Upde Designs

What a treat!  Two nights in a row we get to see Angie, Ben, and Joshua.  They came to our home last night for dinner and to have another visit with Great Grandma Andreae.

When Angie was only 4 or 5 years old we brought a rocking horse.  I think we got it at a yard sale so it wasn’t new but it was in great shape and Angie, then Mark enjoyed it a lot.  In fact I have this photo of Angie a few days after we got the horse riding it with a big smile on her face.

Of curse that was back in the days of film so that picture is in one of about 20 boxes sitting in the store-room.  We didn’t do a very good job of categorizing the old pictures and to convert them all to digital would be a daunting task at the least.

I tried to capture a similar look of Josh on this horse and then if I get lucky and find the picture of Angie I can do a side by side.  Who am I kidding?  The odds of me even going to the store-room to look for the photo are practically nil.  But it was a touching thought.  🙂

I was playing around with this image of Joshua in Photoshop and perhaps got a little carried away.  I was looking for something different and you know what?  I liked it.  The more I played with it the better I liked it.

I could see making a framed portrait of this and hanging it on a wall or standing it on an end table or shelf.  But then again who am I kidding?  I won’t do that either.

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

Happy Monday.  Back to work today, lots to catch up on I’m sure.  I have a lot of images for today’s post.  Normally I would spread this many images over a two or three-day post but they are all part of the experience.

Yesterday Jeanne drove to Ames, Iowa and picked up her Mother to bring her back here for a visit.  They arrived home around 1:30 pm and then at 4:30 pm we went to Angie and Ben’s home for dinner.  This first image is after fair amount of Josh making strange with us (he actually blocked the gate so no one could get in) until  he saw the camera and the light then he warmed up bit.  🙂

So once we all go acquainted again we started having fun.  His vocabulary has really grown since the last time I saw him.  He routinely says “Thank You” when you give him something or do something for him.

He loves to be where the action is and of course at meal time the action is in the kitchen.  He has this little stand (I think it is called little kitchen helper) that he pushes up to the counter and then climbs up on it.

Angie gives him some tools to work with and he busies himself with making things.  🙂  Every once in a while he will taste his creation but never offers to share with anyone else.

When it’s time to eat he dutifully pushes the helper back in the corner, with a little help from Dad.  Angie says it is the greatest thing, because when she is making a meal she doesn’t have to keep track of him.  He’s right there helping with the process.  🙂

We had a wonderful dinner of spaghetti and meatballs and a tasty salad with Jay’s special dressing.  She made it from scratch and as always it was great.  I would have taken images of the dinner but I was busy stuffing myself again.

I think I gained 20 pounds this week.  I had some of the best meals I can remember and it was one of the most relaxing vacations I can remember.  I was able to get some projects done that I haven’t had time to do, took a lot of naps, spent some quality time with my bride and took a fair amount of images.  Fun stuff.

So it was a great evening.  Jay got to spend some time with her Great Grandchild.  It had been a couple of years since she was at Ben and Angie’s home and she really enjoyed that.  We were home by 8:00 pm and I was asleep in my recliner by 9:00 pm.  🙂  As a good friend of mine says, “It’s all good.”

Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your Monday, it’s going to be here all day.  Be careful.

Wonderful time yesterday with our dear friends Steve and Becki.  They invited us to dinner at their house, which is affectionately called “The Lazy K Farm.”  It is a peaceful place outside of Ground Mound where the sounds and sights of nature are everywhere.  We love going there and hate to leave.

Normally Becki and I will walk around the farm and do some shooting.  They have a lot of prairie flowers and a lot of great stuff to shoot.  Because Jeanne had the wedding duty yesterday we didn’t arrive at their home until about 6:45 pm, which didn’t leave any time for shooting.

In the first image is Mia, their little Shih Tzu.  She is just as cute as can be and such a well-behaved little dog, (unlike ours.)  In this image she is shucking some corn.  Becki wold give her the husk and she would disassemble it.  In the second image, tired from all that work she rests on Steve’s shoe.

How do I describe our dinner?  Wonderful, marvelous, spectacular, delightful?  Certainly all the above but they seem to pale in describing the exquisite array of flavors we were presented with.  I told Becki, “I may have had a better dinner but I couldn’t remember it.”  Jeanne says that is not a compliment but it certainly is in my mind.

As we were sitting on their back patio sipping wine and enjoying the beautiful evening I had to slip down to the pond and capture the sights at sunset.  As I approached the pond I saw the tail fin and about 6 inches to the left of it was the dorsal fin and a huge carp resting near the surface.  He swam away at a leisurely pace as I approached.

Steve said the carp keep the pond clean as they are vegetarians and the pond was free of scum and plant life.

It was a great evening that ended all too soon.  Unfortunately we had an hour drive ahead of us and it was already around 9:45 pm.  Although short in duration we had a wonderful time and enjoyed a little slice of heaven on earth.

Thank you for stopping by today.  Enjoy your Sunday and be careful.

Well my vacation is over. It represents the good / bad that life is.  I loved sleeping late, wearing tee shirts and shorts all week and not having much to think about other than what type of pictures do I want to shoot today.

I’m very lucky in that I really enjoy the work I do and I love the company I work for.  I’ve made a lot of great friends there over the past 12 years so I’m happy to start-up again on Monday.  But I could get use to this life style very easily.  🙂

All-in-all not a total veg out.  I had six projects that I wanted to get done for the week and I was able to get them all accomplished.  We didn’t do many photo runs as I thought we might but it was a great week.

Yesterday evening Jeanne had to be at the church for about 45 minutes.  She is on a committee that acts as host for the church to a wedding party.  Last night was their rehearsal so she only needed to be there a short time.  Today she will be there for a few hours for the wedding. She has to do this about every six months.

St. Luke’s Methodist church is the oldest church in Iowa and has beautiful Tiffany windows.  It is a treasure and lots of people from out-of-town come to the church to be married.  The couple getting married today are both from Maquoketa.

So I had 30 minutes to go take pictures.  I looked for a couple of things to shoot but not finding what I wanted I headed for my favorite place the 16th Street Basin.  I was sad to see that the water levels are really low there as well.  There are large patches where there is no water.

The good news is there were about 20 Great Egrets at the pond.  I got a lot of pictures (125 to be exact) but didn’t have a long lens so I don’t have much to show for it other than a lot of white spots.  😦

After she finished at the church we went to Tony Roma’s Steak House for dinner.  The hostess showed us to our table and then I noticed there were several empty tables on the patio.  We opted for that and it was a great decision.  The weather was perfect and there was a light breeze.  We had a wonderful meal, great service, and a perfect view of the river.  One of my best dinning experiences.

Even got some pictures during and after dinner.  On the way home we saw the Hawk in the 3rd images land on a street light on our street, just a block from home.

We slowed down and drove right under it and I grabbed a couple of shots.  He didn’t seem to mind and was undisturbed  by my photo taking.  Well that’s it for today.  Enjoy your Saturday (there are only 52 of them a year.)  Thanks for stopping by and be careful.

Normally I am excited about Friday but today of course it means I only have three days left of my vacation.  Yesterday was a total loss.  I spent most of the day trying to solve a video problem I have on a web site that I manage for a customer.

I downloaded and read over 80 pages of technical data and still was not able to solve the problem.  Finally last nigh around 11:00 pm I discovered a suitable work around to the problem so now the urgency is over I can continue to try to resolve the original problem.

About 8:30 pm I realized that I had not completed my photo of the day shot so I grabbed my camera and headed out for a walk around the neighborhood to see what I could find.  When I got to the door I found that it was raining.  🙂  So I put the macro lens on and started looking around the house.

One of the things I enjoy about macro photography is that almost anything lends itself to a fun shot.  Even our little dog Maggie is fair game.  Although I used up a fair amount of her trust to let me get this close without running away.

With most of my face covered by the camera and lens (yes I know I do look better that way) 🙂 I had to keep reassuring her while I focused the shot.

I was about the put the camera away and I found this little button on my shelf.  I remember this button because on my friend, Dave Johnson’s 70th birthday all the staff wore these little pins to celebrate his birthday.  Pretty neat.  🙂

That’s it for today.  I hope you have an enjoyable Friday and as always thank you for stopping by.  Be careful.

My vacation is going by at blink speed.  While most normal people would be bored out of their mind it has been a wonderful experience from my view-point.  We had our carpets cleaned Tuesday so we have furniture piled everywhere.  If  I wanted something or just want to move from one end of the house to the other it is a chore.

I’ve been working on some projects that I never seem to have time for during the normal work week.  One of those projects was to set up my Elinchrom BX 500 RI multivoltage strobes that I got way back in March.   So today I decided since there was no furniture to mess with I’d set them up in the living room and see if I could figure out how to make them work.  🙂

They are really neat lights.  They have 500 watts of power that is adjustable in 1/10th level increments.  I have a 39″ x  39″ soft box on one and a 52″ Octa hooded diffuser on the other as my main portrait light.

They are way more light then I should have but it worked out for me to buy them at a very reasonable price with proceeds from a design job I did.  I want to get more into studio portraiture type work so I think it was a good investment.  I normally shoot with a green screen but was able to pick up a couple of muslin photography backgrounds for $20 each.

From the time I started setting the lights up to when I was ready to shoot was a little over an hour.  I assume that time would get quicker the more times I do it.  So now that I have everything set up I have to take some images right?

That’s what I said to Jeanne but she was not happy about standing in front of the background to have her picture taken.  We had been working on projects all day and she was not in the mood to have her picture taken.  I assured her that I would not post it.  🙂

It’s funny all the mistakes a person makes when they are doing something that they normally don’t do.  For example, once I got the lights set up I took a meter reading and it told me that I could shoot the image at 1/200 sec at f8.0.

When I took the image it was completely blown out.  Then I looked at the meter and it was set to ISO 100, which is the native ISO for the D800.  The D3S has a native ISO of 200.  Making that adjustment gave me an f-stop of f11.  Still blown out.  Then I look at the ISO setting on the D3S and it is at ISO 800 because of some images I shot at dusk Tuesday evening.  Once I made those adjustments f11 @ ISO 200 was indeed the correct setting.

Even after all the missteps once I got it dialed in the lights were great.  I didn’t pay much attention to the posing of my subject and I took a straight on head shot, which is not a great way to shoot a portraiture.  I also didn’t have the lights set up the right way but it was more of an experiment with the lights than a serious portrait photo shoot.  Besides that she kept moving on me and I had to beg her to come back each time.

I hope I didn’t bore you with all the light talk.  Fun stuff for me but I suspect most of you would rather see something else.  Assuming Jeanne doesn’t hurt me after posting the shot above, I’ll be back tomorrow with some more images.

Only 4 more days left of my vacation.  Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your day and be careful.

Interesting day yesterday (day one of vacation.)  We had a gift card for Wood Fire Grill.  So around 7:00 pm after little adventure (for a later post) Jeanne and I went to the restaurant.  First of all if it were not for the gift card we would have not eaten there.  Everything is à la carte, which always translates into super expensive.  WOW!

So since we had a gift card I ordered a New York Strip (it was not cooked the way I asked for it) and it was tough.  I also had Lobster Tail, which was excellent.  The restaurant was full so at least several people do not agree with me.  🙂

These images are not particularly noteworthy.  I am displaying them to give you an idea of the new art work at the River Walk.  The top image is a compilation of driftwood.  My Mother would have loved this.  She collected driftwood most of her life.

They finally got our driveway opened up yesterday.  The city is re-paving our street and putting in new curb and gutters.  It’s going to be very nice when they get it all done but it has been an inconvenience for a period of time.  Well worth it however.

Anyway after that sinful dinner Jeanne and I decided to try our luck at the Casino.  It had been three years since I was last there so I figured I could blow a hundred bucks on the Blackjack table.

Let me rant on that for just a moment.  When we walked into the casino it was like being pounded in the chest by a strong overwhelming pressure.  The smoke was oppressive.  We only spent 30 minutes there but my lungs felt like I had smoked two packs of cigarettes.

Everywhere you looked there were people sitting at slots with a cigarette in their mouth or in their hands.  The blackjack table I played at had 5 people at the table and 3 of them were smoking.  It just amazes me.

Can you tell  I’m just rambling to fill up space?  I took $100 Jeanne took $20 and played the slots.  After 30 minutes we were both bored and bothered by the smoke so we left.  I made $10 on the cards and she lost $17 on the slots.  🙂

This last image is a swing made with a tractor seat.   I had to wait sometime before being able to make this image.  Lots of kids had fun swinging on this art work.

So the first day of my vacation is history and it was a good day.  I didn’t get many images yesterday but will try again today.  Enjoy your day and thanks for listening to my babble.  Be careful.

After vegging most of the day, I suggested to Jeanne we should get a couple of Blizzards at DQ and head to the River Walk.  She liked the idea so that is what transpired.  I continue to be amazed at the diversity of the population that is present on the River Walk.  There is always something new going on and on this evening the Twilight was once again docked.

It was about 7:15 pm when we arrived at the river.  The sun was turning a warm, soft yellow and made for some excellent shooting conditions.  Scott Kelby says there are only two times of the day to shoot landscape.  Just before dawn and just before dusk.  Kind of limits your shooting opportunities in the Summer but the Fall time of the year it’s great.

I know I’ve posted several images of the Twilight on this blog.  It is just such a pretty boat.  Perhaps because it is blue and reflects blue around it.  Blue happens to be my favorite color so I’m usually guilty of boosting the blue when ever possible.  🙂

It’s too bad the Twilight doesn’t start in Dubuque, over night in the Quad Cities and then return to Dubuque.  I ‘d do that trip in a heart beat.  Jeanne and I talked about it last evening.  Takes some of the luster off the event, when we would have to drive to Davenport to start the cruse (then sleep over in Dubuque) and then drive back to Dubuque.   We noticed that the front deck of the Twilight is covered with wooden rocking chairs.  🙂

We finally made it to the end of the River Walk and was greeted with perfect sun light on the old railroad bridge.

We had a wonderful time at the River Walk.  The weather was perfect, there was a nice mild breeze blowing and the temperature was moderate.  It was fun to watch the little children play near the river and to hear all their inquisitive questions to their parents as they traversed the walk.

I think  I could go down there about every evening and enjoy myself.  Not to mention pick up an image or two.  We are off on a photo shoot this afternoon.  Hope to have something worthy of your visit tomorrow.  Thanks for stopping by today.  Enjoy your Monday.  Be careful.

Just a short post today.  The image above was taken just before sunset.  I was looking for an image to capture for my 365 project and when I went outside to grill some burgers I saw this wonderful site.

Yes I boosted the coloration a bit through the clarity slider and boosted the blue and yellow sliders a tad.  Brought the shadows slider way to the left and deepened the black slider.  I like it. 🙂

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

Happy Saturday.  I was looking through my image file from a couple of weeks ago and found this series of images that I had intended to show much earlier.  Somehow they got over looked and I would have completely forgotten about them I had not been culling images from my hard drive. 🙂

I was on my way to one of our banks and I always try to take some of the lesser travel roads.  I drove by this farm and the mixture of colors of these birds was what first caught my eye.  I believe there is a mixture of Snow Geese and Chinese White Geese in these images.

It was a very warm day and when I first got out of the car all the geese were in the water.  However by the time I got my camera out of the bag and turned towards the pond you can see (in the first image) they have already exited the pond in favor of solid ground.

You can see from these images there was a good growth of high grass around the pond that allows for good cover when they want it.  In the image just below they have started to make good on their escape.  No running but for every slow step I took they would take ten and pretty quickly they were gone.

I am taking a week of vacation starting…  today 🙂  Unlike last year when we were up on the beautiful Leech Lake of Northern Minnesota we are going to do a “Staycation.”  Do little mini trips around the area looking for interesting things to shoot and eating out a lot, so it will sort of seem like a vacation.

There are a ton of things I need to do around the house including cleaning my office, but then it wouldn’t be a vacation would it?  Plus if my office was uncluttered and clean I wouldn’t feel comfortable in it.  🙂

That’s it for today.  Enjoy your Saturday.  Another HOT one and then suppose to be a break in the temperature.  Way down into the 80s.  <sigh>  Come on Fall.

Thanks for stopping by.  Be careful.