Upde Designs

The image above is of my friend Dave Tabor.  He is the one on the right.  Without a doubt one of the finest gentleman I have had the pleasure to know and call my friend.  We were at a bait shop in McGregor, Iowa as Dave wanted to pick up some smoked salmon.

I looked around the store and saw nothing of interest to me so I went outside.  I was looking at all the stuff on the building  when the person in the middle of this image came up to me and asked me if I knew where some little town was.  I told him I didn’t but that my friend probably did.  Sure enough Dave had an idea where the town was but he walked the half block to his truck, retrieved his map of Wisconsin showed the couple where the place was and then gave them the map to boot.  That’s how he rolls always looking for ways to help others.

After leaving the bait shop I saw this train sitting at a crossing apparently waiting for clearance to proceed.  I like trains and since we were not on any kind of a schedule I asked Dave to pull over and I made some images of this train.  I had a friend who lived in Ames and worked out of the Des Moines office of the same company I worked for many years ago.

He was an avid photographer and shot mostly trains and landscapes.  His office had at least 50 framed images of the different trains he had captured over the years.  Tragically he was killed in a small town in Western Kansas walking across the street and was hit by a speeding car.

Finally, this elephant has no artistic value, but I had never seen a large pink elephant or for that matter a representation of one so I thought it was necessary to at least make one image of it.  I’m ashamed to say I shot it from the car window as we were stopped at a stop light.  Don’t tell Andreas that I did that.

Still a lot of photos from the adventure to process and show.  I had a real treat yesterday.  A friend had asked me sometime ago to make some images of her Father’s farm and some of the landmarks that were special to him.  She took my images and framed them for her Dad for Father’s Day.

Her and her husband just had another little girl and she asked me if I would take a family portrait of them.  Her Mother, Father, and younger Sister were also there.  I took about 145 images of different groupings at their farm.  The lighting wasn’t very good and it was too windy to use a light stand so I’m not sure how they will turn out but I was honored that they asked me to do it.

Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your weekend.  There are only 52 of them a year and each one is very special.  Be careful.

Continuing the Photo Adventure of a few weeks ago we stopped at this little orchard Northeast of Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin.  It was a colorful small shop with all kinds of fresh fruits and vegetables.  Lots of apples, pumpkins, squash, and assorted other stuff.  On the West side of the retail store were these pumpkins.  I liked the contrast with the green grass.

Also lots of Indian corn for purchase.   We went inside to look around.   Lots of souvenirs and junk to buy.  I caught site of some caramel apples.  Some plain some with nuts.  I bought one for me and one for Dave.  He preferred without nuts, I took the one with nuts.  I would say it was the best caramel apple I have ever had.

On the East side of the shop were these yellow flowers.  They were so bright and pretty.  They would have looked great with a green grass background but unfortunately I could set that type of shot up.

South of the shop was a small petting zoo.  There was a baby lamb, a small horse, a lama, goat and this beautiful horse.  I was struck by the brilliant blue eye of the horse.  I did not enhance the color.  Actually while standing at the shop looking down the hill some 100 yards, I noticed his blue eyes.

Tomorrow some more of the adventure.  Enjoy your Friday “Yea!”  Thanks for stopping by and be careful.

I want to continue with my photo shoot adventure of a few weeks ago.  Talk about time flying this was back in the middle of September.    The image above was captured at a park near Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin.  This train was at least a mile long and I took several images of it crossing the bridge.

I particularly like this image as all of the cars in the image are the same color.  There were several sections of the train where a group of cars were all the same color.  From this high vantage point it was kind of like watching a model rail road.  I remember once taking the kids to see a model rail road display when their convention was in Dubuque.  There was a scene similar to this one.

This image was taken in Fennimore, Wisconsin.  In the middle of their main street they have this miniature train yard complete with depot, box cars, baggage carts, and various rail road signs.

Back track for a moment and the image above is from the Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin area again.  I thought about hiking over to the rock outlook that you can see in the image.  After 30 seconds of thinking I decided against it.  It was further away then it looks.

I have lots more images from that Saturday shoot to share.  I’ll be getting to them over the next few days.  I did some shooting last night but it was really over cast and rainy.  I didn’t like the way my images came out so I’m not sure they will ever see the blog.

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

A short post today both in words and images.  I could only mange two more images from the Sunday shoot.  This one is of a farmer harvesting his bean crop.  I liked the way the combine, beans, and of course my favorite a barn are all incorporated in this one image.

I liked this image in the viewfinder because it showed these grain wagons sitting in a partially harvested bean field.  What I didn’t notice (shame on me) was that the sky was completely blown out thus making this a throw away image.  Still I needed one more image and I still like the look of wagons in the field. 🙂  Bear with me it is a journey.

Tomorrow I will have a little more time and will get back to my Adventure Shoot with my friend Dave Tabor.  Thanks for stopping by (that is of course unless I see something interesting today.)  Doubtful though as I’ll be in class all day in Cedar Rapids.  Be careful

What a gorgeous day yesterday was.   I spent most of the morning yesterday putting the final touches on the presentation for our big meeting today.   I finally finished it up around 1:00 pm.  The weather was nice and I wanted to take some images of the fall colors.  So I invited Jeanne to join me on a road trip.

I had one chore to perform before we could go shooting.  The Keynote Speaker for today’s event was landing at Dubuque Regional around 4:00 pm so Jeanne and I went to the airport to pick him up.

His name is Jon Gordon.  He is a reasonably well-known author and motivational speaker from Florida.  I had heard him speak in March at an event in Cedar Rapids.  He has a high energy presentation style and his talk today will focus  on one of his most popular book entitled “The Energy Bus.”

So we picked him up at the airport and had a cordial conversation on the way to his hotel at the Grand Harbor.  We thought about inviting him to have dinner with us but figured he would probably just like to unwind and relax after his trip.  We pointed out several nice restaurants to him figuring if he wanted company he would engage us.  He did not so we went on the search for fall colors.

We decided to drive North of Ball Town until we ran out of sun.  I found a combine on the way back South just as the sun was setting.  I had to cross a ditch and then climb a rather steep hill to get this shot.  I was mindful that there could have been snakes in the grass but I thought the shot was worth it.

I fell down trying to climb the hill and I looked back at the car to see Jeanne laughing so hard that she was wiping the tears from her eyes.

Unscathed and undeterred I attacked the hill again with more determination than ever and made it to the top so I could capture the image above.  Then the light was gone just that quickly.  We headed back to Ball Town to grab a bite to eat at Breitbach’s Family Dining.  The place was pretty busy and it was hot so we decided to try something else.

We ended up at Buffalo Wild Wings (the noisiest place on the planet.)  We did have a nice dinner and was home by 8:00 am.  So now that I’ve told you way more than you ever wanted to hear about my day I’ll thank you for stopping by and wish you a good day.  Be careful.

Nikon D700 | Nikon 28 - 300 mm lens | Nikon SB 800 Flash | PW2 ISO 200 250 sec @ f9 | Manual Focus

Happy Sunday.  A short post today as I still am engaged in my project for Monday.  It is coming together but a fair amount of tweaking yet to do.

I had read an article in one of the photo magazines I subscribe to about painting with light. It’s quite a process to get everything set up correctly and then to do the painting in a dark environment.

So for those interested here is the set up.  First set your camera to manual focus and if your lens has variable focus set it to manual as well.  Mount on a tripod and focus on a subject that is a specific distance from the camera.  Mark that spot so you can return to it when ready to make the shot.  If you don’t want to use a cable release (I didn’t) set the exposure to the longest exposure available before bulb.

Next you need some type of electronic transmitter to fire the flash at a specific time.  I used two Pocket Wizards II.  One of the mistakes I made was having it in front of me when the flash fired.  Doesn’t look as good with it there.

Lastly you will need an LED flashlight.  I tried a variety of techniques but in the end found that the LED was bright enough that I could make one pass and it would show up really bright.  So I tried to spell Upde and then fire the flash when I finished spelling Upde to light the subject (in this case me.) 🙂

If you were taking the picture of another subject you wouldn’t need a transmitter for your flash and could fire it manually.  To get this shot took about 45 minutes, which includes post processing.

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

It still just doesn’t seem possible that it is October 8th already.  Although I truly love this time of the year it seems like time is moving at warp speed.  The fall colors are suppose to be at their peak today so I’m going to do my best to get out and make some images this weekend.

I’ve got a big project at work that has to be done by Monday morning so I will have to focus on that a lot as well.  I continue today with final images of last weeks Worldwide Photo Walk.  I shot 169 images at the walk and honestly I have a lot more but it is time to move on. 🙂

This image is one along the River Walk.  I was standing talking with one of the participants (I don’t remember her name) and she was talking about all the different angles she had discovered on the walk this time.  She showed me this perspective, which I would have never noticed.  This is one of the reasons I enjoy the Photo Walk so much.

Joshua was an absolute delight the entire walk.  His new toy (his Mom’s camera case) was just right for chewing on so he had a good time.   I saw one of Jeanne’s images of Joshua standing near an art exhibit and wished I had been able to capture that.

Apparently I have not been spending nearly enough time with him as he made strange with me the entire time we were together.  About the only time he would act like he knew me was when I put my camera up to my face.  It was either recognition or relief I’m not sure which. 🙂

Finally the last image from the Worldwide Photo Walk of 2011 is appropriately and black and white rendition of a river boat’s paddle wheel.  I like the lines of this image and since there were basically on two predominate colors I elected to convert it to black and white.

Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your weekend, it should be beautiful.  Be careful.

Today I will deviate from the Photo Walk images to show some of the images I captured last evening after work.  It is more about a celebration of the wonderful fall colors than any good photography.  In fact these images are not all that good but I was inspired by the marvelous colors I saw on the way home.

Nikon D300S | Nikon 18 - 200 mm lens | ISO 200 1/200 sec @ f10

Of course I will have to start the collection off with the ubiquitous barn.    Maybe it’s that I’ve spent the last two days in the classroom that made the fall colors look extra special to me.  The sky was not nearly as pretty as it was on Saturday’s Photo Walk but the colors awesome.

Nikon D300S | Nikon 18 - 200 mm lens | ISO 400 1/640 sec @ f10

I liked the looks of this tree.  It was the brightest looking of all the trees I saw on my short walk around.  Other than the barn, I captured these images on the foot path by the Theisen Distribution Center in the Industrial Park.

Nikon D300S | Nikon 18 - 200 mm lens | ISO 200 1/800 sec @ f10

I’m not really sure I like this image.  I look at a lot of photography web sites and blogs and the washed out / lens flare images are prevalent among photographers these days.  I again am not a real fan of this look but I thought it might be an interesting contrast to the other image of the same tree.

I’ll finish up the Photo Walk tomorrow and then I have a lot of images from my Saturday Adventure to get to.  So much to shoot and so little time.  🙂

Thanks for checking in.  Enjoy your middle of the week and be careful.

I’ve got some more images from the Worldwide Photo Walk this past Saturday.  Again, for the most part I’m trying to capture the essence of the walk and not necessarily shooting for creativity.  Although I suppose I am always striving for a creative approach to my image capture.

The image above is of a new friend I met on this year’s photo walk.  This is Dana Andrews and he is a professional photographer from Platteville, Wisc.  Additionally he is an Adobe Certified Expert so maybe I can learn from him.

This image is of my friend Barb Randall.  She works in Cedar Rapids for one of our banks.  This is her friend from Koleene Herlocker.   They had a lot of fun on the walk and Barb is one of those people who is always fun to be around.

The image above is one I really like because of the way the sun light is sparkling off the water.  Barb’s friend had just asked me how to get that sparkling light on the water and so I saw this boat coming and hurriedly set my camera up for the shot and was lucky enough to get what I had envisioned.

Finally I’ll leave you with this black and white image of a couple enjoying each others company in a tender moment setting by the water’s edge.  I felt a little guilty capturing this image as they were engrossed with each other and didn’t really notice me behind them.  I usually like to ask permission first but didn’t want to miss this shot.

Thanks for stopping by.  I have several more images from the photo walk and will probably post the last of them tomorrow.  Enjoy your day and be careful.

Welcome to the beginning of another week. 🙂  I thought I would continue with some images of Saturday’s Photo Walk.  As the leader of the walk I am not allowed to compete in the photo contest.  So what I try to do is capture the walk itself as opposed to shooting something creative.  I actually took about a third of the images I shot last year.  I was just busy visiting with the participants.

Having just written that my first image is of a group of flowers.  There are flowers all over the great river walk.  If you live anywhere close to Dubuque you owe it to yourself to come and walk it.  The whole walk is less than a mile but you sure have a lot of beautiful scenery in that space.

This is my friend Becki Kenton.  I work with her husband Steve.  Becki has a very creative eye for things and enjoys photography as much as I do.  She has done a lot of traveling this year and so she has an extensive portfolio of images.

This is one of my favorite images of the day.  I enjoy shooting silhouettes and I particularly like the deep blue water (reflective of the sky) and flowers on the side of the shooter.  The sunlight just barley catches her hair while the rest of her is in the shadows.

I love being around people who have the same interest and passion as I do.  I wish we could have spent more time together and looked at everyone’s images.  A couple of people have posted their shots on the web and once more do I’ll put that link up for you to visit.

The image above is a Mother and her Daughter enjoying the Photo Walk.  They both love photography and had never been on the walk before.  They both said they would do it again next year.

So all in all it was a good photo walk.  Not as many people as last year.  Problems with the restaurant and some of the people I was hoping would be there were not able to make it.  The weather was perfect, the sky was a rich blue and the temperature was just right (for me.)  I made some new friends (I hope) and renewed some friends I had made last year.  I have come to the conclusion that I would like to do this more than just once a year.  Maybe for everyone of the four seasons?

Thank you for taking the time to stop by my humble blog.  I am grateful for your visit and any feedback.  I learn from your critique.   Enjoy your week and be careful.