Upde Designs

Good Day.  Happy Monday to you.   I will continue with the skydiving adventure of my friends from this past Saturday.  Prior to their jump and typical of our technological period Joel and Maggie check their phones for last-minute texts or messages.  I just love those little hats they have to wear.

I can’t imagine how we got along without those devices a few years ago.  I turned mine off and put it in my camera bag.  It was wonderful not to have it constantly buzzing while I was enjoying the event.  🙂

Four of the group went in the first flight and the last three went on the second flight.  It was four hours from the time they got there until the last one was on the ground.  There were several groups in front of them and there were still people coming when we left.

Above Maggie walks with her tandem pro to the airplane.  Notice that her hand is blurry?  I wasn’t paying much attention to my settings.  This was shot with the D800 at f8.0 and ISO 100.  Shooting with the 70 -300 mm lens was just slow enough of a shutter speed to not freeze the action.  I’m still learning how to shoot with the D800.  It’s a steep learning curve.

My friend Brian gives the thumbs up on his way to the plane.  Brian is one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet.  He hit a deer on his motorcycle some time ago.  He cracked (or broke) some ribs and had road rash every where and two days later he is out doing chores on his farm.  Tough as nails but he doesn’t play Euchre very well.  🙂

Amy heads for the plane.  I tried to get her to give me a pose but she was focusing on the task ahead of her and was concentrating.

So they all boarded the plane and took off.  It takes about 15 minutes for the plane to get to the jump altitude of 14,000 feet.  Amy said after her landing that it was so cold up there when she jumped out that her fingers were numb.  She showed me her hand and her finger nails were still a little blue.

Once they jump it doesn’t seem to take that long for them to come down.  They actually land about the same time as the plane lands.  They have a ride along in the plane for $45 and I actually thought about doing that.    But I would have had to ride in the front of the plane only able to shoot the backs of the jumpers and then couldn’t have shot them in mid-air so I opted to stay safely implanted on the ground.

Tomorrow I’ll show you Amy’s, Maggie’s, Joel’s, and Brian’s landing.  Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your Monday and make it a great day.  Be careful.

What an enjoyable day yesterday was.  Some of my friends from work were going to go Skydiving at Vinton, Iowa and they asked me if I’d like to take some images of them.   So Jeanne and I left home around 8:20 am,  I had forgotten how far Vinton was from Dubuque, so we arrived a little later than I had wanted to.

The good news is that we were there well before the group jumped.  It was so much fun being there and watching them as they each prepared themselves mentally for the experience they were about to have.

Photography Info:

I’ll get this out-of-the-way so the story of the day doesn’t get lost in the Photography part and if you’re not really into photography you can skip this section. 🙂

I took both the D3S and the D800 yesterday.  I had the 28 – 300 mm lens on the D3S and my old 70 – 300 mm lens on the D800.  This is the second time I have shot the D800 with the 70 -300 mm lens and again I was disappointed with the results.  The D800 is such a high-resolution camera and the 70 -300 just doesn’t produce Tack Sharp images.

Now I can just hear my friend Burt saying, “It’s not the equipment Dummy.”  But in this case I think it is.  If I shoot the 24 – 70 f2.8 or the 70 – 200 f2.8 with the D800 I get Tack Sharp images.

So I shot 600 images and first round cut of 431 images survived.  Normally there wouldn’t have been that many make the cut but I want to make a photo collage for my friends of their landings.

End of Photography Info:

All but one of the group had these neat tee shirts on.  They had to sign 400 pages of forms  🙂 before they could jump.  Watch a video and then take a brief ground school tutorial, mostly about what not to do while plunging toward the ground at 125 mph.

There was a pretty decent breeze and a lot of cloud cover.  The temperature was in the mid 70s when we arrived and by the time the jump was over it was mid 80s so it wasn’t too hot.  I have a friend who likes to say that, “Summer heat is God’s punishment on fat people.”  🙂

Yes that’s right the back of their shirts say “SPLAT!”  Pretty cool I think.  I have a lot of story to tell and lots of images to show over the coming days.  I won’t spend days on the event because eventually you would get tired of it but it is a fun story to tell.

After we left the airport Jeanne and I went by this amazing barn.  I said, “Well if I needed a picture I’d certainly take that shot.”   But we were anxious to get home because Angie, Ben, and Josh were coming over for dinner and I was tired.   Additionally, to get a decent shot of the barn I would have to pull onto the Farmer’s property.  So I decided not to stop.  One mile later I did a “U-turn” and went back 🙂  Hey I just can’t pass up a great barn.  More on that for a later post.

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

Another short post today.  Not because of time constraints but because of a senior moment (more on that in a moment.)  If you follow this Blog you know that I started a 365 Project July 1, 2012.  I’m only 54 days into the project and it is already proving to be quite a challenge.

It is also doing exactly what I wanted it to do, which is to open my eyes to new photo opportunities.  So I’m always looking for something to use for the “picture of the day.”

Driving the same highway every day for 12 years I have become very familiar with each mile and the scenery associated with those miles.  There is a pond located near mile marker 168 that has slowly gone dry.  At one point it was bone dry and then last week after a pretty good rain storm there was a fair amount of water in it.

A couple of days later it was dry again.  So yesterday on my way to work I noticed  the pond not only had water in it again but there was a large population of geese on the pond.  Ahhhh, Photo of the Day.  So I did a Bat Turn and captured the image above.  SWEET.  🙂

You can see how low the water level is at the pond.   I didn’t remember it raining much the last few days but I can’t be everywhere so it was reasonable to assume that they had, had a pretty good rain the last couple of day.

On the way home last night I notice some black smoke coming from the West side of the road.  So I did another Bat turn and went to investigate.  It was just a farmer burning off some brush but as I drove down the road about a 1/4 mile there was the pond that I had photographed in the morning, complete with a full complement of geese, was almost bone dry again.  Now, not only do I have my photo of the day, I’ve also got an interesting story for the blog.  Yea!

Uhhh,  just one problem.  Notice they are not the same ponds.  The first pond is at the 168 mile marker and the second pond is 1/2 mile further South.  As a good friend of mine likes to say I jumped to an optical conclusion. 🙂  My Mother would be so proud.

Oh and about the short post for today.  I was wrong about that as well.  Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your Friday.  It is Friday isn’t it?  Be careful.

Nikon D800 | Nikon 105 f2.8 macro | Nikon SB 200 SL | ISO 100 1/160 sec @f.4

Just a short post today.  I had a late night and this morning there was preparation of materials for a meeting today so little time to pontificate.  A good friend from work gave us some tomatoes, peppers, and sweet corn.  By the time I got home last night I still hadn’t taken the “Photo of the Day” for my 365 project.

Jeanne had a lot of the vegetables sorted out on the counter top after being washed and she suggested a picture of some of them.  Great idea.

Thanks for stopping by.  I apologize for the brevity of the post today or perhaps I should say you’re welcome for the brevity of the post today.  Enjoy your Thursday and be careful.

Happy Hump Day.  Fun evening yesterday.  We met Angie, Ben, and Josh at Tony Roma’s Restaurant at the Grand Harbor to celebrate Jeanne’s birthday.  We opted for outside dinning so we had to wait about 30 minutes for a table.

They had live music playing tunes from the 60s and 70s so people were just sitting enjoying the weather and the music.  Who could blame them.  When we were finally seated at our table it was easy to see why people didn’t want to leave.  Tony Roma’s has become my new favorite place to eat.

A young Rembrandt or Picasso?  Who knows, but he sure likes to color.  Grandpa did the eyes. 🙂  Josh really enjoyed being outside at the restaurant, listening to the music and of course having dinner.

I opted for the medallions and baby back ribs again for my meal.  It was just as good as the last time we ate there a couple of weeks ago.  The wine was also very good. 🙂  We all had the chicken tortilla soup.  If you go to Tony Roma’s I highly recommend it.  Be warned however it does have a bit of a bite to it.

I know this is very poor composition on my part, but I wanted to capture the kids in one picture.  It’s not my fault the menu got in the way of the young master.

Jeanne got a lot of nice presents, a wonderful meal, nice atmosphere, and the best company imaginable so it was a great evening.  One of the presents I gave her was a matted 11 X 14 image of Joshua that I posted a few days ago in his cowboy hat.  The one I said I probably wouldn’t frame and then I ended up doing it.  You can see it on the August 14th post.  She loved it and I made an extra print for Angie and Ben.

Just as we were getting ready to leave Mark called and wished his Mother happy birthday.  He’s back at it taking classes now and of course working as well so he is very busy.  It was nice that he took the time to call.  We wished he could have been able to join us.

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

My Queen is celebrating a near Momentous Birthday today.  She is a pure delight and I love her so!

I told you Monday was lurking out there and it is here with a vengeance.  Yesterday afternoon Jeanne and I got a small DQ Blizzard apiece and headed out to the countryside to see what we could see.

I needed an image for my 365 project as well as for the blog.  I’ve wanted to take some images of the church at Bankston, Iowa.  I used to ride there about once a week when I was biking  regularly.  I always thought it would make a great image.

There are so many trees around the building that it is hard to get any type of  clear shot of it.  The clouds were really nice this day and so I wanted to frame up the church with those clouds.

After making some images of the church we took the Girl Scout Road back to Dubuque.  We came across this small church that looked to be abandoned.  The roof was in pretty bad shape and the windows looked to be covered with some type of paper.   Maybe it’s still in use it’s hard to tell.

Our journey took us through Peosta and I noticed this old elevator.  I’ve seen it many times before but for some reason yesterday it caught my eye.  I told Jeanne I thought it might make a good B&W image.  I’m not very happy with it but I spent enough time on it that I was bound to show it to you.

I looked for other opportunities but there was nothing that jumped out at me so we came home.

I’m excited by the news of our new Grandchild.  We are certainly enjoying watching Josh develop.  It is fun to be able to sit on the sidelines and watch as opposed being so engaged with your own kids.  It will be fun to watch Joshua as he adapts to a new sibling in his domain.    Grandpas can help with that.  🙂

Enjoy your Monday.  It will be here all day.  Thanks for stopping by and be careful.

There were three projects I had on my agenda for Saturday and I was able to accomplish exactly zero of them.  I’m so ashamed.  Okay, not really.  I was exhausted from the week back from vacation and needed to recover from that.  🙂

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago when we were on vacation, Jeanne and I bought some new living room furniture.  Our first in 20 years.  So we asked Angie to bring Ben over sometime this weekend to see the new stuff.  She was here visiting her Grandma when it was delivered.

Angie had called earlier in the morning to give some approximation of when they would be over but it was a wide variance of time so Jeanne had some errands she wanted to run and when they arrived she was of course gone.

I took on the responsibility and showed Ben the furniture, which took less than two minutes and then we visited and watched Joshua.  We tried to call Jeanne on her cell phone but kept getting her voice mail.  I finally reached her and she was in the check out line at Hy-Vee.  🙂   She said she was at the end of the line and it would be awhile.  Ben and Angie said they’d wait for her.

Jeanne finally made it home and we had a good time visiting with the kids and watching Josh play.  When they got ready to leave Angie wanted to show us Josh’s new tee-shirt.  🙂

Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your Sunday, Monday is lurking.  Be careful.

A short post this morning.  I had a long day yesterday and then after work I set up my studio lights and did a free portrait session for anyone from our bank who wanted to have a portraiture made.

The shot above is of one of my friends and his great family.  I didn’t spend any time at all on retouching this.  It’s pretty much the way it came out of the camera.  I have to admit I like shooting with a back ground muslin as opposed to shooting with a green screen.  There is substantially more post process with green screen then having a nice background.

Here is another friend of mine who wanted a head shot for a board she serves on.  It was a fun evening, I learned more things, but it was 10:00 pm by the time I got home and I was beat.

I’m always so nervous when shooting portraits.  I can’t relax and do some of the things I’d like to do because I’m always so concerned about the lighting and making people look their best.

I’m sure with the repetition of practice this would go away and I could get a bit more creative.  When you only do portraits once a month or even longer it is hard to develop a routine or technique.

I’ve also discovered over the years that most people just do not like to have their picture taken.  I completely understand this.  When I’m in my slim mode I don’t mind at all but when I’m in my weight challenged mode it’s a different story.  🙂

Final word though, I love portrait photography.  I’d like to do it every day and learn more how to shape the light and try different lighting positions.  I also enjoy being with people (imagine that.)

That’s it for today.  Friday took its sweet time getting here but enjoy the day and as always thanks for stopping by.  Be careful.

This is an image I’ve meant to show you for sometime now but just never got around to it.  The interesting thing about this photo is the lens and the camera that took it.

I was going over to Angie and Ben’s house as Jeanne was watching Josh for them.  My intention was to take some images of Josh doing his thing so the only lens I took was the Nikon 24 – 70 mm lens. Not a great lens for taking wildlife, not even a good lens for that task.

A few blocks from their house I noticed this Doe feeding on the grass in an open area.  I pulled over and got my camera but what to do.  She was a very long way off and I only had 70 mm as my longest focal length.

I knew the D800 had a 36.3 megapixel sensor so I thought why not try it and see what happens.  The last image in this series is what came out of the camera.  The image above is a seriously cropped image but to my eyes it hasn’t lost much of anything in its clarity.

She was pretty aggressive with me.  She would stomp the ground with her front foot and then take a couple of steps towards me.  She repeated this gesture a few times and then I looked even farther away down the hill I saw this Buck Deer and two fawns.

So I took a few steps trying to get a clear shot of the buck and fawns and then she abruptly turned and three bounds later she had reached the area of her family.  Together they all disappeared into the woods.  I certainly wished I would have had my long lens with me.  It would have been a rare opportunity to take an image of this hansom buck.

This is the RAW/JPG image just as it came out of the camera with no development.  I wanted to show you how far away the deer was.

That’s it for today.  I’m so far behind in my work that it’s already next week.  I may never take another vacation.  🙂  Anyway as always thanks for stopping.  Enjoy your day and be careful.