Happy St. Patrick’s Day. I was traveling some back roads last week and came across this goat farm. I had never see so many goats in one place.
Not much in the way of background but the goats didn’t seem to mind my presence near the fence.
Never know what you’re going to find on the back roads of Iowa.
Enjoy your day, drink responsibly, and be careful.
I only have about 10,000 plus images of Canada Geese over the last 20 years but I was at a new location yesterday and finally taking some images with a new lens I purchased in November.
I focused on one particular goose as you can see in the above image.
He / She was taking a bath and really have fun. I stayed with this goose for most
of the shoot. He was very animated the entire time.
It had been some time since I had photographed any wildlife and my difficulty keeping the lens on the bird showed a lot of rust.
Thanks for stopping by. Enjoy your day and be careful.
It’s been a long time since I last posted an image on the blog. I normally don’t have this long of a dry spell, but just couldn’t find anything that interested me.
I found this tree on a drive around last week and really liked it enough to make a U turn and go back to photograph it. Then in post processing I realized that I had photographed this same tree some years ago. Oh well, I still like it. 🙂
Enjoy your day and be careful.
Just a quick post today. Went out yesterday to capture some setting sun images and didn’t do a very good job of that.
So as I was driving to the spot I wanted to take images of I came by this nice home with a big yard and found 7 deer eating the grass. I almost stopped but experience told me if I did and take the time to get the camera ready they would bolt.
So I drove on past. Stopped a way from them, got my camera ready and drove past them again. I got a couple of images before they took off. You can click on the images to see a larger more detailed image if you like.
So I finally arrived at the barn I wanted to shoot during sunset. I had a picture in my head that I wanted to achieve but it didn’t quite turn out the way I wanted it to. I’ll try again on another day.
I enhanced this a little bit in post processing but got something like I wanted. There will be another day to try to make the image I have in my head.
Enjoy your day and be careful.
Welcome.
I was in Maquoketa today to have lunch with some friends. I hadn’t seen them in a month so I was glad to get together. I first met these two when I started working in Maquoketa 25 years ago. Our first lunch we flipped to see who would have to buy lunch. I lost that first flip.
We continue that tradition to this day. 25 years of flipping coins to see who has to buy lunch. I lost today and one of my friends said, “Well you can’t lose them all if you don’t lose the first one.”
I always like to stop by the Hurstville Dam, just to see what’s going on with the river. It always amazes me how running water can freeze.
Another one of my favorite places to check out is the Prairie Creek Park. The small pond was frozen over and I couldn’t find any wildlife to photograph, still I thought it made a pretty image.
Not the best naked tree image but there it was so why not take the shot.
Enjoy your day and be careful.
Welcome
I have a few images from the last couple of weeks traveling the back roads of Eastern Iowa.
I enjoy traveling the back roads looking for interesting images. Sometimes hard to find something different as I have been doing this for the last 25 years.
I always enjoy finding old barns and farm structures. It helps if the sky is interesting as well. So many of these old structures are testament to the building skills of days gone by.
This is one of the most interesting skies I have seen in recent years. The light from a setting sun mixed with still white clouds over a nice blue sky.
It is always fun to photograph a setting sun even if it isn’t over water or lots of clouds to cast a light from the sun. I still like this one and found a place to park. Waited for 30 minutes for the sun to finally go down.
Enjoy your day and be careful.
Welcome
We decided to go out for a little drive yesterday afternoon, even though it was somewhat overcast and of course brown.
Came across this old barn structure. You know, if you’ve followed this blog for very long I have a great love for old barns. The older the better and the more they are deteriorating the better.
I walked up to the residence to seek permission to photograph this old guy in greater detail but after several knocks and no answer I left. I won’t go on someone’s property without permission. I was standing on the road for this shot.
Closer to dusk we came across this wonderful sky with just the hint of the sun behind the clouds. One of those situations where you get as far off the road as possible with flashers on and grab a few shots as quickly as possible.
On the way home near sunset we saw this wonderful sky. I had to take the shot.
Thanks for checking out the blog. Enjoy your day and be careful.
Welcome
Jeanne and I went to the river the other day looking for photos. Saw these Mallards floating by the boat ramp area. I only have 4,000 images of mallard ducks but what the heck we were there and I had my camera.
However something strange happened. Normally when I approach any type of wild life they turn their backs to me and swim, fly, or run in the opposite direction. However, in this case they actually started walking towards me.
Then it occurred to me. I’ve been to this boat ramp before and have witnessed people throwing bread and other food item at what ever wildlife is available. Kind of like Pavlov’s dog… (1849–1936), Russian physiologist; full name Ivan Petrovich Pavlov. He is best known for his studies on the conditioned reflex)
As we headed to the lock & dam we saw a lone fishing boat on the surprisingly open water. We had expected to see more frozen patches on the river.
Finally had to take another image of the lock and dam itself. The clouds were rolling in and was in the process of blocking the setting sun so it was time to head back home.
Thanks for stopping by my blog. Enjoy your day and. be careful.
We brought our new home and moved into it on December 18, 1992. A terrible time to move especially with young children, who were all ready in the Christmas expectation of Christmas and toys.
That Saturday we were still unpacking and trying to get some normalcy back in our lives, when we heard sirens. There were a lot of sirens and I looked out the window and saw an ambulance and fire truck moving very slowly down the street towards our house. Jeanne and the kids came out to see what was going on.
As the fire truck got closer to our house I could begin to see what was going on. The fire truck pass by our house and Santa threw out some candy for the kids even though they were still on the porch.
So 32 years later Santa is still coming to our community on the Saturday before Christmas playing Christmas music and throwing candy (lots of candy) to all the children on the street. For most of those 32 years our children and grandchildren have witnessed the wonder of Santa Clause in the fire truck
And now our youngest grandson got to witness his first Santa in a fire truck.
Thanks for stopping by. I’ve been busy making images, just haven’t had the time to work on them. More to come tomorrow.
Enjoy our day and be careful. Oh and I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and I’m praying that we all have a wonderful 2025. God bless.
It’s been some time since my last post. No excuses other than to say that I had to get a new computer and it has taken a long time to get everything transferred over and then trying to find the right password for the right program has been nothing short of a nightmare.
Adding to the delay was a faulty image card, which I didn’t know was faulty until I tried to upload some images I had taken. So deciding if it was a card program or something to do with the new setup took some time.
As fellow photographers will attest, this is not the best time of the year for photographs or drones for that matter. One good thing is there are a lot of naked trees to. photograph.
I took some unfamiliar roads home from Maquoketa yesterday and found some vintage farm equipment so that made me happy to have finally something that I could post.
Appreciate any comments positive or negative just to know you are out there. 🙂
Enjoy your day and be careful.
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