Upde Designs

On our Sunday drive we came across two horses in a pasture.  The tan one and the black one.  I didn’t remember the last time that I had taken an image of a horse.  So we turned around and drove back to the pasture.

When I first got out there were only two horses, but apparently the two brown horses were down in a ravine where I couldn’t see them because when I began clicking images suddenly I had four horses instead of two.

I made about twenty images of the horses running around and this was the most interesting of them all.  Only one image today and a short post.  Yep, as usual I’ve spent too much time reading blogs and now I’m going to be late again.

Enjoy your middle of the week day.  Thanks for stopping by and be careful.

I’m still in vacation mode.  A few days off and it seems hard to get back to the daily routine.  Anyway a short post this day as I am (as usual) running late.

The image above is of an old barn with a rock foundation that we saw on the way to Cedar Rapids last Thursday.  We were past it before I thought it would make a nice picture so I made a mental note to stop on the way back and take a photograph.

I wish it still had its original roof but other than that I imagine it is just like it was when it was built.  One or two paint jobs over its life but nothing else seems to have been done to it.

A little farther down the highway and Jeanne said, “Look at that fire truck.”  Yep, okay there it was a fire truck parked on the side of a hill with for sales signs all over it.  (I removed them with Photoshop) waded through some knee-deep grass (what I won’t do for you) and grabbed some images.

There was no price mentioned on the signs just a phone number.  If you’re interested, send me an e-mail and I’ll give you the number.  This truck looks like it has seen a fair amount of action and I’m sure it has been in its share of parades.

That’s all for today.  Thanks for stopping by.  Be careful and enjoy your 2nd day of the work week.  <sigh>

My mini vacation is over so it’s back to work today.  In these difficult times I am thankful to have work doing what I truly enjoy doing.  I took a fair amount of naps and got caught up on my sleep.  I enjoyed some reading, gaming, eating and of course shooting images.

My 365 project even in its infancy is proving a couple of things to me.  It will in fact cause me to shoot more, which is good.  It is constantly in the back of my mind that I have to shoot something today.  I guess that’s not all that bad either.

Around 5:00 pm Jeanne and I went for an afternoon drive looking for things to shoot.  We decided to head over to the Wisconsin side of the river as neither of us had been there for some time.  Lots of new scenery to see and some interesting places to visit.

The first image is a barn that is all but ready to fall.  Interestingly enough all the other buildings on this farm looked to be in the same condition.  The house was weathered and in serious need of work.  It was not ready to fall but it looked sad.  Yes there were people living there.

The second image is of an old wagon wheel stuck in the ground.  We saw it as we were coming in to a small town.  Actually what caught my eye was a pair of vintage gasoline pumps.  I shot those and then when I turned around to go back to the car I saw this old wheel.

After shooting the wagon wheel I looked a little farther down the lane and found these old milk cans.  I remember taking a lesson about shooting images and the instructor said, “…and when you’re finished turn around and look to see what you have missed.”

We didn’t get back to Dubuque until a little after 7:30 pm.  Then we stopped at Betty Jane’s Ice Cream Shop for a treat.  I have never (and will never again) had a banana split.  WOW!  That’s a lot of stuff.  I was and still am miserable.

These images were shot with a Nikon D800 (which by the way produces huge files.) | Nikon 70 – 200 mm lens f2.8  | ISO 100.  To give you an idea of how big the files that the D800 produces.  I have a 32 gig CF card in the D800.  In the D3S shooting in RAW format I can shoot 1,500 images.  (RAW is the largest format.)  That same card in the D800 yields only 400 images.  Amazing!

Enjoy your Monday.  Thanks for stopping by.  Be careful.

Nikon D3S | Nikon 28 0 300 mm lens | ISO 200 1/800 sec @ f8

What an enjoyable day yesterday was.  I started off with a visit to the dentist (which wasn’t so bad)  They had to grind down my broken tooth a little more and then Jeanne and I drove to Cedar Rapids.

I introduced her to Dave Johnson (owner of Photo Pro) and took my beloved Nikon D3 (I only had it 8 months) to him to sell for me.  Since I acquired the Nikon D800 I had to get rid of the D3, so it is now gone.  😦

The image above is what my friend Andreas would call a “butt shot.”  Not very flattering to anyone or any animal, however as we were coming into town the back way we crossed a small stream and Jeanne saw this deer.

I did my best to sneak up on him and had the D3S set to burst mode.  This was the best shot I got out of the 34 frames I shot.  Butt shot or not I like it a lot. 🙂  Remember you can click on the images to see a larger version and more detail.

We had lunch at Red Lobster in CR.  Wonderful lunch of shrimp salad and clam chowder.  Very enjoyable.  On the way home we looked for things to shoot and found a surprising number of interesting things to take images of.

Jeanne has a good eye for shots and pointed out a lot of things I would have missed.  Staying with the wild life theme of this post we found this lone Pelican swimming on the Mississippi.  I think this might be a Juvenal by its coloration.  Andreas will know when he looks at it.

We drove down to the Dog track / Casino and back around the camp grounds behind the Casino.  There were a lot of little bunnies scurrying out of the tall grass looking for food.  This is one of the larger ones we saw.

We then met my good friend from Maquoketa, Dave Johnson (a different Dave Johnson) and we had a nice dinner with him and his friend Lois at Catfish Charlies.  It is a great place to eat with lots of good sea food.

So a very nice mini vacation day and I’m looking forward to some type of adventure today.  See you tomorrow.  Thanks for stopping by and be careful.

Hope you had a nice 4th of July holiday.  I am taking the rest of the week off just to rest and relax.  Jeanne and I plan to do some half day trips but nothing special planned because of the heat.  Sort of takes the fun out of anything outdoors including shooting images.

I shot this moon image last night around 9:00 pm.   I shot in manual and with a lot of different f-stops and shutter speeds.  I wasn’t thrilled with any of them because of the lack of sharpness.

I was shooting in town (in my back yard) and because of the heat there was a haziness around the moon, which I think may have had an impact on the sharpness of the image.   This one was the best of 85 images I shot.

I even tried a 5 image HDR shot of the moon.  Boy did that yield some weird results.  I already deleted those.  Note to self:  Taking HDR images of a  light source is not a good practice.

Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your Thursday.  Stay cool and be careful.

Good Day.  I had an interesting experience yesterday.   If you remember I told you some time ago about photographing some of our employees for a marketing campaign.  Actually it was April 30, 2012 when I did the photo shoot.

The original image is above just as I shot it.  Color balanced, sharpened, and a little cropping but essentially the way I shot it in one of the meeting rooms at the bank.  It was a fun session.  All together I shot six employees in two groups of three.  I also did head shots for each of them for their personal use.

One of the employees from one of the groups told me the billboard was up and if I wanted to see my photography in a huge size I could stop by the location where the sign was located.

I didn’t have any lunch plans yesterday so I drove to the billboard and shot the above image.   Kind of neat seeing your image in that huge format where everyone can see it.

That’s it for today.  Another HOT steamy day.  Looks like it’s going to be that way for the foreseeable future.  Stay cool, thanks for stopping by, and be careful.

The image above is of a Yashica-Mat LM and the Yashica Mat – 124G model.  These are the only twin lens medium format cameras I have in my collection.

The following paragraph with quotation marks is copied from a web site discussing the history of the Yashica twin lens cameras.  It is include for information only.

“The Yashica-Mat LM has a 4-element Yashinon lenses (Tessar formula). This is the same lens used on the D, the 635, and all later models. The Yashica-Mat is basically a Rollei copy, with a few of the more expensive features left out, but the ergonomics left in. It actually appeared before the Model D and the 635, and I’ve heard that Rollei wanted to sue because the design was so close (don’t know if that’s really true, though) Crank wind, combined film wind-shutter cock, Rollei bayonet 1 mount for filters. Until I owned a Rollei, I thought there was little difference between this and a meter less Rollei. I was wrong. If you’ve owned both, you know– there **is** a difference. But between the Yashica-Mat and the Rolleis with 3.5 Tessar or Xenar lenses, IMHO the difference is mostly in build quality and the neat little details, not in optical quality. Somebody moving up from 35mm should get better pictures from a properly adjusted Yashica-Mat than from just about any 35mm camera (keeping in mind the limitations ot a waist-level finder, fixed f3.5 80mm lens, etc.)”

The Yashica Mat – 124G was the last version made.  It has increased in value because it is the newest with a lot of the latest features.  I don’t remember what I paid for it but I bought it used so it wasn’t much and it would have been over 24 years ago.

There was a professional photographer in town and he shot almost exclusively with a Rollei  twin lens.  He swore by them and I got to be friends with him.  So I suspect that was one of the reasons I purchased it.  It was also a cheap way to shoot medium format with a 2 ¼ X 2 ¼ negative.    But with a fixed lens it didn’t have much flexibility and so I didn’t shoot that much with it.  Maybe a dozen rolls of film tops.

Yesterday I started my 365 photo project.  One photo each day for a whole year.  I thought a lot about doing this and I still wonder if it is possible to take a picture every day no matter what.

I suspect there will be some real losers in the lot but perhaps a winner or two as well.  If you’re interested you can follow it here.  I have also posted a link on the right side of this blog.

Thanks for stopping by  Enjoy your day and be careful

Nikon D800 | Nikon 24 – 70 mm f2.8  | Nikon SB800 Speed Light | ISO 100 1/60 sec  f8

Wow it seems like a long time since I’ve posted anything.  Actually I guess it’s only been 3 days but it still seems like a long time.  Last week was full of early morning meetings.  Leaving the house at zero dark thirty and getting home late as well.  Not much energy for taking images therefore the lack of posts.

Last night was a treat because Angie, Ben, and Joshua came for dinner.  Even though it was hotter than hot outside I braved the elements to grill some steaks.

After dinner Joshua discovered some magnets on the refrigerator and would methodically take them down and place them precisely on the squares of the tile floor and then just as methodical would put them back on the refrigerator.

It was quite a process and he did this for about a half an hour.  All the time jabbering about something.  I couldn’t make out what he was saying but I’m sure he understood it.

Felt good to take images again and write on the blog.  You may not have missed me but I missed posting for you.  🙂

Jeanne, Angie, and Ben were looking through some old film images that I had taken over the years.  Some of them were pretty good shots.  I can’t imagine having to go back to film now.  I love the ability to  take a lot of images of a subject and pick the best one.

Yes I enjoy the ability to manipulate the images to a degree also.  Adding a vignette here and a softer highlight there.  I think it adds to the total image experience.

Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy the rest of your weekend.  Be careful.