Monday ~ July 25, 2016

Posted by Dave Updegraff on July 25, 2016
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , .

JoeMcN

Happy Monday!

The great Joe McNally.  We had our first session last evening starting at 6:00 p.m. and lasting until 9:00 p.m.  It was more or less a presentation of the instructors and their work.  Then Joe did a retrospect of his career and I was simply blown away.  I’ve always been a huge fan of his but to see his work and listen to his passion as he talks about it was enriching.

Sorry the only thing I had for a camera was my iPhone.

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Saw this on our walk through downtown on Saturday.

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One of the many street signs I photographed on Saturday’s walk.

That’s it for today.  Gotta run, we have an early morning shoot and I have to get out the door.  More to come…

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

Sunday ~ July 24, 2016

Posted by Dave Updegraff on July 24, 2016
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , , , .

July-22-2016

Happy Sunday!

Good Morning from Nashville!  I have several images for you today.  We went downtown Nashville yesterday afternoon and I shot a hundred images.  I enjoy street photography but it can have some tense moments especially if you’re photographing someone who doesn’t want to be photographed.  🙂

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Some more images of the Gateway Arch from St. Louis on Friday.  As you can see from the first image there is a lot of construction going on.  Basically they have leveled everything around the Arch and are in the process of building a tourist shop / museum around the arch.

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I mentioned yesterday about seeing a “pedal bar” our first night in Nashville.    Yesterday, downtown we saw lots of them.  I’m not the brightest light in the hallway of life but there has to be a secondary power source.  This one went by and only a few of the participants were peddling.  Interesting notation is that all the pedal bars we saw yesterday were fully occupied by women.  🙂

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Another observation is there are countless bars downtown.  I don’t mean just a few bars, I mean almost every building is a multi story bar.  They were all full and people and many folks standing outside waiting to get in.  I have no idea the amount of adult beverages being consumed yesterday afternoon and into the evening.  But if I had a dollar for every dollar spent on booze in the downtown area yesterday I could probably buy a lot more camera gear. 🙂

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A close up of the top deck.  🙂

All and all it was a fun, albeit very hot and humid stroll around the downtown area.  I was very glad to get back to the air conditioning of the car.

Today at 6:00 p.m. my training starts.  I’m excited to meet Bill Fortney and the other 13 students.  More to come…

Thanks for checking out the blog.  Enjoy your day.  Stay cool and be careful.

 

 

Saturday ~ July 23, 2016

Posted by Dave Updegraff on July 23, 2016
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , , , , .

July-21-2016

Happy Saturday!

The odyssey has finally begun.  As you can tell from the image above this isn’t Kansas Dorothy.  So the news that I’ve been hinting about for sometime is finally here.  As I write this blog I am sitting at a breakfast counter drinking a cup of Hazel Nut coffee in Nashville Tennessee.

The reason I’m here is to attend a 5 day photography class instructed by Bill Fortney a professional photographer that I have followed for years.  Additionally among other instructors the great Joe McNally will be teaching one day.  The class is limited to 14 students and runs from 6:00 a.m. until 9:00 p.m. so there will be little time for much of anything else.  My hope is to keep the blog up during the experience.

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Thursday evening Jeanne an I attend a St. Louis Cardinals baseball game.  The temperature was 98 degrees with a heat index of 110 – 115 degrees.  I cannot remember being as hot and miserable at any one time as I was that evening.  We finally left the stadium at the top of the 8th inning and walked across the street to our hotel.  We sat in heavenly air conditioning with wine and food and watched the last two innings of the game.  Which the Cardinals won by the way.  🙂

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Friday morning we took long walk around the Arch (much of surrounding area is under construction)  We were still able to get up close and personal with it. When the construction is completed it will be a wonderful addition.

Last night after arriving in Nashville we had a great dinner at an outdoor bar and grill.  It was fun watching all the interesting night life of the city.  I saw a “pedal bar” for the first time.  Several party buses (open air variety) stopped by the outdoor bar so it was a fun evening.

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I have an open day today and then class starts tomorrow afternoon.  It promises to be an exciting week culminating in doing a concert shoot  Thursday evening during the Ricky Skaggs performance.  Ricky is an accomplished photographer as well as being a 14 Grammy award winner.  He will also teach a couple of the sessions.

Thanks for checking out the blog.  Stay cool and be careful.

Monday ~ July 18, 2016

Posted by Dave Updegraff on July 18, 2016
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , .

July-17-2016

Happy Monday!

I’m getting really lax in my posting to my blog.  It’s been a whole week since I last posted.  Busy times and lack of time behind the camera.  The lack of images will change in the coming days.  I have exciting news which I will reveal in one week.  🙂

Yesterday was a fun day.  It started with giving my road bike to Mark who immediately fell in love with it and it’s great knowing that he will get a lot of use out of it.  I still have my “fitness” bike, which is sort of a modified hybrid.  It’s a lot slower than the road bike but I’m in no hurry to get where I’m going now.

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So he took it for a quick spin and I could tell by the smile on his face that he was going to enjoy it.

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Then we got a text from Angie to come over and watch Gabby ride her bike.  She went straight from the “balance” bike to this bike (with no training wheels.)  She still has a little trouble with corners and occasionally braking but she is already riding like a pro.

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She had one accident while we were there.  Nothing serious, thank God, but she was pretty shaken up by it.  A magic bandage was applied and back on the bike she got with this smile on her face.  🙂

That’s it for today.  Thanks for stopping by the blog.  Enjoy your day and be careful.  Stay tuned. 🙂

Monday ~ July 11, 2016

Posted by Dave Updegraff on July 11, 2016
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , .

July-08-2016-XX

Happy Monday!

Only one image for you today and a very short post.  I found this guy in the parking lot last Thursday as I was leaving for the day.  Two things I’m not happy with but over all how can I resist showing a beautiful Monarch Butterfly?

I don’t like the background.  It’s a parking lot!  I wasn’t paying attention to my shutter speed so the over all image is much softer than I like.  I shot this at 300 mm focal length and a shutter speed of 1/100 sec.  Standard rule is that your shutter speed must be at the very least as high as your focal length.  Many professionals will say it needs to be double the focal length because of the increased detail that the new lenses can capture.  So in this instance I would have had a much sharper image if I had raised my ISO to say 400 and that would have let me photograph this butterfly at 1 /600 sec. thus eliminating any camera shake.

Live and learn to pay attention.  🙂

Thanks for stopping by the blog.  Enjoy the “soft butterfly” and enjoy your day.

Saturday ~ July 09, 2016

Posted by Dave Updegraff on July 9, 2016
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , , , .

July-08-2016-A

Happy Saturday!

A potpourri of images for you today.  I had a meeting down town yesterday morning and after that I headed for the river with my long lens.  Found a group of pelicans fishing near the lock so I spent some time photographing them.  I didn’t realize until halfway through my session that there was a lady below me on the walkway who was also photographing the pelicans.

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This is a favorite fishing hole for many local anglers and when a group of pelicans are hanging around it there are very few fish available for the humans.  I was getting ready to leave when fisherman crossed over and took up his position on the outside wall of the lock.  I obviously didn’t know his intent but it looked as though he was trying to scare the pelicans off with his casts.

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At first, I thought this was a stick protruding from the water but it kept moving and when I looked at it through my lens I saw it was a turtle swimming towards the shore line.  The more I watched the more turtles I saw swimming in the same direction.  I was probably there 30 – 45 minutes and didn’t notice them until I saw this one.  Then when I started looking for them, they were plentiful.

July-08-2016

Grilled some burgers last night and as I was enjoying the mild weather on the patio I noticed the sliver of moon.  I grabbed my “small bird” camera that I keep on a tripod and set up with the 400 mm lens (a little small for the moon) and made a couple of shots of the moon.

That’s it for today.  Supposed to be a beautiful day in our part of the world.  Hope it is where you are as well.  Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your day and be careful.

Thursday ~ July 07,2016

Posted by Dave Updegraff on July 7, 2016
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , .

July-06-2016

Happy Thursday!

A short post today with two images.  The one above was taken with my camera by my friend Tom.   I am teaching a 5 week leadership course this year and for four hours our interns attend part of that class.  Great group of young people, very smart and wonderful to work with.

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This is an image I took with the Phantom for my friend Tom who is the head of Maquoketa Farmers’ Market.  It may end up being the one they use but I have others.  It was a good flight.  No one was injured, nothing broken, no property damage.  🙂

You can click on the images to make them larger and reveal more detail.

That’s it for today.  Enjoy your day.  Stormy in our part of the country today.  Thanks for stopping by and be careful.

Wednesday ~ July 06, 2016

Posted by Dave Updegraff on July 6, 2016
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , .

July-05-2016

Happy Wednesday!

I literally have  thousands of images of Canadian geese and now I have one more.  I didn’t start my journey yesterday actually looking to photograph one.  I didn’t have any lunch plans yesterday so I grabbed my camera and headed out.  It is the worst time of the day to take images but you never know when you might get lucky.

This was at the end of my search for subjects (of which I found none) and I was coming back into town past the “duck pond” when I had to pull off the road and stop to keep from hitting some geese that were making their way back to the marsh.  I had my 28 – 300 mm lens and shot this at a focal length of 125 mm so he was up close and personal.  He kept his eye on me while the rest of the geese made it across the road.  There were a couple of other vehicles that had to stop as well.  Risky crossing for them but this time they were lucky.

Yesterday afternoon I went to the farmers’ market in Maquoketa.  The organizer of the market had asked me if I would come down and take some aerial photos of the market for their advertising material.  Since he is a friend of mine and I think the market is good for Maquoketa I said sure.

So I took the Phantom out of mothballs and got it ready to fly over the weekend.  I think I got some good footage of the market but didn’t have time to look at them yet so I’ll do that this evening.

That’s it for today.  Thanks for stopping by the blog.  Exciting news coming to this blog in a couple of weeks.  <  Teaser!!  🙂

Enjoy your day and be careful.

Sunday ~ July 03, 2016

Posted by Dave Updegraff on July 3, 2016
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , .

July-02-2016

Happy Sunday!

I have several unrelated images for you today.  I saw this landscape on the way home the other evening from work and I liked the clouds, of course, and the pattern of the freshly mowed hay.

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I’ll show you the last of the intern portraits I did a couple of weeks ago.  They are a great bunch of students and incredibly smart.  It’s too bad you don’t see more of these types of young people on the news.  It’s because of millennials like these that gives me hope that the future hold some promise.

This is Kylie one of our interns.  I’m not sure you could take a bad portrait of her.

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This young man is Adam and he is interning with our IT department.

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Last but not least is Tess.  She was an intern with us last year and now this year she is managing the intern program.  Great bunch of young people who really keep me on my toes.

I haven’t been posting any images for awhile.  A combination of work and creative funk have curtailed my photography to a large degree.   I hope to get back on track soon.  Thank you Melinda and others for your kind words and concerns.

That’s it for today.  I hope you have a wonderful holiday weekend.  Be careful.

Sunday ~ June 26, 2016

Posted by Dave Updegraff on June 26, 2016
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , .

June-22-2016-2A

Happy Sunday!

A couple more portraits for you today from the Intern Photo Shoot of last week.  I’m pretty happy with the results of this particular shoot and as I look back over my learning curve of the last ten years I have made progress.  Long way to go but it’s a journey.

These young folks are so much fun to be around.  They are super smart and personable.  My interaction with them aside from the photography is to teach a weekly leadership class.  I really enjoy that and hopefully they will derive some benefit from the lessons.

I have to admit I was a total veg yesterday.  Jeanne and Paula (other grandma) set with the grand kids most of the day yesterday as Angie and Ben had an engagement to attend.  Jeanne’s favorite thing to do is be with the grand kids.  So since they had dual coverage I had a list of things I wanted to do.  Didn’t do one thing but napped most of the afternoon.  I’m so ashamed.  🙂

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A friend asked me last week if there was anything I don’t like about portrait photography.  That was an easy question.  I do not like the set up and tear down.  It’s a lot of work and time intensive.  I’m usually nervous about getting everything right so that adds to the mix.  It would be wonderful if I had a studio where I could just leave everything set up and achieve a consistent look.  Right now my slogan is “Have studio, will travel.” 🙂

That’s it for today.  Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your day and be careful.