Upde Designs

Yesterday I found myself in a rare situation where I didn’t have a lunch meeting or anyone to go to lunch with.  So I decided to grab something to go and take my camera on a photo shoot.  Since it was a business casual dress day I didn’t have to worry about tearing up a suit so I decided to go to the Hurstville Kilns and do a little exploring.

I had never climbed these steps nor followed the path at the top and since I had about 45 minutes I thought this would be a good time to go exploring.  This late in the season and the temperature was on the cool side so I wasn’t too worried about snakes. 🙂

Not much of an image to look at but this is what was covering the floor of the area I was in.  As far as the eye could see was about a 1 – 2 inch thick carpet of leaves.  Many of the trees had not fully divested themselves of their leaves so the depth of the carpet will increase over the next couple of weeks.

I was aware of how quite it was in this small forest.  Occasionally I could hear a semi go by but for the most part just the normal sounds of the forest.  There were lots of birds fluttering around and a couple of species that I had not seen before.  I tried to capture them with my camera but they were just too skittish for my slow reflexes.  The couple I saw that I wanted to shoot were about the same color as the back ground so I could get the lens to focus on them.

This turned out to be my favorite image of the exploration.  I tried shooting several shots of this stream but it was either too dark or too light.  Duh I said to myself perfect place to shoot an HDR image.  Darn though, my tripod is a half mile away.  So I steadied myself against a tree and tried to get as solid as I could to make the 5 image exposure.    I like how it turned out.  If I zoom in to 300% I can see a little ghosting but it is pretty minor.

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

Nikon D700 | Nikon 28 - 300 mm lens | ISO 200 1/350 sec @f7

I had a wonderful drive home last night.  I don’t often say that but the sky was a beautiful blue with big white puffy clouds and a golden sun.  This is, in my mind anyway, the most perfect time of the year to shoot.  Unfortunately we only get about an hour of that “golden sunlight” each day and each day we get less and less.

I left work yesterday at 5:00 pm and by 6:00 pm the sun was pretty much down with not much useful light left.  But in that hour I had a ball shooting a variety of images.  The image above is a jet plane making its way across the sky.  When I first saw it (and it must have been an optical illusion) it looked like it was going straight up (like I imagine the shuttle would look.)

Anyway it was way more interesting than the traffic so I pulled off the side of the road to captured a few images.

Nikon D700 | Nikon 28 - 300 mm lens | ISO 200 1/200 sec @f5.6

Ugh another combine.  I know that I shoot a lot of farm stuff.  After all that’s what we have a lot of and we do live in a farming environment.  Besides to me there is just something really fun to watch as these big monstrous machines gobble up the corn and absolutely shred everything and the only thing left is the little kernels of corn.  That’s just wild.

Nikon D700 | Nikon 28 - 300 mm lens | ISO 200 1/350 sec @f7

I came up highway 61 to Skyline Road and turned West.  As I went by the airport there were some very interesting clouds hovering over the airport.  I’ll show you those tomorrow.  I shot a bunch of landscape images and then I heard this airplane flying overhead.  I looked up in time to capture this neat image of the twin engine plane on final approach.

Nikon D700 | Nikon 28 - 300 mm lens | ISO 200 1/350 sec @f7

Finally for today this wonderful old barn basking in the orange light from the setting sun.  I have photographed this barn before but it was at winter time.  I never really cared for that image but I have developed a fondness for this one

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to a project I’ve had in mind for sometime.  Generally speaking when I get on highway 61 to go South to Maquoketa it is at the 180 mile marker.  I exit at mile marker 161.  I’ve driven this road for almost 12 years and a lot of my photography occurs on this road.

If I do the project it would be an in depth photography collection of each of the 19 miles that I drive.  On the way down in the morning I can shoot anything on the right side of the car because the sun is on my left side and of course just the opposite on the way home.  So over a period of a few weeks I could catalog the entire stretch from Dubuque to Maquoketa.

Of course I would probably have to wait now because there will be precious little shooting light for the next four months.  Anyway it’s just a thought so we’ll see.  Thanks for stopping by, enjoy your Friday and always be careful. 🙂

I happened by this field the other morning on the way to work and there in the fog set this lone combine.  On the other side of the road there were several wagons full of grain.  There wasn’t a good place to park so I had to walk a piece and as a result I was late for work.   The image isn’t all that good but after all the effort I was bound to post it. 🙂

Saturday when I was over in Wisconsin I came around a corner and saw this in my review mirror.  I had to find a place to turn around (do you see a pattern here?)  I went back and as usual there was no good place to park so I had to grab a couple of quick shots of this cross and then move on.

Finally another look at the sunset over a farm.  This image was captured about 20 minutes after first setting up.  I had envisioned that the sun would set directly behind the barn and give this brilliant half elliptical orange burst of light. But after patiently waiting (and enduring the never-ending thought that snakes could be slithering closer) the sun, without fanfare, simply went behind a bank of clouds that I hadn’t seen because I was looking into the sun and then it was gone.  There was just darkness and no brilliant orange burst of light.  Just like that my beautiful well thought out and dangerous sunset was no more.

Still I have to say this isn’t all that bad of an image.  Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your midweek day and be careful.

I realize that I might alienate some of my readers with this post and if that is the case I’m sorry.  Regardless of your political views it was a thrill for me to meet someone I’ve seen on TV for so many years. Someone who arguably is one of the greatest minds in the political arena.  He has written 27 books and has taught for years.

I was sitting in my office talking with an employee when my associate came in and said that another employee had called to say that Newt Gingrich would be at Obie’s Restaurant in about 20 minutes if I wanted to meet him.  Well the employee that I was talking with said, “Do you mind if I come along” as did my associate.  So the three of us piled into my car and we headed out to the restaurant.

I have never done anything like this before.  I must admit it was very interesting.  There were about 30 people in the restaurant and the former Speaker Of The House was standing in the middle of the room fielding questions from the crowd.

Not everyone there was a supporter and there were some difficult questions but the whole experience was very enjoyable to me.  I want to thank my friend Kent Shouse for alerting me to the fact of Newt’s visit and for taking the above image.

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

Nikon D700 | Nikon 28 - 300 mm Lens | ISO 200 1/60 sec @f22

Well here is the image that I risk life and limb to get. 🙂  I suspect there really were no snakes in that grass but I give myself credit for being brave enough to risk it just for the sake of my dear readers of this humble blog.

Nikon D700 | Nikon 28 - 300 mm lens | ISO 200 1/340 sec @ f14

This is a barn I came across coming out of Dickyville.   While I do not like it as much as the one I posted yesterday any barn is pretty to me.  I just think they are a magnificent structure to look at and photograph.  I suppose some day I need to do some research on barns so I can understand more about them.  For now anyway I just enjoy looking at them and photographing them.

Nikon D700 | Nikon 28 - 300 mm lens | ISO 200 1/500 sec @ f14

I believe it was Yogi Berra who said “When you come to a fork in the road take it.”  So I crossed this river somewhere over in Wisconsin and I saw the fork in the river.  I hadn’t seen one like this in recent memory so I decided it was worth of a shoot.

Problem was I had to park a half mile away and there was no shoulder to walk on.  They were putting in new guard rail and that didn’t leave much room for my wide body  🙂  Anyway again what ever it takes to get the shot.

Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your week.  Hope to have more for you during this week ahead.  Be careful.

Nikon D700 | Nikon 28 - 300 mm lens | ISO 200 1/340 @f9

Thank you for stopping by.  Saturday Jeanne was in Ames visiting her Mother and so after she left I decided to go make some images.  When I went to Madison this Summer to the Graduate School of Banking I went past a place about 15 miles Northeast of Dubuque where they sell outdoor furniture.  They have this colorful display of chairs sitting next to the highway.

I thought about shooting them on the way back from class but it was raining and then when Dave and I went by them a few weeks ago I intended to capture an image on our way back but we chose  another route so I decided that Saturday was the day.

Nikon D700 | Nikon 28 - 300 mm lens | ISO 200 HDR Capture 5 images

I traveled around part of Wisconsin and found some things to shoot but the image above was taken right inside the city limits of Dubuque.  I would have to say this is my all time best barn image.  It was such a beautiful site that I stopped and set up the tripod.

I decided to do an HDR image of the barn just to make sure I captured all the luminance levels.  I really like the way this turned out.  If you want to see a larger image of it (you just can’t do justice to it with a 500 px image here) then Click Here.

Nikon D700 | Nikon 28 - 300 mm lens | ISO 200 HDR 5 images

I went out around 5:00 pm last night to see if I could capture a sunset.  I had an idea where I wanted to go and what I was looking for but when I got there it just wasn’t going to work out.  On the way back to town I found a great scene but it required that I walk a quarter of a mile in fairly high grass.  Ugh, braving the possibility of snakes for the sake of the image I did the walk and set up my tripod.  I will show those images tomorrow.

This is an HDR image of a combine sitting in a field.  Nothing special about that except that it was pitch black when I shot this image.  It took about 8 minutes total to make the image.  If you look in the upper left of the image you will see a white streak.  That is traffic on highway 20 going by while the camera was exposing the shot. 🙂

Enjoy the rest of your weekend.  Be careful.

After the big gun fight on Main Street we headed back to Dave’s SUV and I saw this Monarch Butterfly on some flowers.  I shot 20 or so images of him but this is the only one with his wings fully expanded.

As we were walking to the vehicle we could hear more gun shots as the second performance was underway.  Dave had to park about three blocks away from the park.  It is wonderful what the town has done to increase interest in their retail center and the large crowds were testament to their success.

A short distance out of McGregor we were winding up a hill and I caught a glimpse of a beautiful waterfall out of the corner of my eye.  Dave’s standing order was that if I saw anything, no matter where just say the word and he would stop.  So I did.  We turned around and back tracked to the waterfall.  When I got closer I saw that it was down a long driveway on private property.

This is just an awful picture and even after taking a lot of the flaws out of it I am still not happy about showing it.  The only reason it sees the light of this post is to help tell the story.  I walked about 50 paces down the long drive and took a couple of images but I couldn’t get a good angle on it and I was shooting back into the sun.  Dave wanted to go down and ask permission of the owner, but after assessing the situation I didn’t think I could get much of an image so I said let’s move on.

You didn’t expect me to go a whole day of shooting without having at least one barn in the mix did you?  Rolling out of McGregor a few miles I spotted this rustic old barn sitting back against a bluff and thought it worthy of my effort to capture a nice image.

After this image Dave offered a choice.  We could either go to another park or take the Cassville Ferry.  I said let me think about that for a minute… Okay let’s take the Ferry.  So that is where we will head tomorrow.  Thank you for stopping by.  Enjoy your Thursday as we are on the downhill slide to the Weekend!  Be careful.

Sorry about missing yesterday.  I had an early morning meeting and just couldn’t get things organized in time to post.  The image above was captured in what is more or less downtown McGregor, Iowa.  We were driving through the town when we noticed a bunch of guys dressed up  in western garb and a large crowd at the park across the street.

Apparently what they have done is restored about a block of store front to the old west look and made specialty shops out of them.  Then some of the local actors in the community put on their western outfit and put on a series of mini skits for the folks in the park.  They take up a donation to help defray some of the expenses associated with this type of production.

It kind of resembles the old 15 minute Saturday Matinee at the local theater.  It was fun to watch and we stuck around for about a half an hour to watch the production.  It was very interesting.  If you look at the photo above you might not notice the Photoshop work but as you can tell from the UN-retouched image below there were a lot of parked cars, which sort of detracted from the old west flavor of the image 🙂

So 30 minutes of Photoshop and I get a reasonable image of a wild west shoot out.  (if you don’t look to closely.) Thanks for stopping by, enjoy your day and be careful.

Two days of Joshua, Yea!  Last evening Angie, Ben, and Josh stopped over for dinner.  It had been a long time since they have been here and it was really great to see them.  I love this little Hawkeye warm up suit.

Angie put Josh at the end of our hallway and then she hid around the corner at the other end.  She would peek out and say hi and Josh would giggle and crawl like crazy towards her.   She would pull back out of sight and he would stop and look around and then when she would peek out again he would make this loud giggle again.

Always the poser I caught this nice image of Angie, as they were getting ready to head home.   Like all young babies Josh goes full speed until he gets his last bottle and then it’s lights out.

Have a great Monday.  Tomorrow it’s back to the Saturday Adventure.  Lots of that story still to share and show.  Thanks or stopping by.   Be careful.

This is Joshua at 11 months.  He has a full bag of tricks now including sitting up, rolling over, standing up, and cruising.  Not quite able to walk on his own but that is just a small amount of time away.

I had not seen Josh since the photo walk a few weeks ago.  So the changes were pretty dramatic for me.  Angie and Ben went out for dinner and Jeanne and I sat with Josh while they were out.

Okay truth is Jeanne did the work I stopped by to see Josh and take some images.  This time he didn’t make strange with me.  Maybe because I had the big black thing with the bright light on top and he recognized that.  He had lots of smiles for Grandpa.

He was running on fumes when I got there at about 7:00 pm.  I guess he hadn’t taken a nap during the day (much to his Mother’s dismay) and he was pretty tired.  But when I got there we played for an hour and had a grand time then he had his bottle and was out like a light.

It was lots of fun to see him.  He is very expressive and curious.  OMG nothing is out-of-bounds for his curiosity.  Hope you enjoy your Sunday.  Thanks as always for stopping by and be careful.