Upde Designs

Nikon D700 | Nikon 24 -70 f2.8 VRII lens | ISO 200 1/400 sec @ f6.3

No this isn’t Green Island or even on the Mississippi River.  Where this image was made is less than 300 feet from the very busy Collins Road in Cedar Rapids.  There is a place just off Collins Road called Planet X and as I was parking my car getting ready to go inside when I saw this Mallard.

Nikon D700 | Nikon 24 -70 f2.8 VRII lens | ISO 200 1/400 sec @ f6.3

So I grabbed my camera and shot a couple of images of him and then as I turned around to go back to my car I saw his lady friend.  I had gotten between them so she was holding back and being very quiet.

As soon as I put my camera away they took off and made a big circle around and then flew straight over my head.  It would have made a great shot.  I guess you just never know when there is going to be an opportunity for a great shot.

Nikon D700 | Nikon 24 -70 f2.8 VRII lens | SB900 SL | ISO 200 1/60 sec @ f6.3

If you’ve never been in Planet X it is worth the time to stop by.  There is a ton of things to do.  I’m not going to spoil it for you by telling you everything about it.  If you’ve got kids then it is an absolutely essential stop.  No kids, heck stop by anyway and you won’t be disappointed.

The guy above?  Well let’s just say that he watches over one section of Planet X.  There are a lot more like him there.

I don’t know about you but it seems to me like it was just Friday and now it’s time for Monday.  The weekends sure don’t last long enough.  Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your week and be careful.

I don’t often blog about work but this was a pretty neat event that also has a tie to photography, so I thought I would share my Thursday evening experience with you.

We are opening a new (remodeled) facility in the Cedar Rapids area.  It is a beautiful reconstruction of the existing building.  Actually there is virtually nothing left of the original building.  We just operated out of it as the new building was built around it.

There was a professional photographer from the Cedar Rapids Gazette at our facility Thursday evening taking images of the staff and of the building.  He had all his equipment (including studio strobe lights, light stands, tripod, light meter), and everything was first class equipment.   Yes I was salivating with envy over his equipment but it was more than that.

There was an air of confidence in his approach to setting up his equipment and composing the shot.  He was methodical, but self-assured in his process.  He took readings from his meter and then shot several test shots before actually taking the final images.  He would take some images, then check them on his laptop and make minor adjustments and take some more images.

I thought about my own photography and how so many times I hurry the shot or take little or no time with the set up because I don’t want to annoy people.  Most people don’t like to have their picture taken unless it is a special event or it is by a professional.

So I watched with great interest as he went about his craft and I thought about how I would enjoy doing that on a daily basis.  Yes I did learn many things by watching him so every day is a learning experience, and while I may never get to do what he does on a daily basis, I can work very hard to become the best photographer I can be.

Thanks for stopping by.  Have a great day of rest.  Be careful.

Happy Saturday to you.  A brief post today as it is the type of day that lends itself to rearranging piles and moving various things that I just can’t force myself to part with (even though the dust that has settled on them is several years old.)

Jeanne and I sat with Joshua last evening while Ben and Angie had an evening out.  He is much better although still somewhat congested.  Above Grandma does the manual labor of changing the diapers.

I was relegated to the much more difficult job of helping him get to sleep.  I still  have the skills.

Before heading off to bed he practiced his standing skills for awhile.  He loves to stand tall and look around.  Then after a little while the legs tire and buckle and down he goes.

It was a fun evening for us and I think the kids had fun as well.  Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your weekend and be careful.

Happy Friday.  A late night last night as I was in Cedar Rapids for the first of 4 grand openings of our new facility.  It is also a short post today with a couple of snapshots.  They are not worthy of being called images.  It was a family night out and I wasn’t paying much attention to composition, camera settings, or anything else that had to do with photography.  Just trying to capture the moment.

Mark came home for a 24 hour period and wanted to have a family night out.  We were thrilled that Angie, Ben and Josh could join us.

Josh was amazing.  Even though you could tell he just felt terrible, he never once fussed.  He was always looking around and I even managed to get a couple of smiles from him.

It was a fun evening.  As usual I ate to much and was way more than full.   So that’s it for this Friday.  I apologize for the crappy pictures.  Great subjects to be sure but everything else is pretty much yuk!

Have a great weekend.

Thank you for stopping by. I started thinking about the fact that there are many of you who read this blog regularly that might not have a good idea of what the “Duck Pond” is all about.  So the above image is a landscape view of the marsh.

This is image is of the family as they climb out of the water to their home island.  Note the father maintaining look out while mother shepherds the young ones back to the nest.

The final image is just a close up of the mother and the little goslings.  I love this place.  Often times if I don’t have a lunch appointment I’ll grab a Subway sandwich and drive out to the pond for lunch and just watch the nature.

I have images of the pond flooded, bone dry with cracks in the ground, and everything in between.  It is enjoyable to just watch all the different species of wildlife inter act.

There are also a pair of Trumpeter Swans that live at the marsh for most of the year.  They have nested for at least the last four years that I’m aware of, but have not produced any off spring.  😦

Well that’s it for today.  No camera setting info because it was all the same as yesterday.  Hope you have a great rest of the week.

Nikon D700 | Nikon 70 - 200 mm f2.8 VRII lens |ISO 200 1/640 sec @f6.3

First of all, I realize these images were not shot correctly.  I was shooting towards the late afternoon sun which caused the wildlife to be back lit and that is not good,  but the damn Geese wouldn’t move for me so I had no choice. 🙂

I was headed home and as usual I took the Hurstville road, which goes by “Duck Pond.”  I think I mentioned a few days ago that there are new baby geese everywhere around the pond and as I drove by I saw mom and dad with their babies in the field next to the pond.  By the time I found a place to park and got my camera they were already on their way back to the water.

Nikon D700 | Nikon 70 - 200 mm f2.8 VRII lens |ISO 200 1/640 sec @f6.3

I really don’t know which goose is the mother and which is the father, but the one on the right seemed to be taking the lead and watching me carefully while the one on the left seemed to be paying more attention to the little ones.  That led me to believe the mother was on the left and the father was on the right.  Not that it makes any difference, just an observation.

Nikon D700 | Nikon 70 - 200 mm f2.8 VRII lens |ISO 200 1/640 sec @f6.3

Finally back to the safety of the pond the new family headed north to the more open waters of the pond.  The eventually climbed up on one of the little islands, where I suspect they have their nest. The little ones are cute and stay in pretty tight formation behind dad.

Nikon D700 | Nikon 70 - 200 mm f2.8 VRII lens |ISO 200 1/640 sec @f6.3

I wanted to get this isolation image of the babies to show as a close up.  There were at least 6 families of Geese out with their little ones.  There is another huge wetland across 61 highway and I went over there and saw another 3 families.  So the goose population (at least in the Maquoketa area) seems to be thriving.

Thanks for stopping by.  Be careful and have a great Hump Day

I’m sorry.  I know I said I wasn’t going to post anymore images from Torque Fest but I didn’t have anything else to show.  To give you an idea of my desperation, I even shot some dandelions yesterday.  I’m not going to show you those as even I am not that desperate. 🙂

So I decided to give you my last images from Torque Fest.  My one lament about Torque Fest was that I didn’t go back, take some time and a tripod and really capture some of the great cars that were there.  I think many of the vehicles would have looked great in an HDR capture as well.

Okay I’m fresh out of images from Torque Fest 2011 so you really won’t be seeing anymore cars from that shoot.  Hopefully something worth shooting will occur today and I’ll have some fresh pickings for you tomorrow.

Thanks for stopping by.  Sorry for the lame post.  Be careful.

Nikon D300S | Nikon 18 - 200 mm lens | ISO 1/25 sec @f36

Good Day and Happy Monday to you.  Yesterday, (Mother’s Day) Jeanne said the one thing she wanted to do was to get a Dairy Queen Blizzard and go for a drive.  So even though it was much later than I had originally planned we left the house at 7:15 pm.

So after acquiring said Blizzard,  we headed West to see if there was anything worthy of an image.  I found this tree near a farm-house and really liked the way it framed up against the setting sun.  As you look at my camera settings (Andreas) don’t ask me why I had the F-stop so high.  I suspect it was because I wasn’t paying attention. 🙂

Nikon D300S | Nikon 18 - 200 mm lens | ISO 1/8 sec @f36

As we continued our journey West we came upon this little church setting very close by the road.  I pulled in and made this image.  It’s not quite what I wanted because the Sun was not cooperative but I still like the way it came out.

Nikon D300S | Nikon 18 - 200 mm lens | ISO 1/1250 sec @f5.6

Finally as we were losing the Sun altogether, so I pulled off the road and shot this farm, which was in the distance with the Sun slowly setting.  Actually the farm was further away than I would have liked.  Additionally I made some other images as the Sun got lower and lower but I changed the ISO and they didn’t look very good.

It’s a constant learning experience.  My original plan for the weekend was to take one complete afternoon and just go shooting.  Well that didn’t work out because of other projects and of course an afternoon nap.  🙂

Have a great week.  Thanks for stopping by and be careful.

Nikon D300S | Nikon 18 - 200 mm lens | SB800 SL | ISO 200 1/60 sec @ f5.6

Happy Mother’s Day to you who are Mothers.  I can think of no greater gift than to give life to another.   Angie, Ben, and Joshua stopped over last night because we had fresh mushrooms.  🙂

I don’t want to say that is the only reason they stopped over but it was a strong motivator, since they had ran a 9 mile race earlier in the day and little Joshua has a nasty cold.  Poor little fellow was not feeling good you can see it in his eyes.

Nikon D300S | Nikon 18 - 200 mm lens | SB800 SL | ISO 200 1/60 sec @ f5.6

Hard to believe this is Angie’s first Mother’s Day as a Mother.  We sort of celebrated it last year but this year it counts.

Sorry I missed the last couple of days posting.  I just didn’t have any new images to show and I didn’t want to keep posting cars.  I’m going to get out this afternoon and see if I can find some interesting things to shoot.

Nikon D300S | Nikon 18 - 200 mm lens | SB800 SL | ISO 200 1/60 sec @ f5.6

I don’t particularly like this shot.  The angle, the composition and the lighting all pretty much suck.  The subjects are spectacular so one our of 4 isn’t all bad I guess.

We enjoyed the mushrooms and I grilled some burgers so it was a nice evening and good food.  I felt so bad for Josh though as you could just see in his eyes how rotten he felt.  He sneezed a couple of times and it kind of confuses him.

I remember when the kids were little and they would get a cold.  You just wanted them to be able to blow their nose so they would feel a little better.  It sure is tough when you feel rotten and don’t understand why and can’t complain to anyone.

Nikon D300S | Nikon 18 - 200 mm lens | | ISO 200 1/125 sec @ f36

Finally after the kids left I walked outside to enjoy the evening air and looked around the corner of our home and saw this wonderful sunset.  So I had to go inside and get my camera.  Hope you have a wonderful Mother’s day.

Thanks for stopping by and be careful.

Nikon D700 | Nikon 24 - 70 mm lens | ISO 200 1/1600 sec @ f4

Thank you for dropping by.  It’s been a busy week and I’ve been working out every evening after work so I haven’t had time to make any images.  Hence you get more of Torque Fest.  The good news is that I’m not going to show you ALL of the images I took at Torque Fest.

Nikon D700 | Nikon 24 - 70 mm lens | ISO 200 1/1600 sec @ f4

After talking with some of my friends at work I now wish I had gone back down to Maquoketa on Saturday as there were a couple of hundred more cars that came in Friday afternoon and Saturday morning.

I did learn that Torque Fest was a huge success and very well attended on Friday evening and Saturday.  There were several area bands that preformed throughout the event and the word from the Chamber is that Torque Fest will be back next year.

Nikon D700 | Nikon 24 - 70 mm lens | ISO 800 1/60 sec @ f2.8

You remember I was telling you about the police motorcycle I saw.  Well even though it isn’t much to look at from an aesthetic standpoint it is none the lest interesting.  Like I said Kansas City had a bunch of these (and may still use them) so I was use to seeing them.

Nikon D700 | Nikon 24 - 70 mm lens | ISO 200 1/1600 sec @ f4

Finally the image above is reflective of the theme at Torque Fest.  I will certainly go back next year.  To look at the cars the life styles, and enjoy the music.

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