Happy Thursday!
Went to Maquoketa this past Tuesday to have lunch with some great friends. On the way down I saw this combine in the field waiting for it’s next time to harvest.
So on the way home I stopped and made this image.
When I turned around I saw this small stream with fall colors so I shot some images of it.
Enjoy your day and be careful.
Happy Saturday!
If you like barns, then this is a good post for you. I have three different barns to show today. If you don’t then we’ll see you the next time.
These images are from my barn shoot of last week. They are all owned by my friend Roger. This barn sits about 200 yards away from the 150 year old barn on his farm. We didn’t do any interior shots of it. Just a nice looking farm structure.
This barn sits at his residence in Maquoketa. It’s last few years were used more as a production facility and offices for a specialty business. Now for the most part it just sits empty and looks stately. 🙂
This is the 150 year old barn from my favorite perspective. The front and other side of the barn have been sided to prevent further deterioration. This barn was on the Jackson County barn tour that concluded a couple of weeks ago.
Thanks for stopping by. Enjoy your day and be careful.
Happy Sunday!
I have three images to show today. Yesterday afternoon I went roaming through the countryside. Went to some places I haven’t been in several years. The light was not great but the sky was full of big puffy clouds so it was a good trade-off. You can click on the images to make them larger and see more detail.
Found this old windmill minus the fan blades. It was keeping watch over the hay bales.
I found an old road guard rail that had fallen down the side of a hill and I stopped to take some images of it (I didn’t like any of them.) As I was getting back in the car I happened to glance behind me and there was a large buck dear slowly crossing the road. By the time I turned the camera back on and got it to my eye he was gone. 😦
I love old barns and I found this guy sitting next to an abandoned farm home. There were all kinds of no trespassing signs around so I could only photograph it from the road, which really didn’t give me the best angle.
Felt good to be out with a camera again. 🙂
Enjoy your day.
Happy Saturday!
I have three images for you today that are from my wanderings through the country side this past Monday. I drove about 100 miles looking for things that interested me and these are three of the things that caught my attention.
I was driving slowly along an old road that goes by the river and saw this little volunteer tree standing tall with the river in the background. I had to back up and make an image of it. 🙂
Driving through Clayton County I saw this hay-rake sitting in the harvested corn field along with three bales of corn stalks. I liked the story it told so made an image of them.
Finally I was going through the little community of Buena Vista and saw this magnificent weeping willow catching the last rays of the sinking sun contrasted with the shadows of the late afternoon. So I had to stop and make some images. I’m sure some of the cars that went past me wondered what in the world I was doing. 🙂
That’s it for today. Jeanne and I are attending our oldest Grand Son’s birthday party today. It’s actually the party for the Grandparents he has already had his other birthday party. So you’ll probably get some grand kid images tomorrow.
Thanks for checking out the blog. Enjoy your day. -45 degree temperature change from this time yesterday morning. Wow! Be careful.
Happy Wednesday!
Some more farm and harvest images for you today. Once again I find myself in my typical state of nothing on my mind of relevance and I’m out of time. 🙂
So you don’t have to read my babble today.
These images are from my road trip on Thursday. As you can see from the first image it started out as a very cloudy day. I was expecting rain but the clouds eventually gave way to blue sky and warm temperatures.
I have built and managed many websites over the years. It’s been a hobby / sideline for me and I enjoy it. I have divested myself of some of the websites of late, some by my choice and some by clients who do not want to pay my increased fees, which is another way of me saying I don’t want to manage this website any more.
Anyway I am finding that ending a website relationship is twice as hard as creating one. Go figure. 🙂
That’s it for today. Enjoy your day. Thanks for stopping by the blog and be careful.
Happy Friday!
I have some harvest images for you today. I enjoy shooting the harvest in Iowa. The light is generally softer although I shot these before the golden hour the sun was still softer than mid summer.
Busy last few days. We’re getting ready for a big event at work and I will spend a fair amount of time today working on some of the video and graphics for that day. I enjoy doing that but I’ve let my video editing skills get rusty. 🙂
They are tearing down a one story commercial building right next to the office building I work in. It’s been an interesting process to watch. First they had an asbestos abatement team come in and they took several days to remove the material from the roof of the building.
Then the big machinery came in and started tearing down the building. I’ll have some images of that perhaps for the blog later. I was impressed with the operator of the big wrecking machine. He brought down one cement block at a time. He was super careful so as not to damage our office building.
Amazing job and the skill he must have to operate such a big machine with such a delicate touch. Impressive.
That’s it for today. Lots to do before the end of the day. Prayers for my friend Melinda. Thank you for stopping by the blog. Enjoy your day and be careful.
Happy Hump Day!
A couple of early harvest images for you today. We had a pretty good rain yesterday morning and I saw these two combines sitting in the field on the way to work. I reasoned they might still be there in the afternoon on my homeward commute because it would probably be too wet to continue the harvest.
I was delighted to see them both in their original position and I had some softer light from the evening sun shinning on them. 🙂
I’m doing some video work for a project this evening after work for my company. I used to shoot a lot of video and make training videos as well as video vignettes for website work. About the only video I work with now is from the Phantoms and they have been pretty much non-existent of late.
I actually was pretty good at editing video and using some special effects along with green screen effects. But like any skill if you don’t use it on a regular basis it deteriorates. Additionally the video editing software has changed a lot and I haven’t kept up with the changes so it is a real challenge trying to piece some video together in a coherent manner.
This morning I’m desperately charging batteries for cameras that haven’t been powered on for several years, hoping that the batteries will last long enough to get the footage I need. 🙂
So that’s all I have for today. It should be interesting working on this project. I have two video cameras and if they fail I can always use one of my DLSRs as a backup. Believe it or not I’ve never really shot any footage with the DLSRs even though they have the ability to do so.
Thanks for stopping by the blog. Enjoy your day and be careful.
Back at it today. I wanted to show you this 3 image HDR rendition of the sunset I captured on Sunday. This is really more representative of what I actually saw.
The problem with DSLR cameras is that they can only capture about 5 levels of Luminance. The human eye can see about 9 levels. We can see detail in highlights, mid-tones, and shadows. By that I mean if I were to set the camera so that the sky was exposed correctly the shadows would turn to pure black and the mid-tones would be very dark. If I were to expose for the shadows then the sky would be pure white (blown out.)
I shot this using a technique call bracketing. The three shots were 1 full stop above, the mid-tones, and 1 full stop below. So you are able to capture the full dynamic range of luminance. Normally call HDR or High Dynamic Range. You can get pretty carried away with the finished product but this image is reflective of what I actually saw.
Look at yesterday’s post and compare the difference. Both were shot at about the same time.
I saw this guy coming over while I was waiting on the sun. At first I thought it was a regular plane but then as he got closer it was obvious it was an ultra light craft.
I only had the 80 – 400 mm lens with me so this is as close as I could get.
I’ll leave you with this image of a farm in the distance. Another shot I captured while waiting for the sunset. It wasn’t exactly what I wanted but wasn’t going to take down my tripod and go looking for something that might not be there. 🙂
That’s it for today. I hope you enjoy your day. Thanks for stopping by the blog and be careful.
Happy Monday!
I took a little drive Sunday morning and found this interesting collection of farm buildings against a dynamic sky full of clouds. Although it was past the golden hour for landscape photography I think the clouds makes up for it.
Then I happened by some flowers growing along the side of the road. No one seemed to be living there but the flowers were beautiful so I had to make some images of them. I didn’t have my macro lens but the 24 – 120 f4 VR lens seemed to work just fine.
I also had my long lens just in case i came across some wildlife but they were scarce so no images of them for today.
Very hot afternoon so I didn’t get outside much. Josh had his last soccer game of the year yesterday afternoon at 5:00 p.m. so we went and baked during that. I’ll have some of those images for you tomorrow.
Ben got called from the game and had to do surgery so Angie and the kids came over for dinner and I grilled some chicken for us.
We played a lot, ate a lot, visited a lot and then they went home. I think I lasted maybe 15 minutes in front of the History Channel and then was out like a light. 🙂
That’s all I have for you today. Less humid today so I have a lot of activities planned. We’ll see how many of them I get done. Thanks for stopping by the blog. Enjoy your day and be careful.
Happy Thursday (or in my case Friday,)
Okay I won’t do that every week but since this is my first week of reduced work I had to enjoy it a little. 🙂
A real treat for me yesterday. Some of my friends from work and I attended the weekly Rotary meeting and then on the way back Roger (who has worked for our organization over 45 years) said he was going to run out to his farm and look at something. He grew up on this farm that is a heritage and a century farm.
He asked if I had ever seen his farm and would I like to run out there to take a look. Of course I jumped at the chance and grabbed my camera before we left.
As we looked at this old barn from the outside I would have never been drawn to photograph it. It has been pretty much restored on the outside and modernized with siding. But on the inside it has remained unchanged. The wood was magnificent and the craftsmanship of construction is self-evident considering it has stood for so many years.
Interestingly I couldn’t decide whether to present in color or black and white. Normally there is no decision for me. One or the other is readily apparent. But while I loved the color of the old wood and hay it did seem to demand a black and white treatment. So you get both and you can decide.
Same with this old feed mixer (at least that’s what I think it is and I’m sticking to that.) I didn’t struggle with that decision as much. I believe I like the black and white rendering better.
The interesting thing about both images is that it was relatively dark inside the barn. The opening we were looking into the barn was about waist-high (and I was in a suit) so there was no going inside to set up. The sun was coming through the cracks between the boards so the scene I wanted to photograph was back-lit. I had to experiment with the aperture and ISO settings to finally get a decent image.
Roger gave me a lot of background history about the farm, his Father, and Mother. It was a half hour of pure enjoyment for me. He invited me back to photograph the barn and other buildings on his farm and I will certainly do that. I can imagine a great HDR rendition of the inside of that marvelous barn.
That’s it for today. Hope you enjoy your weekend / Thursday. 🙂
Thanks for stopping by the blog and be careful.
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