Upde Designs

Without looking too far below, can you tell what this is?  One of the many things I like about micro photography is that ordinary objects that we see and disregard every day can look beautiful and interesting up close.  Of course the inverse is true as well.  Things can look pretty grotesque when you see them up close and personal.

This image is from the Hurstville shoot of last week.  I had the wrong f-stop dialed in but still got some interesting images.  I watched a lesson on macro photography this past weekend so I have a much better idea of how to get the look I’m trying to achieve.

The first image is of a common dandelion after its metamorphosis and is ready to spread its seeds to the wind.  I have never looked at one this closely and it was just by accident that I even took the image.  I was just playing with the macro lens and it was in my path so I took the shot.

I was reading a blog yesterday by a man who at the age of 42 made a change in his life.  He had bounced around from one job to another being reasonably successful but never fulfilled.  He had a wife, 4 kids, home, cars, etc. and was deeply in debt.

He felt a passion for photography and video and wanted to make his living doing that but had no idea how to do it.  He bought a camera (at age 42) and started taking on-line lessons, reading books, and shooting hundreds of images.

Fast forward a couple of years and he makes the move without any guarantees.  What was the one thing he did that made the difference?  He committed.  He made a commitment to do what he loved and took the plunge.  There is a great passage from the book “Who Moved My Cheese.”  It says, “What would you do if you were not afraid.”  Powerful statement.  As I think about that I wonder how much in life we would do differently if we were not afraid?

And now for something completely different.  On one of my many trips to somewhere last week I came across this tree, which I thought was interesting.  I really like the way it turned out.

I really messed up yesterday.   I was headed to one of our banks to do some training and the sky was just magnificent.  Brilliant blue color with hundreds of small puffy white clouds that went clear to the horizon.   I said to myself more than once ~ stop and take a picture of anything with that wonderful sky in it the picture will be great.  I was running late so I reasoned that the sky would still be there when I was finished.  I walked out of the bank at 3:30 pm and of course the sky was a solid gray.  😦  Opportunity waits for no one.

Thanks for stopping by today.  Enjoy your Thursday and be careful.

Say I like this idea of starting the work week on Tuesday.  I could get use to this very easily.  I’m going to have to work on the idea.  🙂  Yesterday a real treat.  Angie and Joshua stopped by for a quick visit while they were on the way to the grocery store.

I had forgotten how thrilling it was when young children start to make sense of the language and really start communicating.  Josh is at that stage now and seems to have a wide grasp of word meaning and complex sentences.

He is also quite adamant about what he wants and doesn’t want as well.  When he comes to our house he loves to turn light switches on and off.  He will turn one on and then point to the light and say ‘light.”  Then of course he’ll repeat this many times until his attention turns to something else.

We decided to play in the back yard for a time.  Angie swung with him for awhile but then he wanted to be on his own and explore the back yard.  He likes to go up and come down the big hill we have in the back yard.

Here he has just conquered the hill and is explaining the process to me.   Now he calls me Pampa.  After our adventure in the back yard it was time for a snack of Cheerios and juice.  I asked him if Grandpa could have just one Cheerio and he would pick it up and show it to me and then put it in his mouth.  Finally he would just shake his head no.

Fun time with them but all too soon they had to leave.  And now for something completely different.  This little guy was in the yard while we were playing with Josh.  Looks like he has lunch in his bill and is just looking for a place to eat.

Thanks for stopping by.  I hope you enjoy your Tuesday.   Be careful.

Yesterday afternoon Jeanne and I took our normal Sunday photo drive and this week we decided to go see what was happening at the 16th Street Basin.  This has become my favorite place to go for a variety of reasons.

There always seems to be something going on at the Basin.  Usually geese and ducks with an occasional blue heron.  We had all that yesterday but a special treat, as many of the geese were parading around their new off spring.   So for my friend Betty here is a new family of geese.

The other thing I like about the Basin is that you can shoot from your car.  The wild life pays little if any attention to me if I am in the car.  The geese came right up to the car close enough that I got on a personal level with a couple of them.  🙂

Plus it was 91 degrees outside the car and a pleasant 70 degrees inside.

Couldn’t go to the Basin and not capture an image of a duck.  There were several ducks out with their new children as well but they were more in the middle of the pond so all I could get were these little black dots.  Not much of an image.  This guy was right below the car and he was engaging in some personal hygiene.

As they use to say on the Monty Python Show, “And now for something completely different.”  After spending a fair amount of time at the Basin we drove over to the River Walk.  The temperature had moderated a bit and there was a nice breeze.

There was a diverse population at the river walk and it was good to see that we are no longer homogenous group of people in Dubuque.   The Twilight was docked at the River Walk and I though it made a nice image in the light of the setting sun.

I hope you enjoy your Memorial Day.  I am thankful and grateful for those who gave all so that we can enjoy this great land of opportunity.   We owe them a debt that can never be repaid.

Thank you for your continued support and kind words about this blog.  I love posting it and as long as anyone cares to read it I’ll keep doing it.  🙂

Be careful.

A short post this day.  Yesterday Jeanne and I had errands to run downtown and then we decided to try out a new restaurant that she had heard about.  So after running our errands and eating at the restaurant (I will never go back) we went looking for photo opportunities.

Jeanne had been to Timmerman’s Supper Club on Friday evening for a retirement party and all the while she was there she enjoyed watching two eagles sitting in the trees across the road from Timmerman’s.

Hoping that they may be nesting or hunting around that area we went looking.  We didn’t find any eagles, but what we did find were some turtles.  In the parking lot of the Silver Eagle there were three turtles who had apparently come up from the channel and were making their way (very slowly) to a large area of water caused by the storms of Friday evening.   It is a wonder I didn’t hit one of them as at first because it was hard to tell what they were.

We stopped to shoot this turtle and as you can see from the image above he withdrew into his shell and pretty much halted his journey to the water.

Finally one of the guys made it to the water and quickly paddled out far enough that he could submerge.   When our attention turned back to the other two they were moving at a relatively fast pace (for turtles that is.)

We carefully pulled out of the parking lot and decided that the light was not very conductive for taking images but that it was a perfect time for a Saturday afternoon nap.   So we headed home.

Hope you enjoyed your Saturday.  It’s nice having Saturday and knowing you have two more days off.  🙂  Thanks for stopping by.  Be careful.

On this solemn Memorial Day Holiday let us all take a moment from our activities, parties, barbeques,  and give thanks to the brave men and women who have served our country over the time of our history.  All gave some and some gave all and it is a debt that can never be repaid.  There is a photo blog I follow daily called Weekly Photo Tips.  Scott Eccleston is the author and professional photographer.  He posts a lot of things on You Tube.  Here is the link.

I do not necessarily follow him because of his exceptional photography skills.  He does have those but he is one hell of an honorable man and that is what I admire about him.   He has a short video honoring our troops on his blog today and I would encourage you to go look at it.  It is so sad to see all those young men and women who will never get to chase their dreams because they gave all for us.

I have not shot with my macro lens for sometime and it shows.  I had the wrong f stop set up and I didn’t have my flash attached so these images are soft and I apologize for that.  I plan to do a lot more macro photography in the coming weeks.  I love how ordinary things look so different when photographed up close.   Some can look downright disgusting as well.  🙂

Remember you can click on the image to see a larger image than the 500 pixel allowed on this page.  I was happy to be able to capture this bee visiting the flower as I was trying to capture the image.  I was dodging some rain drops as well and I’m thankful Mr. Bee didn’t try to sting me.

Jeanne had a surprise retirement party to go to last night so I took my time coming home, looking for images.  Problem was the weather was not cooperative and it was raining intermittently all the way home.  So I decided to go home and see what I could find in the back yard once the rain stopped.

Yes another new toy.  I had a really cheap ring flash for macro work but it would work sometimes and not work most of the time.  Plus it didn’t have TTL metering and so I was never happy with it.

I found this new system (just like CSI uses) at a bargain price and so it came yesterday and I finally figured out how to get it on the camera (damn I hate reading the instructions.)  I don’t know how to use it yet but it has TTL metering and that will make a huge difference.

That’s it for today.  I hope you have a safe and enjoyable holiday weekend.  Thanks again for stopping by the blog.  Be careful.

I didn’t have time to shoot anything yesterday so I’ll show some of the images that I really like from Torque Fest that were not previously shown.  Well to be completely honest I just didn’t take the time to shoot anything yesterday.

I left work a little late and I was tired so all I wanted to do was get home, see my wonderful wife, get in comfortable clothes and veg.  Sad to say that is my disposition more often than I care to admit.

So I’ve thought about an ambitious project to correct that.  I have been thinking of creating a 365 image blog.  Requiring me to shoot something everyday of a full year.  I’ve read where other people have done this and they have found it to be very difficult.  I think at the end of a full year it would be amazing to look at the entire year day by day.

If I do it I will start on June 1st and run it until May 31st 2013 (assuming the Mayans are incorrect.)  Right this moment I’m leaning towards doing it.  I don’t want to start it and not finish it so I have a few days left to make up my mind.

Can you tell what year the Corvette (above) is?  Many of the cars in this era could be identified by year, make , and model just by looking at the tail lights.  No so today.  It is a 1963 Corvette.  Much harder on the Corvette because they basically had the same rear end for several year with only slight modifications.

This one is easy.   This is the year of Chevrolet I learned to drive with.  It was probably the only new car my Dad every had.  He had an auto repair shop in a small town of 450 people.  The times that he had more than a dollar in his pocket were rare and the people who could pay for their repairs were even more rare.

I don’t know how he afforded this vehicle.  Although it was a station wagon with no radio or any other amenities.  It was a pale blue and it was just down right ugly.  He kept a huge tool box in the back compartment so every time you went around a corner a little too fast (and I did that a lot) the tool box would slam into the side of the car and make a very annoying noise.  It was NOT a chick magnet to be sure. 🙂  1956 Chevrolet.

Another one of my favorite cars.  My cousin Johnny had one of these.  It was white and bright yellow.  He let me drive it once (why I’ll never know) and I was only 14 then.  I had never driven anything before.  It was a scary and exhilarating experience and I couldn’t wait to do it again.  I had to wait two more years before getting to terrorize other motorist.

Every year as I was growing up there was a “thrillcade” show at the county fair.  Usually consisting of 4 cars they would do daredevil stunts with these cars like driving on two wheels, or doing a Canadian reverse spin (going backwards very fast and spinning the car 180 degrees continuing forward without stopping,) jumping a car from one ramp to another, and other close order driving stunts.)

Well I thought this was amazing and that is what I wanted to do when I grew up.  As soon as I got my hands on my Dad’s station wagon I started practicing my reverse spins and sliding sideways to a stop.  This also caused the tool box to get pretty beat up and he could not understand why.  If he only knew 🙂  By the way the car above is a 1955 Chevrolet.

I’ve rambled and reminisced long enough for one day.  Hope I didn’t bore you.  Enjoy your day and thanks for stopping by.  Be careful.

Good Day.  Happy middle of the week.  I hope your week is going well so far.  Last week Angie and Ben went to visit friends that just had a baby.  Since Josh was just getting over a virus they left him with us for an hour while they visited their friends.

This is the fun part of being a grand parent.  We packed more fun in that short hour then we could have had in a half day.   Jeanne had purchased a swing this Spring and this was the first time he got to try it out.    He wasn’t too sure at first but each time we would pull him a little higher and then he would laugh and ask for more.

It was a wonderful evening with mild temperatures and a light breeze.  There were some kids playing on the other side of this fence and Josh was very interested in them.  Jeanne asked him if he wanted to go see the other kids.  He did not but spent a lot of time at the fence watching them play.

Our yard is a lot different than the yard he has at home so he spent a fair amount of time running around looking at everything.  We would have stayed out longer but he kept heading back to the house.  He would point at the puppies who were watching from the patio door and head for them.

Our back yard is like a big bowl and it was an effort for Josh to make it up the hill.  He would go a little way, stop to collect his balance then push ahead.  Jeanne was always right there to steady him if he faltered.  He could navigate down the hill in good fashion and Jeanne had to move pretty quickly to keep up with him.  Of course you know where I was so I was useless if he fell down. 🙂

We ended up back inside to play with toys and then he was gone home with his parents.  Yep this grand-parenting thing is just okay. 🙂

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

Hope you had a good Monday.  I had a very long day yesterday and didn’t get home until well past 9:00 pm.  So I wasn’t able to shoot any images and therefore we have left overs from Sunday for today’s post.

I think all churches are beautiful.  I’ve often thought about getting permission to photograph the inside of many of the really ornate churches in our area.  Another project to think about.  The image above is the alter at St. Luke’s Methodist Church in Dubuque.  It is the oldest church in Dubuque.  I know that is hard to believe since it is a Methodist church but it is.

A few years ago the church members raised a lot of money and commissioned a  restoration of the sanctuary (including applying golf leaf to some of the hand carved ornaments.) It is beautiful to see in person with all the rich dark wood.  A couple of years ago I spent several hours in the church making HDR images of the stained glass windows and the sanctuary.  They really turned out nice.  You can click on the upde.net logo in the top right of this blog and browse through my photography pages to see some of this if you are so inclined.

After church we drove over to the 16th street basin.  They have done a lot of clean up work there and it is going to be a very nice place.  You can sit on 16th street and if you stay there for a little while you’ll see some very big fish jump in the pond.

It’s going to be my favorite place this winter for shooting eagles again.  Today though, there were only two Blue Herons.  As soon as we approached (even though we were being pretty stealthy) they flew away.   They were more skidish than I’ve seen them before.  So as we approached the second one I had my camera ready and was able to make this image.

Finally I’ll show you this very interesting tree.  We were on a narrow back road and I saw this picture.  There was really no safe place to park but I couldn’t let this wonderful tree go with out capturing it, so I put on the flashers and over the objections of my spousal unit jumped (climbed) out of the car and grabbed a couple of quick clicks.

That’s it for today.  Hope you have a safe and enjoyable Tuesday.  I’m suppose to take images for the Kiwanis’ Golf Outing today but I have some scheduling issues so we’ll see how it all comes together.

Thanks as always to stopping by and your kind comments.  They mean so much to me.  Be careful.

Hope you had a wonderful weekend.  They are all good, some just better than others.  Jeanne is a member of the “family choir”  and her group presented 4 songs at the morning service yesterday.  She has a wonderful voice and I love to hear her sing.

Jeanne’s Mother (Jay) really wanted to come hear Jeanne sing but we just couldn’t get it worked out.  I did take a video of one of their songs but I haven’t had time to process it yet.  I’ll do my best to get it posted this week for you Jay.

We decided to take a photo drive after church and so not too far from the church we came across this house.  Our first time by it there was an elderly gentleman out tending the flowers.  By the time we got around the block to take the image he was gone.    You can tell it takes a lot of time and devotion to keep up this wonderful flower display.

A little later in the day we took another photo drive.  We came across this old McCormick Farmall Tractor sitting on an empty lot with a for sale sign attached to the front.   If you remember my story about Everett Robinson last week, he had a M Farmall tractor, which I got to drive from the hay-field to the barn from time to time..

Finally I’ll finish up with this wonderful church at New Vienna.  This image begged me to shoot it in HDR but the wind was blowing pretty strong and I was wearing shorts.  The temperature had dropped dramatically from the time we left home to this point so for all of those reasons and because I was just too lazy to set up the tripod I shot it normally. 😦

There were more images yesterday.  They may or may not make it to the blog.  We had a good time on both drives.  I like to look for things to shoot and Jeanne enjoys the drive so it is a fun time for both of us.

Enjoy your Monday.  It’s here whether we like it or not.  Thanks for stopping by and be careful.

I was driving back to the office from a meeting and saw these two hay wagons parked in a field.  I had to do a cross over come back about a mile do another cross over and finally was able to take the shot.

It brought back a lot a memories of when I was a kid.  I started working in the hay fields at the age of 13.  I was bigger than most kids several years older  and so usually got stuck with the hardest job.  We got $1 an hour and it was not uncommon to come home with $10 – $15 a day over the summer, which was pretty good money back then.

We always had our favorite farmers to work for.  That was usually based on how hard they worked us and how good a cook their wife was.  My favorite of all time was Everett Robinson.   He was a wonderful person who had a lot of hay work over the summer.  He never tried to work us too hard and would always give us breaks.  He would make us rotate going into the hay mound because it was the hardest and hottest job.  Boy could his wife cook.  If I knew Everett was bailing hay I’d turn down other farmers because I wanted to be available for him.

Yes we worked hard for that dollar but we always got a great meal from the farmer’s wife and if I worked 3 or 4 days a week I could have some pretty good spending money for comic books, candy, malts and cigarettes.  Yes I was smoking at age 13.  Not very proud of that now but I was up to a pack a day by the time I graduated from high school.  In those days there were more kids that smoked than didn’t.  At least it seemed that way.  Selective vision probably. 🙂

Not too far up the road there was this old barn.  I thought it was a neat old structure so I stopped again and shot some images.  Then I wonder why I’m always behind trying to get things done.  It’s because I stop so many times to take pictures.  🙂

That’s it for today.  I hope you enjoy your Saturday and the rest of the weekend.  Hope to get out and take some more pictures today if I can pull myself away from Diablo III.  🙂

Thanks for stopping by.  Be careful.