It’s been sometime since I last burdened you with images of birds so that is what I have for you today. I love these little Gold Finches. They are all that I am feeding this summer. When the colder weather comes I’ll start feeding all the birds but for this summer I have only fed the finches and provided a full bird bath for all the birds.
A real treat yesterday as I got to play golf with some good friends. If I was to design the perfect weather day it would have been a day like yesterday. Big puffy white clouds, beautiful blue sky, temperature around 72 degrees, low humidity and just enough of a breeze to keep the bugs at bay.
I have never been blessed with any athletic abilities. My eye-hand coordination is suspect at best but golf is one sport that I had some success with. Lots of practice, a bunch of golf lessons, and a fair amount of playing at one point got me down to a 9 handicap.
However as life, work, and kids made more demands on my time what little ability I had gained soon evaporated. I finally quit playing except in special outing type events like best shot and group effort type matches.
Knowing that I had this game coming up at a nice golf course I called my old golf instructor and took another lesson. In no time he had me hitting the ball with some proficiency again. I hit practice balls over the weekend and was confident that I could at least play good enough not to embarrass myself.
I was wrong. What little game I thought I had deteriorated in the blink of an eye. I lost 11 golf balls, had a thee digit score and drew the attention of the roaming ranger more than once. 😦
Truth is I’d much rather photograph a golf course than play on it. The clubs are back where they belong and can no longer do any damage to me or the golf course. I will stick to photography and leave the golfing to those who have abilities.
That’s it for today. Enjoy your day and be careful.
Nothing on my mind this morning but did want to share this scene I photographed last week. I didn’t touch a camera over the weekend. Been working on a project and just wasn’t inspired to go capture any images.
That’s all I have for today. Thanks for stopping by the blog. Enjoy your day and be careful.
I have some post birthday snapshots for you today. I call them snapshots because they were quick, shoot from the hip type shots without much thought to composition or camera settings. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.
Above Jeanne shows off her big bowl with all the kids foot and hand prints on it and a wonderful tribute to her. She was thrilled to have it. She is also wearing a special birthday hat that Josh spent hours making for her.
We had the kids over for her birthday dinner celebration. Only downside was that Mark couldn’t join us but he will be here this evening.
Jeanne has wanted me to go to the River Center Museum for years. I have to admit that aside from funerals and weddings visiting a museum is right up there on my top 10 list of things I do not want to do. But as a part of her birthday I took her to visit the Titanic Exhibit at the River Center Museum.
It was amazing. If you have an opportunity to go I strongly encourage you to do so. I’ll tell you just one part of the experience. When you “board” the exhibit you are given a boarding pass that has complete information about one of the passengers and what “class” ticket they had.
It helps in understanding the class distinction and as you progress through the exhibit you also progress through time from departure to the impact and eventual sinking. The artifacts from the Titanic are breathtaking. They have been under water 2.5 miles deep with 6,000 pounds of pressure per square inch, for 40 years. They are encased in humidity / temperature controlled display cases and are as I said just breathtaking to view.
When you reach the end of the exhibit you find out if your person was a survivor or perished. Interestingly the most survivors were crew members, first class ticket holders and the ones who fared the worst was of course the third class ticket holders.
Your boarding pass also give you some information about the person, what they did as a profession and why they were on the ship. My person was a prominent businessman who had just concluded a successful business deal and was traveling back to the states first class. He didn’t survive. 😦
We toured the rest of the Museum as well and I have to admit it is a wonderful place that I will revisit from time to time. 🙂
We had a wonderful lunch on the patio at Tony Romes and watched river traffic go by. Then flowers, a balloon and a wonderful dinner completed her day.
A rare image of Austin. I’ve been neglectful about photographing his progress. He is a happy little guy and rarely cries, usually only when he is hungry. He is very social and Josh has adopted the role of his protector making sure he is properly covered when he is laying down. 🙂
So it was a great day for the Queen. I enjoyed sharing it with her.
That’s it for today. Thanks for stopping by the blog. Enjoy your day and be careful.
And you’re always there to lend a hand in everything I do.
That’s the wonder, the wonder of you.”
“And when you smile the world is brighter.
You touch my hand and I’m a king.
Your kiss to me is worth a fortune.
Your love for me is everything.
I guess I’ll never know the reason why you love me as you do.
That’s the wonder, the wonder of you.”
Happy Birthday Honey. You are my best friend, my soul mate, my lover, my life partner and I love you so much. The smartest thing I have ever done is marry this woman!
A mixed bag of left overs for you today. This is the last of my Des Moines Photo Shoot. I looked through the remaining images and as I studied them I can remember why I captured each one however different day, different mood and then they don’t appeal to me.
We were walking along the river and heard the distinctive sound of a flock of geese flying by. Nothing special but the sky was pretty and I liked the formation so made the capture.
We stopped at an outdoor restaurant and had lunch. My friend Terry ordered this as his meal. I think my blood sugar spiked 80 points just sitting near it. I watched him savor every bite and half way through the delight he ordered another scoop of ice cream. Some people just know how to get the most out of life. 🙂
There are always lots of flowers and groups of arrangements at any Farmer’s Market. These just appealed to me probably the coloration.
I captured images of a lot of people and when I first looked at the shoot I liked about 75% of them. Now they just don’t appeal to me. So I’ll keep trying because street photography does intrigue me. I’ve taken a few classes on it but just cannot seem to grasp the look I want. It’s a journey.
That’s it for today. Enjoy your Thursday, you only get one chance at it. Thanks for stopping by the blog and be careful.
The images I have selected for you today seemed to speak better in black and white than in color. I captured these images a couple of weeks ago while we were in Des Moines.
Good luck and prayers for my Friend Diana as she under goes an operation today. I know it will go well for her and that she’ll be good as new in a few weeks.
I found out another good friend of mine has shingles as well. His is a lot worse than mine. The pain is pretty much gone from my episode. (Knock on wood) I hope that continues. I have a few more days on the steroids and then hopefully back to normal.
That’s it for today. Supposed to be cool and damp in our part of the world today with a high temperature of only 65. Refreshing for sure.
Thanks for stopping by the blog. Enjoy your day and be careful.
I stopped by Angie’s home yesterday morning for a visit. Jeanne was helping with the Grand kids and I had some errands to run so it made for a great opportunity to catch up on some Angie time and see the little ones.
I never got around to photographing Austin. He is sure changing and can really hold his head up now. He is a happy little guy and does a lot of smiling.
Grandma lets the kids have the iPad and so when I got there Josh was engrossed in a story and didn’t even acknowledge my arrival. In fact I don’t think he ever said hi or goodbye. 🙂
Gabby came over and climbed on my lap and we played some interactive games on the iPad.
Got some things done around the house and took care of some travel details for my up coming photography school. Still two months away but never to early to get things in order.
By the way Snake Eyes, Iowa has four poisonous snakes, all of which are state endangered species except the timber rattlesnake. The massasauga is known to live only in three state marshes. Timber rattlesnakes are the largest and potentially the most dangerous. They occur in eastern and southern Iowa where bits of relatively undisturbed habitat remain. The prairie rattlesnake is very rare in Iowa and is limited to the northern portions of the Loess Hills. The copperhead is found only in a tiny area of southeastern Iowa.
Not much on my mind this morning so I’ll wrap it up.
Thanks for stopping by the blog. Enjoy your day and be careful.
Okay, yesterday I told you that I may or may not have an adventure to tell you about. Well I do because it turned out to be a happy ending. If it hadn’t, I would not be posting this story. 🙂
It’s a long story with a 5 minute video at the bottom of the post.
I have been working on again off again on a video / photography project about the “Duck Pond” at the Hurstville Marsh. One of the things I wanted was to do a relatively low fly over of the marsh to give the viewer a sense of its size. Now with my questionable flying skills and flying mainly over water I have been reluctant to do it for sometime.
Saturday I decided that the weather was perfect for flying. Jeanne was busy with a church thing she was working on, so I loaded up my older Phantom and headed for the Pond. I had flown the root in my mind many times and knew exactly where I wanted to go and wanted to show.
I was super careful about getting the GPS lock, calibrating the compass, checking battery capacity, and wind speed. When I was comfortable with everything I launched the Phantom. It was a good flight (the video below is an abbreviated version) and I got most of the footage I wanted. I still had more than 50% battery reserve when I made a critical mistake.
I was at the far end of the pond (still well within the range of the flight controller) when I lowered the craft to get a better view of the surroundings. Apparently I got too low because the group of trees between me and the Phantom interrupted the signal and initiated its fail safe routine so the phantom went into its Going Home Routine.
Even that would have been okay if it had risen to 60 feet like it is supposed to and then come back everything would have been fine. But instead it did not rise and the altitude it was at is the altitude it headed back home at. The problem was there were trees between it and its take off point and it flew straight into them.
I really was getting bad reception through my monitor but the last thing I saw was what looked like bare branches. That’s all I had to go on because immediately after that the monitor went black. Nothing was showing (the impact knocked the battery out of the phantom) because there was no power.
So what to do. If I do nothing I lose my Phantom, camera, and a lot of investment. If I go in there looking for it I run the risk of seeing or worse stepping on a snake. How bad do I really want to get that damn machine back?
Now most people know that I have an abnormal fear of snakes and the area between where I was standing and the Phantom went down is covered in chin high grass, brambles, thistles, and assorted other bad things including fallen tree limbs. The grass is so thick in places it actually pulled my shoe off a couple of times.
Did I mention that it was 92 degrees with the humidity of an oven. I was wearing a tee-shirt, shorts and tennis shoes. Not exactly the proper apparel for hiking through a jungle invested with all sorts of wild things and probably some poison things as well.
Throwing caution, fear of snakes, common sense, and logic to the wind I went into the wilds of the marsh. I wasn’t sure what the final path of the Phantom was but I did know that it hit some trees so I concentrated my search around them. Sounds easy but after an hour and a half of walking, falling down, being trapped and literally hacked to pieces I gave up.
I was drenched, dehydrated (I lost my water bottle) and bleeding. So dejected and very disappointed I drove home. Took a long hot shower and put medicine on my legs and arms and had a glass of wine.
Yesterday morning Jeanne and I decided to give it another try. This time properly dressed in hiking attire complete with gloves and walking sticks we headed back down. During the prior evening I had thought through the flight and had narrowed down where I thought it should be.
The good news is that after only 15 minutes of walking I found the Phantom. I found the water bottle too. 🙂
There was very little damage to the craft. One broken prop and the battery had been knocked out but the camera was in perfect condition and the video finally ran camera’s battery down. I spent about an hour working on it yesterday afternoon and took it up for a test flight. It worked perfectly.
So that’s my adventure story. Yes I’ll admit it was not a smart thing to do going into the marsh dressed as I was but I just didn’t want to lose that Phantom and camera. In the end I would have been better off coming home and getting the proper clothes for the search but it is what it is. 🙂
That’s it for today. Thanks for stopping by the blog. Sorry for the lack of photography and images but you know me, if it’s on my mind I’m going to write about it.
I have some images from the “Duck Pond” for you today that I took last Friday. I was on my way out of town after photographing the human checker game and saw some activity at the pond. I cannot pass up an opportunity to capture images of wildlife even if the lighting isn’t perfect.
Mother Duck was taking her new brood out for a walk. When she noticed me they all scurried to her side and she promptly escorted them back into the tall grass.
There have been a couple of Blue Herons at the pond this last week. They stay pretty close to the inland shore line and they are difficult to photograph. I only had my 80 – 400 mm lens so it’s not a tight shot but he was walking very slowly up the waterline looking for something to eat.
Something startled him and in an instant he was flying away. I don’t think it was me because I had been stationary for some time waiting for him to walk pass my vantage point. He didn’t seem to mind my occasional shutter press.
Sometimes they don’t seem to mind being close to humans. I have been able to get within a few feet of them and they pay no attention to me. Other times a mere movement of your body and they are off.
That’s it for today. As a teaser I may or may not have a great adventure story for you tomorrow. It just depends on how today turns out. 🙂
Thanks for stopping by the blog. Enjoy your day and be careful.
A very late post for me but since I am so late it will take care of Saturday as well. The video of the golf course is what took so much time. That and building a composite still photo of the entire golf course.
Above is a candid shot of Trevis Mayfield, owner of the Maquoketa Sentential Newspaper. He was photographing the Chamber Golf Event and I caught him trying to take a picture of me taking a picture of the speaker. 🙂
There is a 5.30 minute video at the end of this post, which (spoiler alert) shows the infamous mooning of the drone. 🙂
There are many times when I would much rather just photograph a golf course then play golf on it. Golf courses are serene places of natural beauty and it seems a shame to spoil them with golf. 🙂
This is a composite image of the Maquoketa Country Club above, which took over two hours to build. It actually only took about an hour to build the first one. I inadvertently deleted it and had to start from scratch. It is made up of 5 different video grabs from the drone. If you don’t look at it with a magnifying glass it is a pretty decent composite.
Yes it has some flaws in it. The images were taken from different angles and it’s hard to get everything all lined up. I think two hours was enough time to spend on it. If I were doing it for a paying client I would have spent a lot more time on it making it perfect.
If you have a few minutes (5 minutes & 30 seconds to be exact) you might enjoy the video and the mooning.
That’s it for today. Sorry to be so late with this. I hope you had a great Friday and will have a better Saturday.
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