Upde Designs

I can remember years ago I use to hate Sundays.  They were usually quite boring and very lonely.   In fact there was a group called “Blue Suede” that had a hit song titled  “Lonely Sunday Afternoon.” Well today was not a typical Sunday for me.  It was anything but lonely and full on rich blessings at every turn.   So today Jeanne was singing a cantata at church and I acted like I wasn’t going.  I hurried abound and did show up.  She was so glad to see me there.  They did a beautiful job and it was a wonderful service. (camera info – Nikon D700 ISO 1600, manual mode shutter 80 @ F2.8 Nikon 24-70mm F-2.8 lens.)

So that was the early service and she had to sing again at 10:45.  Well I had done my spousal thing so I texted Angie to see if I could stop by and see Josh.  I got there about 10:00 am   But before I did I had to stop and shoot the American Gothic that is on display down town.  Pretty neat display.

When I got to Angie and Ben’s place Josh was asleep but it was time for his mid morning feeding.  Ben got the honors.  It is so much fun to watch Ben with his Son Josh.  It is like he is so amazed at this little guy and how phenomenal his life is.  Ben is a really neat guy.

Once he eats he is wide awake and very inquisitive about his surroundings.  I’ll swear the kid is going to hate me as he gets older.  I can just see him calling me Grandpa Flash and running from me and my bright lights 🙂

So after a few dozen shots I left the young family to enjoy their Sunday together and headed out to see what else I could find to shoot. This is a nice image but there is over an hour of post processing here.  I had an off camera flash to Ben’s right and it was about eye level.  With his hat on it left a terrible shadow on part of his face.  I removed that shadow and I learned a lot by doing it but it was a powerful lot of work.  🙂

Each time we go to the kid’s house we go by this barn.  The sun was at the right angle and I liked the way the snow surrounded it so I stopped and took a few shots.  I like the way it turned out.

Then I went West out-of-town and happened by this little stream that I have seen from time to time on my bike rides.  There was a small amount of water running today so I stopped on the bridge and snapped a few images.  At first I liked the scene in color but the more I played with it I decided to retro it in black and white.

Well that’s enough for one day.  It was a busy and very enjoyable Sunday.  I have left you with one more image of Josh right after eating.  I’m thinking this is one great looking kid.  Thanks for stopping by.

I had these grandiose ideas last night of getting up before sun rise and taking some breath-taking Winter scenes.  Well I did get the getting up before sun rise done but then looked at the thermometer and it read 2 above zero with a 10 mph wind.  My grandiose ideas went right back to bed.

So since I haven’t  shot much of anything all week I did take a picture of Maggie out the back door as she surveyed her territory.  Pretty lame I know but I just don’t like the cold.

Okay I did venture out the back patio door far enough to shoot this back yard scene.  Again the sad thing is that this is our neighbor’s back yard not ours.  So I’m just totally lame today but wanted to get something posted since Wednesday.

I hope to get to see Josh today or tomorrow so I’ll have some Josh stuff later today or tomorrow hopefully.

Thanks for stopping by.

Thanks for stopping by.  Today is about pulling some photos from this past week and from some weeks ago as the weather outside has been frightful and I haven’t had an opportunity to shoot.    The image above of Angie and Josh was from a week ago when Ben had to work and Angie brought Josh over for dinner.  I posted some of those pictures earlier.

I liked this shot of Angie but not the back ground so I messed around with my retro technique and I didn’t like it either but decided upon this look, which is about half way through the retro look process.  Hey, maybe I found another technique.

Another Christmas ornament from our tree.  This was another gift from one of Jeanne’s students.  Ornaments seems to be the favorite gift the kids give her.  She’s got a ton of them.  I like this one because it expresses the sentiment of the season.  A time for JOY.

It has been a tough year at our organization.  With the loss of our CFO Krista Grant who was only 43 years old and a part of ownership and the remaining founder of the Ohnward organization Edward Tubbs passed away at the age of 90.

Our company gets it unique spelling by combining the names of our founders.  JOHN Fagerland and EDWARD Tubbs.  so OHN WARD make Ohnward.  I always have to spell it when I’m giving my e-mail address to someone.

Anyway the image above is an image I took of John and Ed at a celebration of the new Ohnward Fine Arts Center (of which they were major donors.)  Ownership decided to use my image  to hang on our corporate headquarters above our corporate sign.  I was very honored.  Al Tubbs said “It’s the best image of the two of them I’ve seen.”

Have a great Wednesday.

Just a quick post today.  These two  images are from a shoot I did this morning for my photo web site.  If you are interested in  “what is up with the Wizards” then you will have to go to my photo web site and click on the navigation button “Wizard.”

I will warn you though you may think, “Well this was certainly a waste of time.” 🙂
Thanks for stopping by.

This is the day that Jeanne and I take our infant CPR course at the American Red Cross in Dubuque.  It is one thing to be a new Grandparent, it is another thing to be prepared should the need arise.  So we signed up for the course and even the freezing rain and heavy snow fall could deter us from our class.

Above Jeanne beams with her perfect score.  She scored 100% in both the CPR and First Aid test.  I on the other hand scored 90% on the CPR test and 100% on the First Aid.

In a rare moment in front of the camera (instead of behind it) Jeanne snapped this shot of me with my new Red Cross CPR certification card.  I did a lot of work in Photoshop to get this presentable for posting.

We were suppose to attend a Christmas party in Anamosa this evening but this view out our back window would help us decide it would probably be wiser to just stay home than to be on the road with a 60 miles + drive in a potential blizzard.

Hope you had a great Saturday.  Thanks for checking out the Blog. 🙂

Here is an image I took yesterday.  I had to be at our bank in Cascade yesterday and on the way home I saw this tree in the field.  It was kind of  at the bottom of a ravine and I liked how full it was.  I had to work with it for sometime in Photoshop to get the look I wanted but I’m pretty happy with it.

On the way over to Cascade I came to the bottom of a large hill and this scene caught my eye.  I’m going to have to quit watching the scenery and pay more attention to the road. 🙂

Special treat last night.  Angie stopped over for dinner with Josh.  Ben had a function to attend last night and Angie wasn’t quite ready to leave the care of Joshua to someone else (even us) so she came with him to enjoy a nice dinner with us.  Of course that is a photo opportunity I cannot pass up.  I like this photo of Jeanne feeding Joshua.  He had put up quit a protest about not getting his dinner and you can just see him thinking “Now that’s what I’m talking about.” 🙂

I love these pictures of Jeanne and Joshua.  Kids in general are her passion but her Grandson is well what ever is beyond passion.  I enjoy watching her nurturing ways.  Thanks for stopping by. 🙂

Thanks for stopping by.  Time constraints have limited my shooting this week.  On the way to work Monday I saw a perfect image.  The sun was shining through some clouds and made a perfect shaft of light to the ground.  I was late for work and so I didn’t stop and take an image of it and I kicked myself most of the day for that decision.

So today is just a mix of some images I made last week.  The one above is of Maggie after Angie, Ben and Josh left Sunday after dinner.  She was sorry to see them go and I liked this look so took a quick snap of her.  She is actually pretty good about posing (okay it’s called holding still) for me.

This is one of the images I took Sunday evening.  I didn’t like the background clutter and I didn’t do a good job lighting the shot so as I worked with it in Photoshop I kind of liked this metallic B&W look so I went with that.

Black and white photography really appeals to me and some images just lend themselves to that format.  I guess it reminds me of all the images I saw growing up because of lot of the art images would be rendered in black and white.

This is another ornament from the Tree shoot.  I don’t remember who gave this to Jeanne.  I want to say it was one of her students but it is certainly one of her favorite ornaments.  I know she will tell me when she reads this post so I’ll correct myself tomorrow.

That’s it for today.  I hope to shoot something today.  Just not a good day if you can’t take a memory of something. 🙂  Be safe.

Angie, Ben, and Joshua stopped by for dinner this evening.  It had been a while (almost 7 days) since we had seen the kids and Josh so it was fun to have them over. 

Just one of the many adorable faces the little guy makes.  He is going to hate the Grandpa who has the flash in his face all the time 🙂

Grandma got into the act.  In fact it was hard to get him away from her.  Thanks for stopping by.

Color Checker RAW

Good Day and Happy Sunday to you.  Some of you will find this post boring but it is something that I learned a few days ago that should help me continue to improve my images.  It is called color calibration.  What it does is build a profile of your camera in a particular shooting environment so that the colors you see are the colors that are really being captured by your camera.  It happens in post processing.

Now admittedly the image above is not very exciting by any stretch of the imagine, however it is very exciting to me because it means that I now have a means of color calibrating my camera.  So look at the image above and pick one of the colors on the bottom half of the checker and then compare those colors to the image below.

Color Check Enabled

Now there may be an almost imperceptible difference in the colors (that’s because you are looking at a 500 mp wide image) but I can tell you the differences are huge.  What this all means is that when taking images I can stick this little color checker in front of my camera (take a shot of it) and then when I’m processing the images for that particular shoot I can create a profile for my camera based on the lighting of the environment I shot in.   Pretty cool.

Okay last night was the MSB Christmas party and Jeanne and I attended.  It was a great time (one because for the first time in almost 18 days I was completely pain-free with no medication at all.)   The food was excellent, the dress was casual (blue jeans) and I got to play Euchre.  Doesn’t get much better than that. 

The image above is the gift the company gave to our employees.  Pretty nice and very practical.  My hats off to the planning committee.  A great evening.  Oh what is different and why now am I pain free?  Well I’m not sure it is the complete answer but I’ve been off Diet Coke for three days.  Big difference in my vision as well.  I’ve been reading some research.  You should too.  Thanks for stopping by.