Upde Designs

A couple of weeks ago Jeanne and I met some good friends at the Star Brewery Restaurant for dinner.  Of course I had my camera along so while we were waiting on our friends we were looking at all the stuff in the lobby.  I didn’t have a tripod (I’m not that bad) with me so I had to bump the ISO up to about 2000 and still I could only get a shutter speed of 1/40.

So there was just a bit of camera shake in this image (so much for image stabilization lenses.)   Anyway the next day as I was culling my images from the past  day I just passed over this one because it was a little too soft for me.

Well I decided today to sharpen the devil out of it and got this sort of surreal looking image, which I kind of like.  So I guess you should never give up on an image until you’ve tried a lot of different things.

I was asked by a friend the other day if I shot anything other than scenery.  Yes I said, but the problem is when you turn your camera on someone they usually either put their hand up or ask you not to take their picture.

I completely  understand this as well.  There are times when I would welcome photos of myself.  When I’m at a good weight and freshly scrubbed 🙂  Other times like maybe now when I’ve put on my Winter weight I’m not so thrilled.

On our trip to Bellevue  last week we stopped at a new restaurant called the “Off Shore.”  Wonderful place to relax and have a great meal.  This young waitress (above) “Anna” who is only 18 was a real delight.  She was so bubbly and friendly.  She engaged us in conversation and gave us great service. We all really liked her.  She told us that she was attending NICC and what her plans were.  Very thoughtful young lady.

Anyway as we were ready to leave I asked her  (I always do) if I could take her image and she just smiled and said “no problem” then gave me this pose.  The image above is just the way came out of the camera (in RAW format) with no retouching of any kind.  The shot below was after some minor touch up and adding a background in Photoshop to make a nice looking person look their best.

So which one do you like?  Which one would you want to frame? Enjoy your weekend.

Every once in a while I do not have a lunch meeting scheduled and then I get to take my camera out on my lunch hour and shoot.  There are a couple of things wrong with this time of day.  One of which is usually the lighting.  It is high noon and that means the harshest light of the day.  Second there isn’t much time available to look for some quality shots.  But hey, it is an opportunity to take images so it’s not all bad.

So today was one of those days when I didn’t have a luncheon engagement and so I grabbed a sub sandwich and headed out-of-town to try to find something interesting to shoot.  I couldn’t find any machinery in the fields and nothing else of interest showed up so as I was coming back into town I noticed this old barn with a couple of horses in the lot.

So I tried to get an interesting shot but as you can see this doesn’t do much in the way of evoking any emotion about the photo.  So I made the image black and white to try to capture something but it is still a lame shot.    Thanks for checking in.

One of the things I enjoy about this time of year is the “Golden Hour” of sunlight, which is perfect for photography and occurs during the time that I am normally driving home.  The light is so soft and warm that it makes something normally just  ordinary  look so good.

This lowly combine was sitting in a field that was almost done.  It is rather a small combine and probably pretty old but I thought it looked interesting sitting in the field with the setting sun light falling on it.

I like this image because to me it says that the end of the harvest time is near and as I watch the fields on my commute I notice many of them have been stripped of their crop and now lay barren under the Autumn sky.

There really wasn’t a good place to stop and take this image but as I looked to the left I saw this distant farm silhouetted against the setting sun and so I just stopped and although still on the road, I grabbed my D700 and shot away.  I like the way it turned out.

Yesterday, (Saturday Oct 16, 2010) My wife and I got up early and traveled to Bellevue, Iowa about 25 miles South of Dubuque.  We met Steve and Becki Kent (Becki also shares a passion for photography) for a cup of coffee at the Happy Java Bean and then we set out to photograph some of the sites of Bellevue.

There are so many opportunities in this small river community.  Wow practically everywhere you turn there is a great picture just waiting to be taken.

We did the river walk first and I captured this image (above.)  I was going to do a “golden pond” look but this is just about the way it came out of the camera and I really liked the silhouette look so I decided to stay with that.

We shot a bunch more photos (see my photography page on my website) and then drove over to Bellevue State Park.  There were lots of people there mostly just enjoying the wonderful Fall day.  We saw a wedding being preformed by the river view look out,  so we went over by the Indian Burial Mounds and watched a large river barge lock through the damn.

Then we walked over  to the “Butter Fly Garden”, so named I suppose because of the variety of flowers that must attract migrating butterflies.  We only saw a couple of butterflies and couldn’t get a good shot of them but I did capture this really pretty flower.  I had the wrong lens to take flower shots and there were lots of flowers to shoot.  I was lucky to get this one.  I had to crop it more than I wanted to fit the blog.  There is a better one on my website.

There was a young “professional” photographer at the park shooting a young couple and their small daughter.  I stopped and talked with her for a little while.  That is one of the nice things about photography.  You can walk up to anyone that has a camera and you have an instant conversation.  She actually was a second year student in a photography school.  She was shooting a Cannon EOS Mark 5 with a 70-200 mm  F2.8 lens.  I was very envious (not of the Cannon but the lens.) major $$$$.  We ran into them several times as we made our way around the park and I took note of the different back drops she was using for the shoot.  She shot all her images using a tripod.  It is a pain to carry and set up a tripod but it is about the only way to get “tack sharp” images with a digital camera and a long lens.

We ate lunch at a brand new restaurant called Off Shore (Okay I think that is what it was called-damn shot term memory is a real problem.) It is just about a mile from downtown Bellevue  (North) and has only been open about two weeks.  The service was wonderful and the food was really great.  I highly recommend their “Awesome” fries.  There are three levels of outdoor decks you can enjoy or go inside, which is nicely appointed.  Boats can dock from the river and enjoy the restaurant as well.

We went back to Bellevue and toured their series of art galleries on Main Street.  Very nice and lots of great art including some really nice photo images (some of which is for sale.)  They feature a lot of local artist and it is a wonderful venue for artist to display their creations.

This day was such a wonderful experience we decided to do this on a quarterly basis.  Meeting at a different community each quarter and photograph the sights and flavor of the community showcasing the four seasons.  Next stop is the town of Galena, Ill in December.

We said goodbye to Steve and Becki about 2:30 pm and headed back to Dubuque.  On the way back I stopped and shot several images of three different barns.  (My wife suggested that I concentrate on my driving and stop looking for photo opportunities :). ) I’m beginning to really enjoy shooting barns.  They are very interesting and there are a lot of them.

This is one of the three barns I shot.  Take a look at my photography page on my web site to see the other two. This one is not necessarily my favorite barn.  In fact I shot an image of “twin barns” that is actually my favorite for right now.   So my goal now is to find a barn image that is better than my current favorite.  It was a great day to be sure.

Well of course it is.  Okay maybe this one is over the top (a little)  but again it evokes some type of emotion from the viewer.  You either love, like, dislike, or hate it.  The original (below) just the way it came out of the camera doesn’t evoke any emotion at least from me.

I remember shooting this when I was in Madison, WI at the GSB HR school.  I was walking with some new found friends on State Street and it was hotter than the hubs of hell.  I was tired, hot, and all I wanted to do was go back to my room at the hotel and grab a shower.

As is my habit I had my Nikon  D90 with me and saw this older gentleman sitting on the walkway.  In an instant thoughts went through my head about him and his life situation and that made me want to capture this image.  As soon as I shot it he looked at me and scowled so there wasn’t an opportunity for more images.

When I got back to my room and downloaded the image into Lightroom 3 it looked like a throw away until yesterday when I saw it again and decided to work with it a little.  I don’t know maybe it is a bit contrasty and over bright but I like it much better than the original.

I have worked with the photo until I’m sick of it.  This has so many problems with it I don’t know where to begin.  Well for starters there is way too much green in it.  It was shot at the wrong time of day and a given that I should have used a flash to help neutralize the sun.  I shot it in HDR and it really doesn’t lend itself to an HDR format.

I also didn’t shoot it at the correct angle.  I should have lowered the tripod and shot it from eye level with the statue.  I don’t even remember who the statue represents.  I did I just forgot.

This could have been a great shot.  Just goes to show I still have a lot to learn.  The good news is that I’m still learning 🙂

I had watched a video on photography today and part of the lesson was that you can go anywhere and find things to make beautiful images of. And the point was that you should take your camera with you at all times.  So this evening Jeanne and I were suppose to meet two dear friends at the Star Brewery Restaurant.

None of us had ever eaten there so I certainly didn’t know what to expect.  But as we pulled in the parking lot there up on an elevated embankment was this train just sitting there waiting to move.  The light was perfect (the golden hour) and the sky was a brilliant blue so I shot about 20 pictures.

Never mind that we were late and that our friends were already wondering about us.  I mean you have to have your priorities straight right?  Anyway we had a wonderful evening with them, lots of great conversation.  Excellent food and drinks and the service was great as well.

So like I said.  I rarely go anywhere without my camera.  I’m happiest when I have one in my hand.

This is a conversation my wife and I have all the time.  How much Photoshop is too much?  Well take the image above.  It was taken from about 2,000 feet from inside a 1970s vintage air plane, complete with sun washed windows and a slight fog  burnt into the windows from 40 years of use.

Now in my mind no one is going to look at this image and feel much of anything other than perhaps it is a crappy photo.  Contrast that with the one below, which is moderately enhanced in Photoshop.  That photo will elicit some emotion.  Either “Wow, I love that” or “Wow I hate that.”  Either one is better than “Oh, that’s a nice picture.

Anyway I guess it still comes back to the old tried and true saying that “Beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder.”  Well truth be known, I like it a lot (the one below that is) so good, bad, or indifferent I will continue to apply my limited Photoshop skills to my photographic images. 🙂

I’ll try not to ramble on this subject but I can make no promises.  I was driving to work last week and went by this new house (out in the country) and in the unfinished front yard of this house was an old piece of machinery.   I didn’t know what it was but it looked interesting.

So having thought about it for several days in a row I finally stopped this evening to see if the owner would let me photograph it.  Now I still had my suit on and as I pulled into the driveway it became apparent to me that no one was living there yet. There was a lot of dust in the air from all the harvesting and very little grass in the front of the house.  So I could leave or stay and take some images.

I stayed and took some shots but I was a little uncomfortable because no one was there and so I didn’t get my tripod out and I didn’t take an HDR image, which the shot cried out for.  I don’t know I just didn’t feel right being there and so I just shot quickly and then left.

I shot 20 quick images and then came home.  I downloaded into LightRoom 3 and then the question is do I go with a black and white image or color?  I always have trouble deciding.  So the image above this post is the black and white that I also posted on upde.net and below is the color image of the same shot.

I’d be interested to know what anyone else thinks.