Upde Designs

Today’s post is not so much about photography (these images are not note worthy) but it is more about an update on the “Duck Pond” that I promised you earlier in the week.

The image above is of the abandoned nest of the widowed female swan.  She once again has dutifully sat on the nest for several weeks only to be disappointed with the results.  You can see that the nest has been beaten down and there is not much left of it.

There are two new swans at the pond now.  I don’t know if they are a pair (as in man and wife) or if they are suitors for the new widow.

Tuesday on my way to work there were two swans flying over 61 highway so low  I was actually concerned they were not going to clear my car.  Apparently  they have been feeding at a newly planted field on the other side of highway 61 (be cause I caught a glimpse of them yesterday in the field.)  That explains why I haven’t seen them at the Duck Pond all week.

The young swan that escaped captivity from the Interpretive Center continues to enjoy his freedom at the South end of the pond.  He still cannot fly any distance so he seem content to spend his time with the geese and swim in what little water that’s left the pond.

The water levels are getting very low.  If this keeps up I suspect the pond will be dry in another month.  I have several images taken a few years ago of the pond with cracked ground where the water is now.

Very interesting day yesterday.  Started off by trying to slam my finger in my car door.  I really don’t know how that happened but I feel so lucky that I only got a sore finger with a deep cut on it and not a broken or severed finger.

I got to do a lot of photography yesterday.  Shot a lot of images of board members and staff for an upcoming meeting presentation.  So it was a pretty good day aside from the finger incident.

Enjoy your Friday and the weekend.  Thank you for your continued support of this blog and be careful.

Just a quick post today.   Last week I was at the Hurstville Kilns looking for things to shoot.  There wasn’t much that caught my eye with the exception of this old bolt.  I’ve probably seen this a hundred times when I been at the Kilns shooting and never paid any attention to it, but for some reason it caught my eye this day.

I wondered who put it there and how hard was it to do and how long ago.  Well okay I really didn’t but it makes for good writing doesn’t it?  🙂  I just thought it would make an interesting black and white image and I think it does.

Some sad news about the Hurstville female (recently widowed) swan.  More on that tomorrow.  For today, I hope you enjoy your mid-week day and thanks as always for stopping by the blog.  Be careful.

A short post today.  The image above is from last week’s Torque Fest.  I saw several ladies walking the grounds in different fashion ensembles.  My assumption was they were modeling different fashions.  I could be wrong.

Anyway I saw this lady with a parasol walking the grounds with this little girl in tow and I tried to get directly behind them (thinking a black and white image) so I could get a straight on shot.

Because of the crowd and the angle I had to shoot from this is what I got.  I still like the shot but it is not totally what I had in my mind when I took it.

Hope you have a great Tuesday.  Thanks for stopping by.  Hope to have something of interest for you tomorrow.  Be careful.

I hope you had a wonderful Mother’s Day weekend.  I was delighted that both of our children, grand child, and son-in-law could join us for Mother’s Day brunch.

I did a lousy job with my photography yesterday.  I was so full and uncomfortable after the brunch that I think I just wanted to get a few shots and get home so I could get into my comfy clothes.  🙂

Other than the dappled lighting, poor composition, and a few other things these are not bad snapshots.  I guess in the final analysis the subject is all that really matters.

So as we did last year we had Mother’s Day at the Star Brewery.  They do a wonderful job and we had a great location.  The first place they took us was not very nice.  It was on the 3rd floor and was tightly packed.   The hostess said I think I’ll put you on the main floor and I said “Okay that will work.”  It was a great location and the food was very good as well.

Joshua had a viral infection (I think Ben called it hand, foot, mouth virus) but he was in good humor and didn’t seem to mind the little “chickenpox” like sores on his hands and mouth.

He was sitting across from me and I would point my camera at him, compose the shot and all the time he had this very stoic face.  Once I would take the picture he would laugh and giggle.  Only once was I able to capture his laugh but the flash didn’t fire the second time so the image is going to take a bit of work to be usable.

We went outside for awhile and he was exploring the grassy area near the restaurant.  I shot about 30 images of him walking around a dirt pile with his constant companion “Boo Bear” and all the time he would make sure I was watching him.  I love watching him grow and develop.

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

Scott Kelby (as well as other professional photographers) says that there are only two times of the day to shoot landscapes.  At dawn and at dusk.  I certainly do not have the credentials to argue with that statement nor do I intend to.

As an avid amateur photographer whose shooting time is limited (many times to the 45 minutes during my lunch hour and drive home) I have to take what I can get.  Take this image for example.  It will win no awards and would be trashed by most professionals, however as I was driving the back gravel roads yesterday during said lunch hour this image presented itself to me and I took it. 🙂

It is a scene you can see just about any where you care to look in Iowa but when I saw this, for some reason it appealed to me and I stopped on the gravel road (my car is a mess by the way) and captured the image.

So not my normal post of three images.  Just one for today.  I like it and I hope you do too.  Enjoy your weekend.  Sounds like the weather is going to be pretty nice most of the weekend.

Happy Mother’s Day to all of you Mothers (and you know who you are.)  Where would we all be if not for our Mothers.  We would not be!

Thank you for stopping by.  Be careful.  Oh and for my good friend Chad (who regularly reads this blog) I finished both chapters of D2 – Ugh!

For those of you who are fans (like my wife) of American Pickers, this is Danielle Colby Cushman from that show.  I would not have paid any attention to her and more than likely walked right past her had I not been asked to take a picture.

I went back to Torque Fest Friday after work and as I was walking into the fairgrounds a guy I know yelled “He Upde come here.”  I thought it was a little unusual because he rarely speaks to me but he wanted me to take his picture with Danielle, which of course I did.

I enjoy the cars (some of them) and the motorcycles (some of them) and the sounds of those big muscle car engines.  But it is a different culture than I’m accustomed to.  I think the best way I can describe it is “gritty.”  Lots of tattoos, piercings, and weird hair colors.  Did I mention lots of tattoos?  WOW!

The image above is of a 1951 Ford.  A buddy of mine (back in high school) had one of these.  It was black and white and I think it was an old cop car.  He had loud pipes on the car and the funny thing was he kept several spiders in the back window.  In those days air conditioning wasn’t very prevalent and so that meant lots of flies.  He said it kept the fly population down in his car.  I know I always hated to ride in the back seat but being an under classman to him that was usually where I had to sit on those rare occasions I got to ride in his car.

I’m not sure what vintage this vehicle was.  I saw it parked uptown on Thursday night.  It had an Illinois license plate and it was parked in front of the Decker Hotel so I figured it was here for Torque Fest.

It was on display at Torque Fest but I was surprised when I was processing this image of the serious paint damage to the front fender (not to mention all the dead bugs.)  I had not noticed them when I snapped the picture, I just liked the color of the paint scheme. So yes I did touch up the fender in Photoshop.

I have a few (actually lots) more from images from Torque Fest 2012 and I’ll show them as I find the time to process them.  I haven’t really even looked at all of them yet.  I just clicked away.  Many will get tossed but I think there are a few keepers in the bunch.

Have a great Thursday.  Thank you as always for checking out the blog and be careful.

A short post today.  I was intending to show you some of the images I captured at Torque Fest last week but as I was heading home last night I noticed an increased swan population at the Duck Pond.

I don’t know enough about swans to know if these are males or a combination of males and females.  The widowed swan is still sitting on her nest and will likely not have any cygnets if history is an indicator.   The male swan that was electrocuted last week did a good job of keeping other swans off the pond.  With him gone there may well be a larger community of swans at the pond.

It will be interesting to see if she suits up with one of these.

This is the juvenile swan that escaped captivity at the Interpretive Center.  He spends all of his time at the North end of the pond.  Doesn’t seem interested in the other swans and is very friendly with all the geese that make their nests at that end of the pond.

That’s it for today.  I will show you some Torque Fest images tomorrow providing I don’t find something interesting to shoot today.  I’m always looking 🙂

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

Just when they said they would release it, they did and the first thing when I turned on my computer yesterday morning I had a message from Adobe that their latest version of Photoshop, version CS6 was ready for download.    So last night I worked a couple of hours transferring my favorite plug-ins and getting the software configured the way I like to work.

PSCS6 has a lot of very cool features that let you do some amazing things with an image.  I enjoyed using the Beta and now will spend some time getting use to the new workings of this version.

The image above is of my dear friend Dave.  At this particular stage of his life he decided to have a  little fun and enjoy some things that life has to offer.  So he bought this red Corvette a couple of years ago.  He had it on display last Thursday at the pre-Torquefest party on Main Street.

Lots of great cars at the Thursday night event.  Maquoketa has a very strong and vibrant car club called Coronado Car Club of Maquoketa.  So Thursday evening they blocked off Main Street and pulled their cars along the street so that people could get up close and personal.  It was a fun event and there were some beautiful older muscle cars.  Brought back some great memories of another time.

Tomorrow I’ll show you some of the images I took from Torquefest.  Same issues at Torquefest as Thursday evening.  Way too many people getting in the shot and the light was not very favorable.  So I tried to keep my shots tight and shoot images that didn’t have a lot of reflection or people in them.

That’s it for today.  Kind of sad going by the Duck Pond this morning.  The female swan was dutifully sitting on the nest and her partner of course was nowhere to be found.  That, as they say, is life’s cycle but it sure does suck sometimes.

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

I have lots of images to show you from Torque Fest as well as some other images I shot last week but this post belongs to Joshua.  Angie and Ben were in Kansas City this weekend for a wedding and so Jeanne and I (well really Jeanne) sat with Joshua.

I did make a couple of appearances but Jeanne was the one with the primary care.   The nice thing about being a grand parent (for the most part) is that you can have time with them and then you can go home.  🙂

These images were taken yesterday afternoon.  Josh was playing in the yard and decided to do some digging with a stick.  The only place to dig was a patch of bare ground near the driveway.  He found out how much fun it was to dig in such a fashion that the dirt all ended up on the driveway. 🙂

So he did a pretty good job of covering a portion of the driveway with dirt.  He would scrape some on the driveway and then look at me and grin.

I asked him if he would show me his stick and he did.   He then put it back into the dirt and it broke off.    Once it broke he looked at me like it was my fault it broke.  No worries, he soon found another stick and was back to digging with a purpose.

He is at such a fun age and is learning every day.  More and more words are fitting into his vocabulary.  He has a book of 100 words and I am impressed with how many of them he could say and how many pictures he could point to when I would say the name.

Sorry about no photos over the weekend of Torque Fest.  I was looking forward to shooting the super moon as well but with overcast skies I never got the chance.  I hope you enjoyed your weekend and enjoy your Monday as well.  Thanks for stopping by and be careful.

I start off the blog with some sad news.  I was speaking with my friend who works for the DNR at the Interpretive Center.  She said that Monday the male swan at the Duck Pond flew into the main power line that runs parallel to the pond and was killed by the high voltage.  She also said there were more swans that have now come to the pond since he is no longer around to chase them off.

Last night the Coronado Car Club of Maquoketa held a Torque Fest pre-party on Main Street.  Many of the car club’s members displayed their cars to the public.  I am the President of the Maquoketa Chamber this year and it was a fun event and good for the community.

I took about 50 images but the light was harsh and most of the surfaces were very reflective so it made for some difficult shooting conditions.  Additionally there were people everywhere so it was hard to capture an image without a lot of people in the frame.  Finally I had a good pair of pants on and didn’t want to get down on my knees to get a good angle on some of the cars.  Those are my excuses and I’m sticking with them.

Having said all that I did get some decent shots of the event and of the cars.  I opted to shoot tight shots of car surfaces and a lot of interior shots.  That seemed to work out as I was reviewing the images this morning.

I do not know how many people attended the event last night.  It was free to the public.  There was food, drink, and live music so when I finally packed it in around 8:00 pm things were really starting to heat up.  Many of the cars that will be in Torque Fest were arriving during the evening and the air was filled with the sound of big throaty horse power.   Those sights and sounds bring with them lots of great memories of another era.

Starting today and running through Saturday evening Vintage Torque Fest 2012 will be in Maquoketa, Iowa.  The event is held at the fair grounds in Maquoketa and it is worth your time and the trip to see some of these great cars.

There is live music from a variety of bands, lots of great food, adult beverages, interesting looking people, souvenirs, and a lot of very expensive cars to view.  I would encourage you to attend some of the event if you can.

Well that’s it for today.  I’ll have lots of Torque Fest images to show for a while cause I’ll be at Torque Fest both days.  Last year I got a lot of good images at the event and this year it is twice as big.

Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your Friday and the weekend.  Hope to see you at Torque Fest.  Be careful.