Sunday ~ April 24, 2016

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

April-23-2016

Happy Sunday!

I haven’t shown any backyard birds for some time so I thought I could get by with showing you a few today.  I was sitting on the patio last evening enjoying the weather and an adult beverage and was watching the birds do their thing.  I used to feed all the birds but they turned the patio into a mine field and an everyday chore of cleaning up their poop.  So now I only feed the Gold Finches.  I love their bright color and they don’t seem to come to the patio to use the bathroom.  🙂

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I was watching this Robin scoot along the back yard looking for worms and as I watched him with the telephoto lens he would hop a few feet and then turn his head like he is in this image.  I don’t study wildlife but it seemed to me that he must be listening for worms making noise assuming they do in fact make noise as they tunnel through the ground.

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Kind of a quasi butt shot but I like the background bokeh the lens produced.  All shots were taken with the Nikon D4 | Sigma 150 – 600 C version lens | ISO 1200 1/1250 sec @ f6.5

That’s all I have for you today.  Thanks for stopping by the blog.  Enjoy your day and be careful.

Thursday ~ April 21, 2016

Posted by Dave Updegraff on April 21, 2016
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , , .

April-20-2016

Happy Thursday!

Busy work day yesterday and then I had training at our banks in Cedar Rapids.  After the training was over I met my son Mark for a wonderful dinner and conversation.  I am blessed to have two wonderful children.  I’m a very proud father.  🙂

Today I wish Master Austin Happy First Birthday!!  Hard to believe that he is one year old today.  I’m a very proud grand father as well.

On the way home last night this is what I saw.  The sky was amazing with some of the most dynamic clouds I have seen lately.  This was not the best sky I saw last night but it was the only one I had time to pull over and photograph.

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

Monday ~ April 18, 2016

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

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Happy Monday!

Not an award-winning image but a sure sign of Spring.  A box-elder bug investigates a dandelion.  We were coming back from the playground Saturday and Josh stopped to pick some flowers for his Mom.  I noticed this little box-elder resting on the dandelion so decided to take some images.  I really didn’t have the right lens but I’m happy with the results.

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

Sunday ~ April 17, 2016

Posted by Dave Updegraff on April 17, 2016
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , .

April-17-2016

Happy Sunday!

We had a visit from the Grands yesterday.  Ben was on call and Angie stopped by with the Grand Kids for a couple of hours.  After playing, eating lunch, and playing some more we walked over to the school playground to burn off some energy.  🙂

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It was a beautiful day weather wise and the playground was full of young children from the neighborhood.  When we purchased our house 22 years ago we were one of about 20 houses in the sub division and there was nothing but farm land behind us.  Now I can’t even begin to tell you how many homes have been built-in the area plus a grammar and middle school.   One of our neighbors put his house on the market last week and it sold the first day.  When I found out how much he got for his house it made me think about selling.  But then again the thought of going through a move put those ideas out of my head pretty quick.

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Austin did not appreciate the bright sun nor the grass on his hands and feet.  It was one of the few times I’ve seen him where he wasn’t all smiles.  I don’t know but doesn’t he look like he has a Donald Trump hair duo? 🙂

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

 

 

Tuesday ~ April 12, 2016

Posted by Dave Updegraff on April 12, 2016
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , .

Upde's Apple Shoot-005-Edit copy

Happy Tuesday!

Just a quick update to my last post about my attempt to replace the hard drive in my 2011 Mac Book Pro.  The new hard drive didn’t arrive (thank you FedEx) until around 10:30 a.m.  I had watched the video several times on how to make the conversion but I was still nervous.  I figured there were any number of ways for me to mess this up.

I was going to photograph the whole process but that idea got away from me when I got into the actual work.  So the first step was to hook the new drive up to a SSD dock that connects to your computer.  Then using the disk utility from Apple, erase the new hard drive and make it suitable for Mac OSX.  Then using a free app called SuperDuper, copy all the files from the old hard drive to the new one using the SSD dock.  On the video that process took 1 hour and 37 minutes.  Mine experience took 5 hours and 45 minutes.  Most of which I spent figuring it was at some point going to give me an error message saying the process had failed. 🙂

Then just before dinner the copy process was done.  It was then a matter of taking the bottom cover off the Mac Book and carefully removing the old hard drive and plugging in the new one.  That process took about 20 minutes.  Button it back up and then the moment of truth.  Turn it on.  It seemed to take a little longer than normal to boot up and I was anxiously waiting for the boot failure message.  But it did boot up and then it was like magic.

It is like a brand new computer.  There is no way to compare but it seems like it is actually faster than when it was new.  Everything works perfectly and programs that took minutes to load now load in a couple of seconds.  WOW!

Now I’m thinking of doing the same thing to my iMac.  It’s pretty slow as well.  Stay tuned.

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

Sunday ~ April 10, 2016

Posted by Dave Updegraff on April 10, 2016
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , , .

April-09-2016

Happy Sunday!

I haven’t been doing much photography the last few days as is evident by the lack of posts on this blog.  I intend to correct that moving forward.

Yesterday afternoon Jeanne and I went on a photo drive.  Visited a lot of our favorite places and there just wasn’t anything worthy of an image.  Friday evening I was standing on the back patio and saw a large flock of pelicans flying over.  I reasoned that they would be at the 16th Basin or at the River on Saturday.  We found three pelicans floating in the middle of the channel.  Much too far away for a photograph.

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My friend Andreas has been photographing and following an owl at the Mud Lake Park North of Dubuque.  She has hatched two owlets this year so we drove up to the Mud Lake area hoping to catch a glimpse of the owl and her offspring.  She was nowhere to be found and the young ones must have been hunkered down in the nest.  We watched for a long time but nothing.

We did find these Blue-Winged Teal swimming around.  So we watched them for a half hour or more.  Lots of fun watching any wildlife interacting with its environment.  You can click on the images and make them larger for better viewing.

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I have a project I’m going to try tomorrow.  I have a 2011 Mac Book Pro that I bought new.  It was blink fast speed when it was new and now is so slow I stopped using it.

I put a new battery in it and have had some other issues but it’s a great computer and I hate to get rid of it.  So while doing a Google® search on how to speed up a Mac Book Pro the central suggestion was to replace the original hard drive with a SSD hard drive.  There were several videos available to demonstrate the process so I’m going to try it tomorrow.  I’ll let you know how it goes.  🙂

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

 

Tuesday ~ April 05, 2016

Posted by Dave Updegraff on April 5, 2016
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , , .

April-04-2016

Happy Tuesday!

I went on two photo excursions this weekend and this is the best image I have for you.  😦

I spent a fair amount of time at Green Island yesterday hoping for some migrating wildlife.  Unfortunately I must still be a little early.  The weather conditions were not good for photography either.  A gray overcast day which made me really boost the ISO on my camera.  I like to shoot at 1/1600 shutter speed with the long lens, so it made the ISO sometimes as high as 6400.  The Nikon D4S handles that ISO pretty well with minimal noise.

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I saw a lot of these Northern Shovelers in various places around the wetlands but never in large groups.  Normally they would fly away before I could even get close.  I captured this little guy after sitting in the same spot for 25 minutes.  He finally swam past me and I was able to make the image.

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This little Pied-Billed Grebe is fun to watch.  They really scoot around the water and it is hard to get a sharp image of them.  I got him the same way I got the Shoveler by sitting in one spot for a long time waiting for them to get use to me.  🙂

Sunday Jeanne and I went on a photo run that turned into more of a Sunday drive than a photo experience.  We had strong winds and there just wasn’t any wildlife at any of our normal stops.  We did find a couple of Blue Herons at the 16th Street Basin but they were well hidden by the overgrowth and I could not get a good focus on them.

I may have to put the long lens away for awhile and concentrate on subjects other than wildlife.

That’s it for today.  Thanks for checking out the blog.  I hope you enjoy your day and be careful.

Thursday ~ March 31, 2016

Posted by Dave Updegraff on March 31, 2016
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , .

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Happy Thursday!

Been a busy work week so far.  I’ve also been working on processing the head shots from the photo shoot I did last week.  I love taking portraits and I really enjoy working on them as well.  The more I photograph people the more I’m convinced that it is much easier to photograph wildlife then people. 🙂

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There are just so many variables in doing portrait photography.  I mentioned in an earlier post that I used to use a green screen for my portrait work.  It was a real struggle to get the skin tones correct.  I finally decided to shoot with a neutral gray background and that made all the difference in the world.  It is much easier to get the white balance correct and once that is correct the skin tones are much easier to get right.

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Then there is the lighting.  It is very easy to over power the portrait with too much light and by the same token you can create too many shadows with not enough light or with the lights in the wrong position.  I’m always looking for the right combination of lights to properly expose the portrait.

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Finally I want to help people look their best in the photograph without adding too much enhancement.  It is always a fine balancing act.

All told, I’m pretty happy with this session.  I will deliver the final product tomorrow and hope that everyone is happy with their photograph.  If they are then I consider it a great success.

That’s it for today.  Thanks for stopping by the blog.  Hope you enjoy your day and be careful.

Monday ~ March 28, 2016

Posted by Dave Updegraff on March 28, 2016
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , .

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Happy Monday!

I hope you had a wonderful Easter.  Please indulge me today as I have images of my three grandchildren.  Saturday we celebrated Gabby’s 3rd birthday.  Ben’s parents and younger brother Nick were there and it was a wonderful time spent with family.

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It’s so much fun to watch the kids interact.  At his age it is sometimes difficult for Josh to let Gabby be in the spot light but he managed pretty well.  He is very good at thinking things through and making the right decision.

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Austin now smiles every time I put a  camera up to my eye.  I’m not sure if it is because it covers my face or that he is now conditioned to the camera.  🙂

Anyway it was a wonderful weekend and we got to spend time with the family on both Saturday and Sunday.  Mark made it up for Easter so it was a great time.

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