consistency in the images and the theme.  Three different images without a consistent idea behind them or theme to them.  Well, I guess, if you factor in that I like all three images then that is and of its self consistent.

Confused yet?  The above image is the only one from the Corvette shoot that I halfway liked .  I printed this one for Dave and it’s okay, but wasn’t what I had in my mind’s eye.  Dave said, “We’ll try again next year. ”  Hope springs eternal.

This morning I read the blog of one of my favorite photographers, Bill Fortney.  His blog this morning said exactly what I feel about my photography so I’m quoting here directly from his blog (hope that’s not illegal.)

Bill writes… “How do you see the world photographically?   This is not a question with a value judgement, just a question!  The great thing about photography is we can see and interpret the world as we desire.  The shot above is my vision for something I saw this morning and then photographed it, then processed it to my liking…”

…”well, that all depends on how you want to share your vision with the world.  If you see a spectacular world with vivid rich colors, the top shot is for you, if you are much more grounded in reality, you might like the one directly above.  Fortunately we don’t have “photo police” that enforce seeing the world only one way!  Once you start to explore your feelings about images you are open to stretch that vision even further…”

… “So what is the bottom line?  If you feel adventurous, I’ve given you some food for thought, if this is not your thing, it’s o.k.,  feel free to leave it alone.  The most important thing is to find a vision that fits you and works for  you.”
~Bill Fortney

I’ll leave you with this image that I took at the wedding reception last Saturday evening.  This lovely lady works at one of our banks and is just a delight to be around.  One of the very nicest, classiest, and thoughtful individuals you’d ever want to be around.

They were sitting across the table from me and as I watched them I thought I wanted to make an image of this wonderful couple and give it to them to remember this evening.  I really like the way it turned out.

Okay I’ve already told you more than I know so you’re good to go this Saturday.  Enjoy your day and thank you for listening to my ramblings.  It keeps me amused and out of trouble.  Be careful.

Good Day and happy Friday.  I will follow yesterday’s post about the Nikon D800 36.6 megapixel DSLR for two reasons.  I have no new images for you today and a couple of my readers thought that post was interesting.

I have found with most things in life, there are positives and negatives.  The glass is half full or it is half empty.  Or as an engineer friend of mine once said the glass is improperly designed for the volume of liquid it is supposed to contain.

Yesterday I pointed out many of the positives of the D800.  Some of the negatives are it has a very slow “burst rate” of only 4 fps compared to the 11 fps of the D3S.  That means even with all its glorious detail it is not a good camera for capturing wildlife (as they tend to move a lot.)

Additionally the image file it produces is so large that it slows down my computer just doing simple processing.  I have a one year old Mac Book Pro with intel core I7 processors and 8 GB of RAM.  It smokes, until I try to process a D800 image and then it slows down noticeably.

Speaking of file size that translates into huge disk space usage.  The images of the D800 run on average of 48 MB per image.  When I typically shoot any one subject I may take as many as 10 – 20 images per subject.  So you can see that it eats up a lot of disk space in a hurry.

Finally it is an unforgiving camera.  In that if the depth of field, shutter speed, or aperture are not set precisely the softness of the subject is very apparent.  Last night for example I was attempting to photograph a shrub in front of our house (I was desperate for a photo of the day.) 🙂  It was dark, raining, and there was a little wind.  Hey, does that sound familiar?  “It was a dark and stormy night…” Sorry I digress.  Anyway as a result much of the image was softer than if I would have used a lower resolution camera.

But isn’t that life in general?  We can spend our time focusing on the negatives of anything or we can understand the negatives but focus on the positive things and get the best results with what we have.  Concentrating on the negatives causes cognitive blindness to the variety of possibilities available.

Focusing on the positives (while acknowledging the negatives) allows us to have a broader, clearer vision of what we can achieve.  And then we all live happily ever after.  🙂

Enjoy your Friday.  Thank you for supporting the blog and be careful.

Good day.  Today’s post is about an amazing camera and an amazing principle.  The camera is the 36.6 megapixel Nikon D800 DSLR.  It has been called (mainly by Nikon evangelists) the “medium format camera.”

In the highest settings shooting RAW it produces an image that is 7,360 pixels X 4,912 pixels.  Put another way that would print an image (as it came out of the camera) 31 inches X 21 inches with a resolution of 240 dots per inch (DPI.) A RAW (unprocessed) 16 bit image is 43.8 megabytes.  Compare that to a 10.7 megabyte image from the Nikon D3S.

The image above is only 500 pixels wide (the largest allowed) on this blog.  When you click on the image you can see it at 1,200 pixels, which is pretty large for most screens.  So a 7,360 pixel image is reduced by 6,160 pixels and saved as a JPEG file.  That means lots of data gets thrown out, which is usually okay for a web presentation.

Now why am I boring you with all this useless information?  The point I’m trying to make is the D800 takes such incredibly high-resolution images that you can really crop an image to change the perspective of the entire image.

I shot this scene above (for my photo of the day) with the Nikon 24 – 70 f2.8 (which is a very sharp lens.)  I keep the 24 -70 on the D800 because it is such a sharp lens and I want the image to show as much detail as possible.  However as with most things in life there is a trade-off.

My shooting style tends to be more on the telephoto side and as is the case with this shot, the combine was in a field a fair distance from where I was standing.

I couldn’t get the perspective I wanted with that lens but I knew with all those mega pixels I could crop down to the shot I wanted without any appreciable loss of detail.

So this morning as I was thinking about what images to post (it rained most of yesterday) I was very limited (actually I only had this one.)  I decided to see how far I could go with this image and still maintain a quality image.  Same image as the first one, just cropped to give it a different perspective.

And now for something completely different.  I was conducting a conflict resolution process yesterday and usually conflict results from parties having a different perspective of the same event.

Both parties saw, felt and experienced the same event or stimulus but because of their different perspectives came away with a diametrically different interpretation of the event, which then became their reality.

The process of conflict resolution (in part) is to help each understand (not agree with) the others perspective and how they might interpret the given stimulus from that view-point.

By increasing the understanding of the others viewpoint it helps mitigate the differences and promotes a more unified understanding of the event and each other.  If everything works the way it is supposed to then the conflict is resolved and we all live happily ever after.  🙂

Just like the above image.  Same image as the first one just from a different perspective.  Same stimulus just viewed from a different point of reference.  Shot with a remarkable camera by a less than stellar photographer

If you stuck with me and made it to this part I am amazed and grateful.  Thank you for checking out the blog.  Enjoy your Thursday, it is so close to Friday.  Be careful.

Another nice commute home.  Beautiful skies and the temperature was very mild.  The clouds were dynamic and filled with a variety of colors from the sun’s reflection.

I was looking for that perfect landscape to shoot with that sky but unfortunately for me I couldn’t find the look I was trying to capture.  I took a couple of roads that I normally don’t travel in hopes of finding something but they both led to dead ends on gravel roads.

I’ve done a lot of thinking over the last few days.  I have been presented with a photographic opportunity that would really challenge me as a photographer and would require a lot of hours in preparation and post production.

There would be some monetary gain from the project and there in lies my dilemma.  If I only have to please myself with my photography then I can be my own worst critic or my biggest fan.  If on the other hand someone is paying me to take images they must be pleased with the result.

I have to make a decision by the end of today so I’ve tried to weigh the pros and cons but I  am still undecided.  Perhaps something today will inspire me to make the right decision.  🙂

I hope you enjoy your mid-week day.  Thanks as always for stopping by the blog.  Please be careful I need all the readers I can get.

Beautiful drive home yesterday evening.  The temperature was a pleasant 60 degrees, a wonderful blue sky with wispy clouds and the orange color of the setting sun.  What a great photo opportunity.

Wouldn’t you know it a barn got in my way and I had to capture the image.  Actually this is one of my favorite barns.  I’ve taken lots of images of it and tonight because of the lighting conditions I took a three images bracketed shot of the barn and I have to say I really like the way it turned out.

It was a classic HDR set up.  If I exposed for the mid tones I was getting a blown out sky and if I exposed for the sky I had a lot of shadows that lost detail.  I was too lazy to get my tripod so I just stood real still and only took three images in the bracket.   Click on the image to see a larger version of it.

Jeanne had a dinner meeting after school so there was no hurry to get home.  I took a lot of back roads on the trip this evening.  I found some interesting things to shoot but by 6:15 pm I was loosing daylight and it was getting hard to shoot.  The bottom image I had to boost the ISO to 400 to get a decent shutter speed.

If it is starting to get dark around 6:30 pm that means in a very short time my commute will be in the dark every night for at least 3 months.  I love this time of the year but I sure do not enjoy that evening commute.

I came into Asbury the back way (for me anyway) and caught a glimpse of the pond at The Meadows Golf Course.  I’ve taken several images of it but liked the color of the trees this evening set against the brilliant green of the grass.

I was about 15 minutes late taking this shot, however I’m still happy with it.  Yesterday morning on the way to work I found a corn field in the valley covered in a dense fog with just the top of the stalks poking through.  I was already 11 minutes late so I groused a little and kept going.  One of these mornings I’m going to leave for work on time and then I’ll get a shot of that fog.

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

We were invited to Angie and Ben’s last evening for Chilli and cornbread.  Wow, my little girl can sure cook.  Great dinner.  Joshua came to Grandpa’s arms as soon as we got to the door.  We had a lot of fun playing the entire time we were there.

The answer is no.  I did not enhance his eyes.  That is what they look like.  Now admittedly the flash brings out the color but they are just a really pretty blue.

He loves my flash attachment and has learned where the test button is.  You know from reading this blog that he love to push buttons and flip switches to see the reaction of light.  I have to take the flash off and put it up for awhile because you can actually melt the inner working of the SB800 Speed Light.

Angie took this image (I don’t like being in front of the camera) while Josh and I were playing with his farm animals.  He likes to mimic their sounds while he holds them.

He also likes to have you stick one of the animals in his back pocket.  He can’t quite reach back there and find his pocket but he likes to have an animal handy in case he needs one.

Joshua enjoys cornbread.  When Ben turned his head for a moment Josh grabbed a piece of cornbread and took a big bite out of the middle of it.  Even with a mouth full and another bite waiting he is still interested in the light of the flash.

We had a very enjoyable evening with the kids.  Joshua was so much fun.  He is really stringing words together now and can count to 14.  Heck I was in 2nd grade before I could count to 14.

I remember in 2nd grade Ms. Phillips had us writing our numbers to 100.   I took my paper up to her (so very proud) and showed it to her.  She smiled and said, “Keep going.”  I said, “Are you kidding, you can’t go any higher than 100.” I was not a bright child, nor as I recall was she pleased with my response.  🙂

That’s it for today.  Monday is here and we are going to have to deal with it all day.  Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your day and be careful.

Looking out my window this morning I see the rain continuing to fall and that is not conducive to making outdoor images.  So it affords me time to review images I have taken in the last couple of weeks.

I actually found a couple that should have made the first cut in my humble opinion.  So I’m happy to be able to show them to you today.  We were going to try for the pumpkin patch today but the forecast and radar predict a rainy period for most of the day.

Yesterday a dear friend’s daughter was married and we were invited to attend the wedding / reception.  We opted to go to the reception, which was held in Davenport, Iowa.  We left home around 3:00 pm and drove through fog and light rain to Davenport.

Counting the tables and chairs we estimated there would be around 300 people attending.  The room was half full when we arrived and one of the first people we saw was my friend.  She looked wonderful and radiantly happy.  This was a very special day for her and her husband.

The room continued to fill with people and of course the temperature in the room continued to rise.  Finally two friends from work showed up and asked to join us.   It was a good meal and we enjoyed our company but then we all decided it was okay to leave and so all three couples left at the same time.  🙂

The drive home was worse as it was a steady misty type rain mixed with fog.  I apparently need to replace my wiper blades because I had trouble seeing the road, which reduced our speed and lengthened our trip home.

But it was all good.  We got to share a little bit of my friend’s happiness and reconnect with a couple of friends I haven’t spent much time with lately, so it was a good evening.

Hope you enjoy your Sunday.  Thanks for checking out the blog and be careful.

I woke up yesterday morning around 2:00 am with an intestinal disorder.  It persisted throughout the morning and so I took a PTO day.  I think I needed a mental health day as well so eventually it turned out to be good day for me.  I just rested and relaxed and today feel refreshed and fit.   Well maybe the fit part is a bit of a stretch.  🙂

The image above is from my odds and ends file.  Taken last week to capture the look and feel of this exceptional time of the year.  I would put it in the category of “snapshot” but still I like the three trees in the foreground and the cattle in the pasture.

I sometimes go out by the fairground and take that bypass road to highway 20 on my morning commute.  There is a big construction project going on there on both sides of the road.  It is an interesting process as they take about an 8 foot high section of earth, put it in a big dump truck, take it across the road and dump it on the ground.

I’m sure they know what they’re doing but it looks counter productive to a disinterested passer-by.  I am curious about what the project is but not enough to stop and ask someone.  🙂

Finally, I’ll leave you with a combine image.  Even though the little 4 row combines are my favorite, this behemoth makes a nice image even if it is a butt shot.  🙂

Angie and Ben were going to take Joshua to the pumpkin patch today and Jeanne and I were going to tag along just to take some images of him playing in the pumpkin patch.  Unfortunately the weather did not cooperate so we had to scrub that plan.

I enjoy these type of days, but I wish it had been sunny this morning so I could have captured some wonderful images of my Grandson.  Well that’s it for today.  Thank you as always for stopping by.  Enjoy your Saturday and be careful.

I took this image just about one year ago this week at the “duck pond” known as the Hurstville Marsh.  At that time the water level was adequate to support a variety of water fowl including two trumpeter swans.

It was one of my favorite places to visit and I would often grab a sandwich and go to the duck pond just to watch the entire echo system go through its daily life cycle.  It was a peaceful and interesting place to visit.

And this is the duck pond as it was yesterday. There is a very small remnant of a pond that is at the far North end of the marsh.  The juvenile that was born in captivity is still there and an occasional goose or two will stop by but the area is void for the most part of other water fowl.  Very sad indeed.

So now when I don’t have a lunch appointment I really don’t have a favorite place to visit.  I will occasionally go to the Maquoketa Dam, but with the low water levels there is no water flowing over the dam so nothing of interest to shoot there.

I did decide to shoot this barn.  They have harvested the bean crop that surrounded the barn and every morning as I come to work the morning sun is shining on the east face of the barn.  Makes for a nice image but of course I’m always running on the verge of being very late so I never have time to stop and photograph it.

The barn doesn’t look as good at noon as it does in the soft morning light.  The person who owns this barn also has three peacocks as pets.  They live in the barn and they come out every day around 7:00 am and look for food.   I’ve never seen them on the roadway and occasionally you’ll see one on top of his truck, but mostly they wander the field all day.

I have never found the time to stop and photograph them.  In the morning they would be facing the rising sun but they hang mainly around the barn so it would be hard to get to them.  In the evening they are usually down by the house but it would require shooting directly into the sitting sun.  I haven’t given up on them however.

Finally I’ll leave you with this image.  I’ve taken this image several times over the years but never seem to capture the look I want.  This is as close as I’ve come so I thought it was time to show.   Yes it’s just a dead tree but I like the way this large dead tree is sitting in  the middle of a field with the fading Fall colors in the back ground.  I guess you would have had to been there to appreciate it.  🙂

That’s it for today.  Enjoy your Friday, it’s a special day you know.  Thanks for stopping by the blog and be careful.