Upde Designs

The good news is the weather cooperated yesterday and it was a bright sunny afternoon so I was able to have the photo shoot that I had planned.  This is my dear friend Dave Johnson and this is one of his “Bucket List Items” a Corvette.

I was so happy for Dave when he bought the car.  I think that a lot of  men would say that one of their dream items would be a Corvette.  For me it would be a 1966 Corvette convertible (but that’s another story.)

Oh by the way, there are no more images for this post so if you’re not interested in my rambling babble you can just hit the back button and save yourself.   🙂

I told you that I had a picture in my mind for over a year now.  Actually it’s been more like a couple of years and it centered around Dave and his Corvette.  I even knew what I wanted him to wear and what I wanted the back drop to be.  So he had agreed to have the image made and we’ve been trying to get it done for almost two years now.

Since he is getting ready to store the Corvette for the Winter it was now or not for another year.  I had an appointment in Dubuque to get my flu shot so I was on a very narrow time line to stop and get the images of Dave and still make my appointment.  [Lesson 1] Do not try to rush through a shoot or have a pressing appointment to go to right after the shoot.  Focus on the shoot and only on the shoot.  In other words “be in the moment.”

The sun was “about” right but not quite.  It was still very bright and harsh light.  So Dave had to squint a lot and there was a lot of reflection from the sun on the shiny surfaces of the car, which is just about the whole car. [Lesson 2]  The light has to be perfect or no matter what your subject the image will be flawed. Had we waited 40 minutes we would have had the golden light with it at an angle that would have eliminated a lot of the glare spots.  Dave wouldn’t have squinted because he wouldn’t have been looking directly into the sun.  The colors would have also been softer and richer looking.

Probably the biggest mistake I made was not posing him correctly.  Again I tried to present the picture in my mind and I didn’t communicate it correctly to Dave and consequently his poses were rigid and unnatural for him. [Lesson 3] Once you have a picture in your mind do not take the shot until the pose matches your mind’s vision of the image.   I have several shots where the lighting is pretty good and the composition is good but the subject looks awkward and uncomfortable.

You can’t really tell from that little 3 inch viewing screen on the back of the camera how good or how bad your shot really is.  I have my review screen set to shot blown highlights or the blinkies as they are often called.  So if there is no blinking my high lights will have detail and I’m good to go.  Wrong!  Obviously there is so much more to an image than the highlights.

[Lesson 4] When you are trying to make a professional looking shot take the time to be professional.  A professional would have shot tethered to a laptop computer and reviewed each shot to see what was wrong and then make a correction.  I can always see the mistakes when I am looking at the full shot on my laptop, but when I’m sitting at home 12 hours later it is too late to make corrections.  Which by the way is the reason I will not shoot a wedding!!!!

I only shot 31 images, which is not enough when you’re trying to make a perfect image.  [Lesson 5]  Pay attention to the details.  Take the camera away from your eye and just look at what you’re trying to do.  Does what you see convey the look you’re trying to capture?  The “Devil is in the Details.”

Finally, (well not really but I’ve got to go) a simple light diffuser  (which I have more than enough of them) would have solved a number of the issues I encountered.  I had them with me but of course no one to hold them.  [Lesson 6]  Plan the shoot and anticipate the things you’ll need.  Again I was looking to create a “professional quality” image for me and my friend.  I got a couple of nice “shots” but not what I was striving for.

So I could pontificate for another several paragraphs but I think I’ve made my point.  I learned a lot from this brief shoot.  I’m very disappointed in the final product.  I wanted a quality image I could give my friend and I wanted to be able to say, “I did it.”  As my boss says, “it is a journey and you lean (hopefully) as you go.”

If you stayed to this line, thank you for checking out the blog today.  Hope you maybe picked up some tips that you can use as well.  Enjoy your Thursday and be careful.

Normally I probably would not have posted today.  I don’t have a lot to talk about and I have some lame images.  However I set a goal for myself to post every day for the month of October.  These are from the Saturday Fall Colors shoot I did.  They obviously did not make the first or second cut.

A dear friend of mine invited me over to his house after work for a dinner of pheasant stew.  I’m not a big fan of eating game and in fact I’ve only had pheasant one other time in my life.  I have to say it was wonderful and I of course had to have seconds.  🙂

After dinner we played some Euchre.  My partner and I got whopped the first two games but won the last game.  We were down 9 to 8 and we set them on the last hand.  I love to play Euchre but I’m the first to admit that I’m not very good at it.   Of course having a couple glasses of wine doesn’t improve my skills.  🙂

I’ve had a picture in my mind for over a year now and we’re going to try to make it a reality this afternoon,  depending on the lighting.  If I’m successful with the shot I’ll post it here tomorrow.  The weather forecast is for cloudy, overcast day with some wind.  It’s not looking too good for the shoot.

That’s it for today.  Like I said it was a lame post but I’m trying to post everyday in October.  Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your Wednesday and be careful.

We had our Corporate Event yesterday at the Grand River Center.  It is a wonderful facility to hold such an event and it was well attended by our staff.  We had motivational speakers, music, team building activities, and training all rolled into one huge day.  By the end of the day I was exhausted.  But in a good way 🙂

I was working on the audio / visual presentation when a friend leaned over and said, “Hey Mr. Photographer, did you know the American Queen is docked outside?”  WOW!  I’ve never photographed the Queen, well not this one anyway.   So shirking my duties (at least for 10 minutes) I went outside and captured this photograph.  The Twilight looks like a fair-sized boat until you put it in front of the American Queen.

Later in the day after inhaling my lunch I grabbed my camera and went down to the dock.  Fortunately the Queen was still tied up.  I had a 28 mm lens on the camera and still had trouble getting the entire boat in the field of view.

The lighting wasn’t very good either but I was happy to capture several images of this magnificent river boat.

This is my friend Abby.  She has a wonderful photographic talent and has been using a point-and-shoot camera.  Yesterday morning she came up to me and said that she had taken the plunge and purchased a DLSR camera.

Even though she bought a Cannon I didn’t hold that against her.  So after lunch we both headed for the Queen to take some images.  Several other friends joined us to look at the boat.  I captured this image because she was trying to take a picture of me.  I like the fact that it shows her and her camera.

It is a good picture but not a great one.  The stray hairs in the face (in my opinion) detract from the image.  It would take hours to remove them so I just show it to convey the joy that she was having over her new camera.  🙂

I was standing on the patio of the Grand River Center talking with another friend of mine and we were watching this barge go through the railroad bridge opening.  I had never seen a barge with a tugboat on the front of the barge pushing against the main tugboat.

Both tugs were operating at full power as evidenced by the white water boiling up behind them.  It looks counter productive to me but they were making progress so it was all good.

That’s it for today.  I hope you enjoy your day.  Oh, by the way if you didn’t check out the blog yesterday (because I said there wouldn’t be one) and you like old vehicles scroll down to yesterday’s blog.

Thanks for stopping by and be careful.

I know that yesterday I said I wouldn’t have enough time for a blog today.  I probably do not but what’s an extra half hour of sleep compared to having something to show the followers of this blog?  I’ll make the sacrifice.

Some more images from my Saturday shoot.  I decided to look around Dubuque for things I have not previously shot.  I found this old Jeep 4-wheel drive truck sitting on a main roadway.  It was in terrible shape but I love to photograph old relics so I made a u-turn and started taking some images.

Interestingly I follow several professional photographers blogs and one of my favorite is a guy by the name of Bill Fortney.  He is a Nikon Ambassador and he does a lot of landscapes.  Anyway I was looking at his blog yesterday and saw that on Saturday he too had photographed an old discarded Ford truck.

You can click here to see his truck (you may have to scroll down a bit.)  He is a wonderful talent and I love to follow his work.  He is a great inspiration to me.

As I was photographing this truck, trying to capture the look and feel of the vehicle I couldn’t help but wonder what type of action this old fire vehicle had seen.  Apparently it was once the property of the Delaware Fire Department.  It has a wood plank bed on it, but could have carried hose, or a pumper or who knows what.

Then I got to thinking about my childhood again and when my Dad was the Fire Chief of the little town of Ridgeway, Missouri.  My Dad had to go to some town, I think maybe it was Chillicothe, Missouri, to get a “new” fire truck for the community.  He wrote a note to my teacher (I was in 2nd grade) and he let me go with him and Jimmy Triplet to pick up the fire truck.

We picked up a very old (looked like a model T ford) with an open cab and a big red light attached to the top of the windshield frame.  Anyway to make a very long story short, Dad drove it through town with the red lights on and I got to blow the siren (which was a peddled on the floor board.)

Dad wanted to show the town the new fire truck we had just bought,  but what happened was that everyone came out to go help fight the fire.  Mother was not happy about all the calls and complaints she received about the false alarm.  🙂

I like the saying that “Life is about the choices we make.”  Sometimes it is very difficult to alter our natural or genetic tendencies but we do have the ability to choose how we react to a stimulus.

Saturday I had just arrived to start photographing this truck and it would have been obvious to anyone what I was doing.  When these two guys pulled up and even though I spoke to them they acted like I wasn’t even there.  Again, I’m hard to miss and it was equally hard to miss what I was doing.

So they started climbing all over the truck and opening doors (which by the way is private property.)  They broke one of the seats while messing around with the vehicle.   I started to say something like “Hey that’s not your property, or Hey can’t you see what I’m trying to do here?”  I remembered that my goal is not to make anyone unhappy with my photography.  So I went down to the river and shot a bunch of images.

When I came back past the truck it was all alone so I had a half hour of uninterrupted shooting.  No frustration, no confrontation, no unfortunate consequences.  🙂

That’s it for today.  Of course I got so busy telling stories that now I’m going to have to rush to get to the event on time.  Thanks for stopping by the blog today.  I hope you enjoyed the old truck.  Enjoy your Monday (hope you get the day off.) Be careful.

I took a little photo trip around Dubuque yesterday morning.  It was my favorite kind of day.  Chilly. gray, and a little damp.  🙂  Anyway one of the things that really surprised me was the number of barns in the city limits of Dubuque.

Not only were these barns inside the city limits, they were all three on the same street.  Each residing within a half mile of each other.  I had no idea of the number of barns within the city limits.

I suppose if I get bored I could create a new project to see if I could photograph
“The Barns Of Dubuque.”  A photographer friend of mine created a series of “Doorways of Dubuque” and they have been very popular.  🙂

This is a barn I did an HDR image of last year.  It was a brighter day and the limbs of the trees were not as grown over as they are now.  It was a much better image than this one.  Click here for that image.  Actually this was the barn I was driving to when I came across the other two.

That’s it for today.  Probably won’t have a post tomorrow.  We are having our big company wide event tomorrow, which means I have to be up and out at zero dark thirty hours.  Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your Sunday.  Be careful.

Last evening on the ride home I found a number of images I wanted to shoot but there simply was no place to park that didn’t require pulling in a private drive and walking back to the area.  I didn’t mind the walking part but the parking in a private drive was something I took a pass on.

I meant this to be a Fall colors image but the stupid combine got in the way.  You just can’t trust a combine this time of year.  🙂  Sorry I couldn’t resist posting another harvest image.

Well as long as the precedent has been set I might as well show you this image as well.  I liked this shot in color, but I liked it a lot more in black and white.

I had lunch yesterday with a couple of good friends each of whom work for other companies.  We have developed a friendship over the last few years and one of the things that has always impressed me about these individuals is their dedication to their position.  To be the very best they can be.  They both thoroughly enjoy the work they do and it certainly shows.

When there is genuine enjoyment and care about one’s profession the energy, creativity and passion are a natural by-product of your contribution.  It is a wonderful thing to see.  When you are around that type of commitment it is contagious.  So it was a very enjoyable lunch and the ideas flowing from these two was remarkable to experience.

That’s it for today.  Jeanne is visiting her Mother this weekend so there is no telling what trouble I might get into considering what happened last weekend when I went out shooting on my own.  🙂   Oh and by the way I really did mean to shoot the combine.  🙂

Thanks for stopping by and visiting the blog.  Enjoy your weekend and please be careful.

Another amazing day yesterday.  When you look at this image and I would encourage you to click on it to see the larger version, you might say this is a nice image.  Something drew my eye to this scene on my way to work.  When I first saw it, the scene was TRULY amazing, but by the time I was able to pull (sort of) off the road this was what I had left.

I wish that I could show you what I saw before I was able to get my camera because it was awe-inspiring.  The big fish that got away.  🙂

I realize this isn’t a very good image.  It is heavily cropped.  I also had to dramatically adjust the exposure compensation on the post processing.  I keep forgetting to reset my camera back to its default settings after taking images.  So I had the EV set to -2.0, which was way too dark to properly capture this image.

Anyway this looks like a doe and her fawn feeding on the remnants of the harvested corn crop.  I was trying to be very stealthy but I had to get out of my car to get the camera.  When I did that they started slowly walking away so I was lucky indeed to capture this image (poor as it is.)

On my way home I was watching the sun as it cast an inviting light on familiar farm structures.  Ironically when I got to the same place that I took the sun in the morning looking at the Eastern sky, this is the image I was presented with from the Western sky.   Within 100 yards of each other,  the same sun, just different times of the day.

That’s all I have for today.  I hope you enjoy your Friday.   Thank you so much for checking out the blog today.  Be careful.

Not much in the way of pontificating this morning.  Just some Fall colors that I have taken over the last three days.  I found this row of trees on my commute home last evening.

I had to do some training over the lunch period yesterday so I wasn’t able to get out for any photographs over the lunch hour.  There are some things around Maquoketa that I want to shoot before the colors are all gone.

I love this image.  It has all the Fall harvest feel to it.  The golden stalks of corn, the still green grass and of course the colorful trees mixed with beautiful blue sky and wispy clouds.  Does God do good work or what.  🙂

There are still some beautiful flowers around as well.  This image was made Sunday at the Dubuque Arboretum.  I stopped by there after my run in with the Photo Gestapo thinking it would be safe to photograph there.  🙂

One more flower image from the Arboretum.  If you live in or near Dubuque you owe it to yourself to visit the Arboretum in the near future.  It is just beautiful with the flowers and all the colorful trees.

That’s it for today.  I know you probably missed my provocative discourse but I was fresh out of things to talk about.  Except for some political observations but then I would only alienate half of the wonderful people who check out my blog and that is the last thing I want.

Besides I cannot change your mind about anything.  Only you can change your mind.  I have enough trouble just keeping track of my mind.  🙂

Enjoy this Thursday.  I hope to shoot some more Fall colors today.  I’ll need to shoot at least one for my 365 project.  Thank you for stopping by.  It is so much fun when someone mentions something I’ve posted here on the blog.  I am humbled by your comments and enriched by your support.  Be careful.

Do you have any idea how many combines I passed up on the way home last night?  I could have posted images of combines in the field, harvesting beans, corn, just sitting in the bare field, and even parked in a framer’s driveway. 🙂

I saw this image on the way to work yesterday morning and made a mental note to stop and take an image in the evening.  I had to work late yesterday (trying to get caught up) so I was running out of daylight pretty quickly.  I’ve photographed the Kleins in all types of lighting conditions and all types of weather but I never get tired of shooting them.

I knew the evening sun would be shining on this scene around 6:00 pm and I was lucky to get there about 6:30 pm.

Above is another shot I saw on the way to work yesterday and I wanted to shoot it as the sun would have been at my back.  I was as usual very late and I knew if I stopped and took a couple of images I’d go from very late to intolerably late and I didn’t want to try that out.

So even though I was shooting into the sun, it was low enough that I got away with it.  There is a hint of ground fog (or road dust) that has settled around the barn.  It is at a very low part of the area.  In the RAW condition you can really see it.  But as I boosted the black a little in the image it became more faint.

This sunset isn’t nearly as pretty as the one I had Friday night.  but a sunset is a sunset and not to be passed up.  I was behind the airport on Skyline Road when I stopped and captured this image.  There were no clouds in the sky to pick up the reflection of the sun.

That’s it for today.  Have I said lately how much I love this time of year.  We were talking at lunch today about the brilliant colors of the trees and how this is the best Fall we could all remember.  One of my friends said he thought it was because of the dry Summer that the trees were so colorful this year.  Makes sense to me.

Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy our midweek Wednesday and be careful.

I know, another harvest image.  I can’t help myself.  When I go by a field this time of year and there is a combine harvesting the crop I just can’t pass by without taking a photo or two.  You can’t imagine the number of combine images I have that you’ll never have to look at.  🙂

When you stop to think about it, these are incredible machines.  I can remember sitting on Main street as a teenager and I would see the farmers come to town on their tractors, fitted with the old one or two-row corn picker, which had the long  shoot out the back of the rig.  Back then it picked the whole ear of corn.  So when you think about the efficiency of the modern combine it is an amazing piece of machinery.

No this is not the same combine as the first picture.   I told you I can’t help myself.  This was another 20 miles down the road and I was seriously not looking for another image.  Just driving along minding my own business but then I saw it in the middle of the field coming towards the highway.  Surly you can understand I had no choice.  I had to take the shot.

Have you noticed the quality of the light around 5:00 pm?  From 5:00 pm until around 7:15 pm (that number changes about every day) the light takes on a softer glow, it seems almost a little more orange than normal.  The colors of Fall are just so beautiful.  I don’t only mean the trees either.  I’m talking about the contrast in the fields of the still deep rich green of the grass next to the golden stalks of corn with the puffy clouds and deep blue sky.  WOW this is a great time of the year.

I’ll leave you with a picture of my favorite wagon.  I’ve photographed this wagon several times.  The difference yesterday was there were two rather large and unfriendly dogs that came out to greet me.  I don’t know if the farmer is tired of me stopping to take pictures of this wagon or if the dogs were just enjoying some freedom but they were not very happy with me.

I showed them however, I just removed them from the shot.  They really did detract from the image I was trying to make so I just used the “content-aware” fill tool and “Poof” no dogs.  🙂  Oh if life were only that easy!

Thanks for stopping by.  I promise no combines for the rest of the week.  Enjoy this Tuesday, it will be here all day.  Be careful.