Thuresday ~ June 12, 2014

Posted by Dave Updegraff on June 12, 2014
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , , .

June-11-2014

Happy Thursday!  ~  281

Yesterday I was engaged in employee benefit meetings the entire day from 7:30 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.  I always enjoy these meetings because I get to see good friends and deliver a good message.  A real win-win.

I am sorry for more bird images.  I was not going to post any more for awhile but two things changed that.  First I’m having a ball just sitting in the back yard and watching and photographing all the interactions with the birds.  It is great fun.  Secondly, and just as important several of you have told me in person how much you have and are enjoying the images of the birds.

So as long as I’m still doing my bird feeder project I’ll probably keep posting bird images for the foreseeable future.  Needless to say, however when something catches my attention I’ll photograph it as well, even if it doesn’t fly.  🙂

June-11-2014

Another full day of Benefit meetings today as well.  I’ll be spending part of the day in Cedar Rapids as well so it will be another long day.

Yesterday I got rid of my 10 inch radial arm saw and a stand up drill press.  I was going to sell them at a yard sale but a friend asked me what I wanted for them and he bought them sight unseen.

I’ve had them both for over 20 years and there was a time I thought of myself as a woodworker.  I cut up a hell of a lot of lumber and never made anything that Jeanne would let in the house.

I got some lumber one time to build a picnic table for the back yard.  This was actually before kids and I had it laying on the floor of the garage.  My friend, Wayne came over (he owned a home improvement business) and he saw the lumber in the garage and wondered what I was going to do with it.  When I told him I was going to make a picnic table he said, “Hell I could build a whole house with that much lumber!”  I finally got the thing built and didn’t have much left over (other than the pieces that didn’t fit any where.)

Now you know why I love photography.  🙂

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The first baby sitter we had for Angie was named Connie.  Her husband only had a few hand tools and I don’t believe he had any power tools what so ever.

He remodeled his kitchen and it was a work of art.  Of course Jeanne made mention of the fact that I had a garage full of power tools and had yet to build anything that we could identify.  🙂

That’s it for today.  I hope you enjoy your Thursday.  Thanks as always for stopping by and be careful.  Remember your sunscreen.

Tuesday ~ June 10, 2014

Posted by Dave Updegraff on June 10, 2014
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , , , .

June-09-2014

Happy Tuesday!  ~  283

Busy week ahead with employee benefit meetings scheduled for two days and then getting caught up from being gone for those two days.

Talk about unintended consequences.  This is an image of one.  This little guy apparently lives in the neighborhood and almost ever evening and early morning he comes to the bottom of the feeders and has a snack of the spilled birdseed on the ground.  It’s fun to watch him.  I was taking some images for my bird feeder project when I noticed him coming from my neighbor’s yard.  He approached very slowly stopping every few feet to listen and then he would hop a few more feet until he reached his goal.  He would eat some seed and then perk his head and move his ears all around listening for any sound of danger.  Fun to watch.

June-09-2014

This is the image I used for yesterday’s project.  Just a lowly sparrow but I like how he is looking down at the water and that he has some water on his beak.  I’m sure some of you are getting tired of all the birds (my daughter for one) but bare with me I promise I’ll shoot other things as well.  It’s just a lot of enjoyment now watching the birds and the excitement of an occasional finch or cardinal.  Precious few cardinals for sure, I’ve seen one since I installed the bird feeders and he only stopped long enough to look over the layout and then he moved on. 😦

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Finally I’ll leave you with an image of this little finch.  They are a pretty bird and with the bright yellow coloration, they are easy to spot when they are in the neighborhood.

Yesterday after work I met a lady, who provides day care for a little Mexican boy, at one of the parks in Maquoketa to shoot some images of him.  His Mother works at the Mexican Restaurant in town and in conversation one day several months ago I mentioned that I had seen her walking on the sidewalk with this little boy and wondered if he was her Son.

After confirming he was I learned that she didn’t have any images of him other than the ones she had taken with her phone.  I told her that I would take some images of him when the weather got warmer and yesterday evening was that sometime.  He is a  cute little guy but very shy.  Only 2 and a half years old.  The day care lady did her best to get him to smile and of the 175 images I took, he smiled in two of them.  🙂

Anyway it was fun to do that and I’ll give her a couple of nice prints of him.   I guess you’d call that a win-win.  The joy for me of taking pictures and the joy for her to finally have a nice picture of her son.

That’s it for today.  Thanks for stopping by the blog.  Enjoy your day and be careful.  Cloudy most of the day today so sunscreen is optional. 🙂

Monday ~ June 09, 2014

Posted by Dave Updegraff on June 9, 2014
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , .

Angie and Gabby

Happy Monday!  ~  284

I want to congratulate my Son, Mark on his first sale in his new job.  He has only been there a little over a week and made his first sale this Saturday.  Way to go Mark!!

Had a lot of fun Sunday.  Jeanne and I’ve been looking for a piece of furniture for our lower level and we’ve been to a lot of stores.  Sunday we went three more and while we were out Angie called and said they were taking the kids to the Asbury Park and would we like to meet them there?  That’s a no brainer so of course we said yes.  They wanted to see the new bird sanctuary in our back yard, so they stopped at Dairy Queen first and then came over to enjoy that with us.

After our DQ treats we all went over to the park.  The park was crowded but Josh doesn’t have any trouble making new friends and before long he was playing with a couple of young girls on the high slide.  It is amazing how much energy young children have.  I took the Nikon D4 (for its fast frame rate) and the Nikon 70 – 200 VR II 2.8 lens because of its sharpness.  I shot 376 images in a very short period of time.  That’s easy to do with the D4 and its 11 frames per second burst speed.

Joshua and Gabby

Gabby is walking now and is relatively steady on her feet.  She fell a couple of times on the wood chips and they stuck to the bottom of her diaper.  That did not make her happy.   It was so much fun watching Josh play unencumbered by the constraints of our back yard.  He had a ball.

Of course when you are having that much fun it’s hard to give it up and understand that it’s time to go home.  I enjoy watching Angie and Ben and their interaction with their kids.  It brings back so many memories of when our two kids were little and the same discussions we had with them when it was time to come home from the park.

Ben and Josh

We got home about 5:30 p.m. and so I got set up on the back patio for my bird feeder project.  Check it out if you have the time.  Just click on the “Bird Feeder Project” on the right side of this blog and it will take you to the web page that has the images.  I sat out on the patio with my camera for about 45 minutes.  It is just so much fun watching the birds.  I should have done this a long time ago.

That’s it for today.  I hope you enjoy your Monday.  Thanks for stopping by, be careful and remember your sunscreen.

Sunday ~ June 08, 2014

Posted by Dave Updegraff on June 8, 2014
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , .

June-07-2014

Happy Sunday!  ~  285

Images from the backyard bird feeders for today.  I’m getting a lot of sparrows, grackles, red-wing blackbirds, and an occasional bunny like this morning.  I saw a cardinal fly by a couple of days ago and we will get the occasional finch but so far I have a back yard inundated with the common birds of Iowa.  Right now I really don’t care because it is so enjoyable just sitting on the back patio with my camera and watching the interaction of all the birds.  Very interesting.

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Yesterday I did the normal Saturday morning tasks of mowing and trimming the grass.  Then I had to get some birdseed, oil for the mower, and a garden hose to wash all the bird poop off the patio.  🙂

Needless to say I bought another feeder (for cardinals.)   I thought photography was expensive but feeding birds is getting right up there.

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I’m enjoying my backyard bird feeder project.  I’m only 7 days into it but having a good time with it.  So we’ll see how far it goes.  I gave myself a time limit of at least a month so at the end of June I’ll decide if I want to do more.  I put a quick link on the right side of the blog if you’re interested.

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Jeanne and I went looking for some furniture later in the afternoon.  There was only one store that we got to as it was getting close to 6:00 p.m. and we didn’t find exactly what we were looking for so we’ll give it another go this afternoon.

That’s it for today.  I hope you enjoy your Sunday.  Thanks for stopping by and be careful.  Don’t forget the sunscreen.

Friday ~ June 06, 2014

Posted by Dave Updegraff on June 6, 2014
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , , , .

Summer Moon

Happy Friday  ~  287

Interesting day yesterday.   No two days are ever the same and the dynamics of my work make adapting and reacting two useful skills.  I suspect a lot of jobs are like that but I mainly know about what I do so that is what I am the most familiar with.  We humans are incredibly complicated beings and the relationships and interactions we have with each other are equally if not more complicated.

Over the years in both law enforcement and human resources I have taken various courses on reading body language and interpreting what people really mean when they say things.  In fact in my leadership class I teach a session on reading body language.  With all that experience and training I still seem to get it wrong as often as I get it right.  Like I said we are complicated.

I was sitting on the back patio last night working on my bird feeder project (which is just a lot of fun) and I wasn’t having much luck with the birds coming to my feeders.

Those people who know me will not be surprised by this but last night I stopped by the store and got two more feeders and another stand.  Well, you know if a little is good a lot has to be better.  Anyway I digress, I was not having much luck with my project and I was looking around and noticed the beautiful moon behind some wispy clouds that were moving by.  I just pointed the camera upward and made a shot.

I assumed it would be blurry or out of focus or both and I was pleasantly surprised last night when I processed it and found it to be a reasonable image.  By the way, you can click on the image for a larger version of the image.

I finally did get my bird feeder shot so all is well.

That’s it for today.  Enjoy your Friday and be careful.  Oh and thanks for stopping by. 🙂

Thursday ~ June 05, 2014

Posted by Dave Updegraff on June 5, 2014
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , , .

June-04-2014-

Happy Thursday!  ~  288

I decided to capture an image of my favorite tree on the way home last night.  There were a lot of puffy white clouds in the brilliant blue sky.  I wanted to capture this tree earlier but it just didn’t work out.  I reasoned that technically this is still Spring but I really missed an opportunity to capture the tree in its budding state.  Perhaps next year.

I had the program at Rotary yesterday.  One of the founding principles of Rotary was the discussion of what your business is and what you do for your company.  So I decided to talk about my 14 years with my company and what my responsibilities are.  I’m not sure most of the Rotarians  had any idea of just how large and spread out our organization is.  It was fun to tell them about the areas of the organization that come under my responsibility.

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I know two things about this image.  One it is a butt shot (ugh) and it is a bird that I have taken a lot of images of before.  However the thing that makes this image special to me is that he is perched on my manufactured tree branch.  🙂

I wasn’t sure (nor was Jeanne) that they would sit on the branch but last night several of them did.  I was at the wrong angle to have a pleasing background but that is easily fixed by moving the camera a few feet to the right.  I was trying to capture the soft evening light on the bird feeder from the position I was in.

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I’ll throw this image in just to show the first one wasn’t a fluke.  After I packed up and went back in the house there were sometimes as many as three birds sitting on the branch at one time.  I love it when a plan comes together.  🙂

That’s all for today.  Thanks for stopping by.  I hope you enjoy your day and be careful.

Wednesday ~ June 04, 2014

Posted by Dave Updegraff on June 4, 2014
Posted in: General Posts. Tagged: , , , , .

June-03-2014

Happy Hump Day ~ 289

Okay I think I’ve made it abundantly clear that I’m not very good at identifying birds.  So this morning I spent the better part of a half hour looking through bird pictures on this nifty iPad App I purchased and do you think I could find two of the birds I captured yesterday?  No!  I’m not even sure that the one bird I did identify is correct.  That is why I enjoy my friends who are good at identifying birds are willing to help me out.

I think this guy above is a White Throated Sparrow.  I’m betting I’m wrong but that is what it looked like it was on the App.    Help me out.

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I have no clue what this little guy is.  He was pretty willing to have his picture taken.

My friend Jake has the office right next to mine and he has told me on a couple of occasions, that when I go out shooting he would like to ride along.  I figured he was just being nice so I never really brought it up.  Today as it happened he asked me what I was doing for lunch and I said I was going to look for images.  He asked if he could ride along and of course I said yes.  I was thrilled that he wanted to join me.  It’s what I love to do on my lunch hour when I don’t have any lunch meetings and it was really fun to have his company.

So we drove past the Duck Pond and there was nothing going on.  The swans were on the other side of the road too far away to get any glass on so we went down to the Hurstville Dam but there wasn’t much going on there either.  Finally we ended up at a wildlife reserve by the Maquoketa River.  That is where we saw the guy above and the bird in the first image.

Jake actually caught sight of a bluish bird but by the time I could get stopped and backed up it was gone. 😦

June-03-2014-B

I captured this image by the bird feeder last nigh.  I’m thinking it is a member of the Sparrow family but that’s as close as I can get.  I like his coloration.  I’m doing a 30 day (to start) bird feeder project, which means that I have to shoot what ever I find on the bird feeder each day.  You can go to my main website www.upde.net  click on the photography link and then click on the navigation button called birds.  I only have three there because I just started June first.

That’s it for today.  I hope you enjoy your mid-week hump day.  Thanks for stopping by and be careful.

Tuesday ~ June 03, 2014

Posted by Dave Updegraff on June 3, 2014
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , .

Green Island, Iowa

Happy Tuesday!  ~  290

No blog yesterday as I had so many things I had to get done in a very short amount of time.  By the time I got them all done I was completely out of time so I apologize for that.

Sunday afternoon Jeanne and I drove down to Green Island Wildlife Preserve.  I’ve wanted to go there for the last couple of months and for what ever reason I haven’t made it.  It is about an hour down so it’s a pretty good time commitment.  On the way down we were filled with anticipation and excitement of what we might find.  There was lots of water in the fields nearby and in the past when the water level was high that meant an abundance of wildlife.

I knew that from talking with friends that the migratory birds would probably be gone but I’ve always found lots of other interesting things to shoot at Green Island.

Turtles

We slowly drove the canals looking for any sign of life.  We saw lots of dragon flies.  It must be their mating season because most were flying connected with another one.  I tried a couple of times to capture an image of them flying but that proved to be a near impossibility without some set up and waiting time.  So we drove on very slowly and carefully waiting for the right moment to capture an image.

We saw some Great Egrets and several Blue Herons but they were so far away I couldn’t get a lens on them.  Funny thing was even that far away when I would stop the car to take a look at them they would fly away.  I’ve been able to get very close to both species in the past but they were on high alert today for some reason.

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Finally on our way out of the Preserve I thought I could see a small bird in a bird house in the middle of a canal.  I shot several images and discovered this little guy.  Since I’m not very good at identifying birds in full side view I have no idea what he is.

That’s it for today.  A disappointing trip from a photography standpoint.  However time spent with my Queen is always enjoyable and the scenery was wonderful as well.

Thanks for stopping by the blog.  I hope you enjoy your day.  Remember the sunscreen and be careful.

Sunday ~ June 01, 2014

Posted by Dave Updegraff on June 1, 2014
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , , , .

Unknown Bird

Happy Sunday  ~  292

First things first.  Can you tell me what this bird is?  I shot it at a great distance, probably over 600 feet, so it is not a great image.  I’ve looked through all the resources I have and Jeanne and I both have looked on-line but haven’t been able to identify it.  Any ideas Andreas?

Birdbath

I was out of gasoline for the mower, so yesterday morning I drove to one of the nearby convenience stores for gas and on the way, I went by a little 2nd hand store and saw this bird bath in front of the store for sale.  We had purchased a hanging one that is pretty small and the main problem with it is that you can’t keep water in it.  As the wind blows the water spills out so even though I fill it every day it is always empty by the end of the day.

I thought $40 was too much but the owner wouldn’t haggle so I bought it.  I’m glad I did because not long after I had filled it up, there were birds playing in the water and drinking from it, so it was money well spent.

Morning Dove

I’m considering shooting the bird feeder every day for a year.  I think that would be a fun assignment.  Sure I’d get lots of duplication but I might also get some pretty interesting shots.  I’ll do it for a month and see what I think at the end of the month.

After I cut the grass and did the trimming I decided to sit on the patio with my long lens and tripod to see what was going on.  I have a lot of sparrows.  In fact they have for right now taken over the bird feeder.  I have some ideas about changing that but I will have to wait until they clean out the feeder of its current stock.

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Finally I’ll leave you with this image of a female finch.  I know I’ve posted images similar to this one in the last few days but I like the looks of the finch so please indulge me.  🙂

That’s it for this day.

Oh by the way just a little bit of preaching to you.  Wear sunscreen when you’re outside.  I grew up at a time when very few of us even knew what sunscreen was.  If I had put sunscreen on I would have been labeled a sissy.  So all of those years of golfing, riding a bike, and working outdoors has taken its toll on my skin.  Friday I had to have a couple of aberrations cut off my arm.

The dermatologist told me that he treats so much skin cancer from people in my age group because most of us did not take any precaution.  I can remember playing baseball as a kid and at the end of the game we’d all have to sort through the pile of shirts to put one on to go home.  So, they say a word to the wise is sufficient so now that you’ve heard the word be wise!!

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

Posted by Dave Updegraff on May 30, 2014
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , , .

May-29-2014

Happy Friday  ~  294

I am sorry to show you more birds today.  I’m just having so much fun sitting in the back yards and watching them interact with each other.  I cannot resist making images of them.  I spent an hour last night just shooting away to the tune of 400 images.  400 images and I have three to show for it.  🙂

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So far about all I have been able to attract to the bird feeder are some finches, sparrows, black birds, and this little Redpoll.  Still it is very interesting to watch them protect their turf and jockey for the favored position on the feeder.  Not all that unlike what we “humans” do on a daily basis.

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Jeanne is going to Ames this weekend to visit her Mother.  So it’s just me and the dog to take care of things while she is gone.  I have so many projects lined up I can’t possibly get to them all.  Not to mention my Phantom Vision 2 also has serious controller issues.

I was telling my good Friend Jake last night as we were leaving that flying the Phantom has lost some of its luster.  For about every minute of flying there is an hour or so of work, repairs, maintenance, and charging stuff.  Hardly seems worth the effort.  Then again there is no other way to get some of the images I can get without the Phantom.

That’s it for today.  Enjoy your Friday.  Very busy time at work and home.  Doesn’t seem to be anytime to just sit back and smell the bird poop. 🙂

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