Upde Designs

Hard to imagine that it is October already.  Yesterday was the 4th annual (2nd annual for me) Worldwide Photo Walk.  There were 1,117 photo walks around the world and 28,294 walkers yesterday and today.

We had about 33 walkers (not all were there for the photo) down from the 50 we had last year.  I think part of the reason for that was the article about the walk ran in the Friday paper instead of the Sunday paper and naturally more people read the Sunday paper.   No matter we had a great group of people.  I made some new friends and had a wonderful time.  the TH also provided a photographer and a reporter to cover the event and you can see an interview with me if you want to waste your time by clicking here.  If you can’t get to the article click on the “Photo Syntheses.” link

My two favorite photographers were on the walk this year.  Jeanne was on the walk last year (this year she had a brand new camera) and took some excellent photos.  Angie and Josh were also on the walk this year.  Josh was wonderful the entire time.

One regret was my friend Andreas wasn’t able to join us.  He had an accident with his camera a couple of weeks ago and so he wasn’t able to go with us.  I really missed having him there.

I wasn’t going to say anything about the Tony Roma’s Restaurant but they did such a lousy job I just have to.  I contacted them a month month before our event and talked to one of the managers.  I told them what we were doing and wondered if they could accommodate 50 people for lunch and could we be segregated because we wanted to have a small program.  “No problem, we’d love to have you and you’ll be set up in your own room.” I was told.

Two weeks ago I called them and reminded them of my call and what I was looking for just to make sure we were still good to go.  “Of course, we have you down, your own room you’re good to go.”

Thursday of this last week I called again (from Iowa City) “Yes Mr. Updegraff we have you down and you will have your own room.”  I told them that the number was going to be around 35 instead of 50 and would that make any difference?  “No absolutely  not Mr. Updegraff, we’re all set for you on Saturday.”

So Saturday (the walk starts at 10:00 am) Jeanne and I roll in about 9:35 am and go to the front counter and announce that we are here.  Deer in the headlight stare from the two people at the counter.  Finally they locate the manger that I had been talking too and she said, “Yes we’re all set for you, you will be here about noon, correct.”  I assured her we would and she said, “You’re all set.”

This is what we got.  8 tables shoved together in the front of the restaurant with no meeting room and no ability to communicate with the whole group and of course no ability to present a program with photos, power point and demonstrations.  I was very, very disappointed in Tony Roma’s!

Sorry about the RANT, but POOR Service at this level needs to be pointed out.  Thanks for stopping by.  More about the Photo Walk, and I still have tons of images from my Photo Adventure of a couple of weeks ago.  Be careful.

Hard to believe that tomorrow is the 1st of October already.  Speaking of the 1st of October our Photo Walk is tomorrow at 10:00 am.  There is still time to sign up as we have not yet filled up.  It will be fun and the weather is supposed to be a nice crisp 59 degrees and sunny.  If you want to sign up just click on the upde.net logo on the right and that will take you to my web site, where you can get to the sign up page.

Remember you don’t need a fancy camera.  Last year over half the walkers had point-n-shoot cameras (in fact the contest winner had one) and I had two walkers use their cell phones.  The point of the walk is to promote photography and fellowship.   BTW don’t tell Jeanne that there isn’t a need for a fancy camera.  🙂

The above image is of a Blue Heron that was feeding in a little pond near the lake at the Black Hawk Recreation Area.  He let me get pretty close for this shot.  Actually closer than I’ve ever gotten to a Heron.

A little further down the road was this grain bin.  I couldn’t tell what kind of structure it was exactly but Dave assured me it was a grain bin like the kind they used to use to load rail cars.  That made sense if you see the image below.

We saw a number of these windmills (at least 15) all in a straight line with this grain bin at the end.  It was reasonable to assume that they had been placed on an old railroad right-of-way, hence the reason for this tall grain bin to be out in the middle of no where.

I’ll try to make another post tomorrow (continuing with the photographic adventure) but there is a lot of work left to do to prepare for the photo walk and I have to get a hair cut first thing. 🙂  Want to look spiffy.

So I’ve got a lot of material to share over the coming days.  I still have a lot of images from the adventure of last weekend and I’m pretty sure I’ll have a snap or two from the photo walk.

Enjoy your Friday and thanks for stopping by.  Be careful.

Nikon D300S | Nikon 18 - 200 mm Lens | Nikon SB800 SL | ISO 200 1/60 @ f11

One of my unwritten jobs is from time to time to help various branches of our organization with their photography and video needs.  Yesterday was such a time.  One of the branches wanted to show case a business in their community and so I did a video of them discussing their product and business.

A Distillery Appliance

While I was there I shot some still photos for my portfolio because there was a lot of interesting shapes and fixtures that would make (at least in my mind) some nice images.

Nikon D300S | Nikon 18 - 200 mm Lens | Nikon SB800 SL | ISO 200 1/60 @ f11

While these will never hang in some gallery they are interesting to me  so I hope you find them worthy of your time.  The Mississippi River Distilling Company is located at 303 North Cody Road Le Clair, Iowa.

Their web site is www.mrdistilling.com and you an learn more if you send an e-mail to info@mrdistilling.com.  They are very friendly people and they give hourly tours of the distillery, which is worth the trip.

I also went by the “Pickers” shop.  Talk about a tourist attraction.  Man there were people all over that place.  I don’t know the name of the woman that works there, but I was told that it became impossible for her to do her job at the shop so she works out of her home now.  The tourists took up too much of her time.  🙂

If you are looking for a wonderful town to shop in with lots of great food, shops, and interesting scenery a trip to Le Claire is something you need to put on your list of things to do.

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

Nikon D700 | Nikon 28 - 300 mm Lens | HDR Bracketed @f8.0

I know that we were just getting started on my Saturday photography adventure and I promise I will get back to it.  However when I left work this evening the light was such a soft beautiful yellow that I went looking for photo opportunities.

What I found was this pond with the growth all around and a nice wind mill right in the middle.  So I had no choice but to stop and shoot.  I did something I’ve never done before and that was to shoot an HDR bracket with out a tripod.  Actually it came out very nice.

So the image above is processed with NIK HDR Prof.  I have never really been satisfied with this plug-in for processing HDR images.

Nikon D700 | Nikon 28 - 300 mm Lens | HDR Bracketed @f8.0

This image is processed with Photomatrix Pro.  I find this program easy to work with and very intuitive.  After processing and tone mapping I was able to take it back into Lightroom 3 for the finishing touches.  Personally I like this image better than the first one.

Thanks for stopping by.  Back to the Saturday adventure tomorrow.  Enjoy the rest of your week and be careful.

Nikon D700 | Nikon 28 - 300 mm lens | ISO 200 1/125 @f7.1

More of my photographic adventure of Saturday.  My friend Dave informed me that the park was the Black Hawk Lake Recreational Area north-east of Plattville.  Even with the overcast conditions and misting rain it was a beautiful area.

Nikon D700 | Nikon 28 - 300 mm lens | ISO 200 1/125 @f7.1

We spent over an hour at the park, there was a lot to see.  We drove all around the lake and checked out all the camping area.  Dave and his family enjoy camping so he was very aware of the facilities available.

Nikon D700 | Nikon 28 - 300 mm lens | ISO 200 1/60 @f7.1

This one tree was standing alone in the park adorned in its fall colors.  I took several images of it but there was always something that crept into side of the image.  So I tried a macro shot without a micro lens.  I love the color.

Tomorrow some images I took in the Fennimore area.  There were some spectacular views at the state park.  Thanks for stopping by.  Be careful.

Nikon D700 | Nikon 28 - 300 mm lens | ISO 200 1/100 sec @ f7.1

My good friend Dave Tabor has tried to take me on a photo excursion for the last couple of years.  He enjoys nature, loves to travel, and he also enjoys my photography.  Finally after coordinating schedules we worked it out that this was the Saturday we would go on a photo shoot.

Our journey lasted 11 hours.  I have no idea how many miles we traveled and as is my usual style I didn’t take down any details of the areas where I made images.  As an after thought, what a great idea it would have been to take along a note pad to keep track of the locations.  Sad to say I didn’t and with my short memory span I can’t remember the name of the above county park.  I’ll ask Dave today.

Nikon D700 | Nikon 28 - 300 mm lens | ISO 200 1/100 sec @ f7.1

These images were all shot at a County park not too far from Dickeyville.  We met at the Hardee’s Restaurant in Dubuque as Dave lives in Monticello.  From there we traveled 151 to Dickeyville to a greasy spoon that Dave had heard about for breakfast.  We loaded up on ham, eggs, and hash-browns.  They weren’t kidding when they described it as the greasy spoon.  🙂

Nikon D700 | Nikon 28 - 300 mm lens | ISO 200 1/60 sec @ f7.1

The weather was not conducive to photography.  It was misting most of the morning and was foggy as well.  So to expose for the light conditions meant that I got a blown out sky.  No matter I tried to lessen the amount of sky in my images when ever possible.

This county park is amazing.  A 250 acre lake, surrounded by beautiful timber.  There are lots of camp sites available and in fact we saw well over 70 campers at the park.  There were also lots of boats on the lake.  You can bring you own or rent a boat from the park.

I’ll get the name of the park from Dave.  If you are into camping (I’m not) this is a great place with wonderful scenery, fishing, and camping and not too far away.  they have walleye, musky, bass, and a lot of other type of fish.

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

I know I told you I would post images from my Saturday adventure and I will as the week unfolds.  It was an enjoyable day and I saw many things of interest.

Friday on the way home I went by the Hurstville Nature Center and saw two swans coming in for a landing.  I thought this was very unusual because the resident swans were at the South end of the pond and over the years I can’t remember too many occasions when there were other swans at the pond.

I parked the car and hurriedly got my camera out and turned on.  The two swans that had just landed started swimming side by side toward the two resident swans at the South end of the pond.  They were alternatively raising and lowering their head, swimming slowly toward the other couple and honking with a very loud voice.

All of a sudden one of the intruding swans (I presume the male) started running / flying towards the resident male swan.  The female resident swan flew off to the North end of the pond and the two males went head to head for about 20 minutes.

Each raising and lowering their head and loud honking at each other.  They never seemed to touch each other but they did a lot of posturing.

After 20 minutes of this and burning about 200 images (thinking I was going to see a rumble) I was just about ready to leave when the resident male fluttered his wings and started a running take off towards the intruding male.

The two intruder swans and the resident male swan flew huge circles around the pond for several minutes.  Usually the resident swan was behind the intruding pair and finally the two intruders broke off and headed West.  By the way I shot up another 90 images of this flying around stuff.

Above the victorious male swan returns to the pond after successfully defending his territory.  He landed very close to his mate and then the two of them swam the entire length of the pond.  Apparently they wanted to make sure that everything was still in order.

The entire situation lasted about 50 minutes.   I shot 311 images and culled them down to 176.  Most of them look a like but I couldn’t bring myself to delete them. 🙂

I hope you had a great weekend.  The weather sucked yesterday for photography but I spent 11 hours Saturday with camera in hand.  It was a very enjoyable day and I’m anxious to share the details and the images of the day with you.

Thanks for stopping by.  Remember the Worldwide Photo Walk is next week.  If you have any desire to join the walk just go to my web site Upde.net and click on the Photo Walk Logo.

I had several comments (via e-mail, Facebook, etc.) about yesterday’s post and today I thought I would follow-up on that post by showing the stages of the final image process.

As you can clearly see by shooting in the direction of the sun the sky is blown out and the airplane actually is back-lit so I had to compensate for that to preserve the detail of the engine.  Notice the big black blob in the center of the propeller 🙂

So the image above is how it came out of the camera.  I did increased the exposure in Camera RAW (Adobe’s free software) a tad just to bring out more of  the detail of the airplane.  Then I transferred this image over to Photoshop.

Next I went back to Camera RAW and changed the exposure (this is one of the many reasons for shooting in the RAW format.) to expose for the sky, which had a beautiful blue color and some nice puffy clouds.  Yep the black blob is still there.

So then I transferred this as a separate image to Photoshop and copied it as a layer to the first image (which was exposed for the mid-tones and shadows.)  Then using a mask I painted in the sky detail from the second photo.  Removed the black blob (it didn’t hurt at all.)  🙂

Finally I added some contrast to the clouds to give them some definition, lightened up the engine compartment a bit more to show some of the detail of the actual engine and added my watermark.

Hope you enjoyed the process.  The entire process took about 8 minutes.  It actually took longer to write this post then it did to process the image.

Tomorrow is my big photo adventure.  I’ll have (hopefully) some neat images to post over the next few days.  Nothing tomorrow however because I’m leaving at zero dark thirty hours.  🙂

Enjoy your Friday and the weekend.  As always I am thankful you stopped by and be careful.

Good Day.  A short post today as is my normal tendency I’m running very late.  I wanted to show this image because it demonstrates a technique I learned from one of the books on Photoshop I’m currently reading.

I took this image last week at the airport exposing for the mid-tones of the airplane, however because I was shooting back into the direction of the sun the sky was blown out.  In other words the sky was clipped to pure white.  If I had exposed for the sky the airplane or mid-tones would have been way too dark to see any detail.  This clearly demonstrates some of the limitations in digital cameras.  Exposing for all the luminance values is rarely possible.

The technique I tried was to first process the image in Camera RAW and adjust the exposure for the shadows and mid-tones.  In other words I balanced it for the airplane.  Then I opened that image in Photoshop.  I went back to the same RAW file and reopened it in Camera RAW and this time I adjusted the exposure for the highlights or the sky.

Then I saved that (same image) to Photoshop and combined or made a composite of the two images and using a mask ended up with an image where both the sky and the airplane are exposed more or less correctly.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day.  Be careful.

“There is a cricket in the store-room, go kill it!”  That was the greeting I received upon arriving home last evening.    Prior to that, I had taken a different (and much longer) route home in hopes of finding something of interest to shoot.

In fact I took some roads that I have never traveled before looking for anything.  I didn’t find  single thing that I thought was worth shooting.  The couple of farm structures I did see would have required that I shoot directly into the setting sun and that usually renders some pretty awful results.

So I decided to put the Macro lens on my camera and once again explore the back yard looking for small but interesting subjects to shoot.  However once I received the decree to exterminate said Cricket I thought to myself, why not shoot it before I snuff it.  Hence the opening photo.  Waste not want not you know. 🙂

I’m sorry to say the back yard yielded even less things to shoot than my alternative route home.  But I’m desperate for something (anything) to post.  Note that I did not say “worthy of”  but anything to post.  The images for this post are at best lame.  However as my daughter pointed out to me, “If you’re going to write a daily blog you ought to post something close to daily.”  🙂

I’ll leave you with this image and you can try to discern what it is.  I have an adventure planned for this Saturday.  That’s all I’m going to say about it now but it promises to fill up a couple of memory cards with images, hopefully worthy of sharing with you over the coming days.

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