Upde Designs

Well I went looking for Eagles again today.  Back to the place where I imagine they would be trying to find fish (just below the damn.) The image above is what I found instead of Eagles.

There were three or four boats out fishing in the open water just below the damn.  There was one Eagle sitting patiently in a tree, way up on the bluff.  He was so well hidden that I couldn’t find him very easily with my lens and when I did there was no good angle to shoot him from.  So I opted for the fishermen instead.

As I processed the image above I kept thinking this should be in black and white.  It is a Winter scene and it was colder than a Witch’s heart so it just has to be black and white.  Right?

I don’t know to me the black and white image is just much more interesting than the color one above.  Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your weekend.

<Sigh> Still no new images to post.  I was just telling a friend this morning by e-mail how much I dislike this time of year.  I usually do not have time in the morning for any shooting and it is dark by the time I leave the office.

I would like to go shooting on my noon hour but many times I have lunch meetings or I’m meeting with employees over other issues.  At least in the Spring, Summer, and Fall there is enough light after work that I can explore my photography.

I was reading some of my favorite photo blogs this morning and one of them is by noted wildlife photographer Moose Petersen. He has started taking a lot of “Air-to-Air” images and he had a series on the B-17 Bomber “Sentimental Journey.”

The image above was one I shot last year around the 2nd of July and the Bomber (Sentimental Journey) was on static display at the Dubuque Regional Airport. I didn’t get there until the public viewing was just about over and they were putting away all the tables and chairs (storing them underneath the plane.)

Of course when Moose gets to shoot the plane he has it free and clear of all obstructions, parked so the light is perfect and has all the time he wants to make a perfect image.  I on the other hand was trying to get a good shot and the guard was sternly advising me to get out of the area 🙂 <Sigh>  Such is the life of an amateur wanna-be.

So this is the RAW image that came straight out of the camera.  No color balance, no sharpening, nothing.  See all the clutter I had to deal with.  Anyway I was pretty happy with my final product.  I may have gone a little over the top with the sky color but I love blue.  Here is the link to Moose’s Blog if you’d like to see a professional’s image of the B-17.

Thanks for stopping by.  Have a great weekend.

Good Morning.  Okay I’m over my rant at Mediacom.  Uhmmm No I’m not (read the post below this one.)  But one must move on to more productive things.  I was looking through some images last night and came across the one below.  Since I couldn’t go on-line without a lot of frustration I picked the image below to experiment with in Photoshop.

But first the image above is of a Casio Exilim ‘point-n-shoot’ 6 mp camera.  I bought Jeanne one just like this about 5 years ago for Christmas and they had a special on (pay an additional $100 and get another one.)  Well that was too good of an offer to pass up so I bought this little camera .

It takes pretty good images but only shoots in JPEG, which I do not like.  But it is rugged and will go anywhere.  I throw it in my pack on my bike and it has ridden lots of miles with me.  I also keep it in my brief case for those candid moments that you just “wish I had a camera with me” and this way I almost always do.

The image below is of a former employee and friend of mine.  We were at a meeting in of all places Onslow, Iowa. It was a company meeting and I was taking images of the group to post on our Corporate Intranet.

This lady kept putting her hand up or turning her head every time I tried to take her picture because she didn’t want her image on the Intranet. 🙂  Of course that just made me more determined to take the picture of her.

This is the only one I got that didn’t have the back of her head or the palm of her hand in front of her face.  So last night I was playing around in Photoshop (which by the way is one of the most remarkable pieces of software on the planet) and decided to try a “cartoon” technique with this image.  I kind of like how it turned out.

Well gotta run.  It is a busy day for me.  I have my first Maquoketa Chamber of Commerce Board meeting today and then I’m teaching a leadership class all afternoon.  The group that I have this year is really keeping me challenged and it is a very enjoyable class.

Thanks for stopping by.  Have a good Thursday.

This saga has been going on since before November 2010.  The problem is there have been a lot of new homes and two schools built around our area over the last few years.   With all those new homes and schools comes a lot of internet users on cable.  So everyday from about 5:00 pm until midnight this is what we have to deal with. We get download speeds of  between .90 Mbps (which is a little bit faster than dial-up) and 1.25 Mbps (which will let you look at images if you are a patient person.

It is maddening considering what we pay for “high speed internet” and what we are getting for our money.  I take  (well I try to anyway) on-line courses in the evening but I haven’t been able to do that for three months now.

I started complaining in late October about the problem.  Well Mediacom’s first response is we want to send a Tech out to check your wiring.  I responded, “There is nothing wrong with my wiring.”

How do I know? Well  because I am up at 4:30 am every morning and this is what I get for speeds, when everyone else is asleep (Yes, that is 20 Mbps and was taken this morning.)  So if it was my wiring I would not be able to get this kind of speed ever.

So we messed around for a month trying to get aTech out here.  Mediacom’s standard mantra , “We can have someone there from 8 am to Noon or 1 pm to 5 pm.”  “Hello!!” Most people, including us work during those hours.  Finally we got a guy out to look at our wiring (on a Saturday.)  The wiring was perfect of course.

Now I’m told that it will be another two weeks or more as they have to put in more equipment.  Seems like they have discovered it is over utilization in our area.  Duh!

Sorry I didn’t mean to bash Mediacom  tonight but there was a live seminar on-line tonight and of course I couldn’t get on because of the line speed.  So I needed to vent and because this has been going on for such a long time now. Mediacom acts as though they could care less.   Which I guess  if you are about the only game in town is exactly how you can act.

After I posted this article I was checking out the link I put below and wanted to make sure it went to the speed check.   Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse now I’m getting only .67 Mbps.  Maybe I should re-consider dial-up again.

By the way if you’d like to check your connection and find your upload and download speed here is the link.

I’ll shut up now.  Thanks for listening.

Once again I’m sitting in my office doing my normal morning routine of reading, working on photos, and reading other blogs, and then the sound I always hate to hear keeps going up and down our street.  Yep another day with the snow plow as a constant companion.  That means a fun commute this morning.

So that is the reason for these two photos.  A book I just finished called the “Happiness Advantage” reveals study after study of the benefits of putting yourself in a happy state of mind.  It is after all a matter of choice.  The photo above is certainly something to make a Father happy.  Angie and Mark have brought me a great deal of happiness.

This photo is a double source of happiness for me.  The happiness of Angie and Ben finding each other and building a wonderful life together and this was the announcement that I was going to be Grandpa (and yes well they were also going to be parents.)  Truly a wonderful moment in anyone’s life.  So after viewing these images for a little while I am ready to face the challenges of yet another snowy day in Iowa.

Thanks for stopping by.  Have a great Wednesday yourself.

Angie and Ben have this toy for Josh called Baby Einstein.  Basically it is a mat filled with soft foam in a colorful design with an arch over the middle from which bright, shiny,  and attractive shapes are hung just out of the reach of a new baby.

I’m not sure at what age a baby discovers they have hands and arms but at this point I think he is excited and interested in the objects and as he is flailing around, if he hits one of them he makes a cooing sound  and smiles.  (I did Google it and I found anywhere from two to three months.) Regardless it is a great developmental product.    I spent an hour just watching him enjoy it.

I thought this was a neat capture (I talked yesterday about the lousy photography) of Ben and his Son enjoying some time together.   My hour with Josh, Angie and Ben was a great time.  I’m sorry Jeanne couldn’t be with me as she was home still recovering from a really bad cold and didn’t want to take any chance of giving the bug to Josh.

Thanks for stopping in and have a great Tuesday.

I have mixed emotions about this post.  On the one hand it is a post about and  of my Grandson and as such every image is precious.  On the other hand as an aspiring photographer these are lousy images.

Here are my excuses for these less than stellar shots.  I have a flash diffuser which is designed to soften the light and spread it more evenly in the room.  I had packed it for this shoot, but it somehow fell off the flash when I was putting it in the car and so it spent some time on the garage floor.  (error #1 no diffuser.)  The lack of a diffuser produces harsh shadows and uneven lighting as evidenced above.

Second issue is the images are softer than I would like them.  (i.e. fuzzy, out of focus.)  This is as a result of improper camera settings.  The camera has three settings for focusing.  The first setting is manual (rarely used by me except in micro photography), single focus, (mainly used for portraiture work) when you know your subject is not going to move (also it is the default setting on my camera), and continuous focus, used when the subject is apt to be moving (i.e. a little baby) 🙂  Hence the fuzzy shots.

Third issue was too shallow of a depth of field or too low of F-stop.  I shot these pictures at F2.8, which means that only a very small part of the subject (where the little focusing square is) will be in focus and everything else will be soft.

Fourth issue was poor composition.  By that I mean given the lack of a diffuser, one must work with what is available.  There are ways of re-composing shots to lessen or eliminate the problem of harsh lighting.  Plus I was just too lazy to move around and get a better angle on my subject.

So while any images of this beautiful child are precious and special, from a purely photographic standpoint I am very disappointed in my work here.  As the old adage goes the “devil is in the details” and when you do not pay attention to the important details you pay the price.

Thanks for stopping by.  Hope to do better in the future.

I spent most of Saturday working on the final part of a large project I am about to finish up.  Then I was lucky enough to be invited to Angie and Ben’s house for a little Grandpa time with Josh.  I’ll post those photos tomorrow.

This morning I got up around 6 am (late for me) and decided I would go find some Eagles to shoot (take pictures of).  I spent 3 hours looking for them and found one so far away that even with a 500 mm lens I couldn’t really tell if it was an Eagle when I looked at the image. 😦

So as I was coming back to Dubuque I noticed these railroad cars sitting on the tracks just outside of East Dubuque.  I parked the car and got some shots of them.  One thing was apparent to me when I started shooting this morning.  Everything I shot was going to be in black and white.  It was a gray overcast day and very cold.  Every thing looks so dirty and all I could see this morning was black and white.

This image I took from my car at the Lock and Dam.  I’m not sure if it is a barge, or a river house of just what it is.  It is tethered to polls so as the river rises and falls it goes with it.  I was sitting in my car hoping an Eagle would start fishing in the open water by the damn when I notice the smoke coming from the barge.  I thought it would make an interesting image.

Tomorrow some of the images I shot of Josh.  Thanks for stopping by.

Happy Friday!  I decided to post some more of the train garden pictures this morning.  (since I didn’t get anything shot yesterday) It is a very interesting story and I wish I could remember more about it.

The image above shows some of the members of Rotary listening to the daughter  of the train master talk about some of the highlights of the train garden.  I don’t remember her name either.  Sad to say as I look at this image many of these fine gentlemen have since passed.

What was amazing to me is the level of detail captured even in the little things, including the people, trees and the fine detailed work on the buildings.  Most of which the owner built himself.  The more remarkable thing is it all worked.  I can remember I was lucky to get a train to go around in circles more than 5 times without something going wrong. 🙂

These are some of the houses and stores in the town.  He even had a lake built on the setting and some fishing boats that were on the water with people in them.

This turn style (not sure that is what it was really called) actually worked  and each of the engines sitting in the repair bays worked.  He could bring them out and just like a real train yard hook them up with a variety of cars (he didn’t have to touch them) and then send them on their way.

Yes he even had a tunnel through a mountain in the garden.  To the left you can see one of the lakes he built.  This is the smallest one, the larger one had boats on it.

This is the Train Master.  I’m sorry I just do not remember his name or much of anything about him.   This is a very interesting story and I wish I could remember more about it.  Here he has his console flipped down so you can see some of the wiring.  He was a very humble man I remember that.

He was running the trains from his control building and I went in to compliment him on his craftsmanship and attention to detail and he just looked at the ground (embarrassed by the compliment) and all he said was, “It is fun.”

Hope you have a great Friday and have a wonderful weekend.  I have a big project to do this weekend that is going to take a lot of work but I’m determined to get out and shoot some images so I will have some new things to show on Monday.

Thanks for stopping by.

Good Morning – I haven’t taken any images this week because  (choose one)
A.  The Weather
B. I’m lazy
C. I’m too busy at work
D. I’m always running late
E. All of the above

So this morning I was looking through my archives (which I enjoy doing from time to time) sometimes  just for the sake of remembering and other times to hopefully learn from  seeing all the mistakes I made with the shot.

Today I came across a series of images I took in 2003 (before I owned a DSLR.)  Dennis Voy (KMAQ -AM/FM Radio) had the program this day and he rented a bus and took us out to this farm about 5 miles North of Maquoketa.

At the farm was a “Train Garden.” This retired Gentleman lived with his daughter and son-in-law on their farm and had painstakingly built with enormous detail a huge working railroad complete with a town.

As time permits I will show more of the images and hopefully you can get an idea of the amount of work that went into his project.  Just look at all the intricate detail work that went into this trestle alone.

Well that’s all I have time for this morning.  Make it a great day and as always thank you for stopping by.  Hopefully soon some Eagle pictures and of course some more of Josh.