Iowa

All posts tagged Iowa

Friday ~ July 15, 2022

Posted by Dave Updegraff on July 15, 2022
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , , .

Happy Friday.

Had lunch with my beautiful daughter Wednesday and afterward I wandered down to the river.  Found this guy at the 16th Street Basin, which is unusual since they have cleared all the trees the wildlife once used for protection.

I took a lot of shots of him and he didn’t seem to mind.  There were some Canada geese close by and a couple ducks, which I didn’t get any still shots of but I did take some video of the Heron and got the ducks and geese in the video.

I also ventured down to the river and captured this video of the small barge.

Enjoy your day and be careful.

Saturday ~ October 31, 2020

Posted by Dave Updegraff on October 31, 2020
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , , .

 

Happy Saturday and Happy Halloween

Today I am showing you the last three images of my leaf photo trip of a couple of weeks ago. 

The image above was taken at Pikes Peek State Park.  It has a wonderful look out designed for sight seers and it gives a magnificent view of the Mississippi River some of the back waters.  If you click on the image to enlarge you can see barges waiting to be loaded and several fishing boats in the back waters.

Jeanne and I stopped in Guttenburg for lunch.  the have picnic tables and benches the entire length of the river area (about a mile) as well as charcoal grills and a large walking path.  They have really done a nice job. 

This last image is from the park again.  Just a massive area with a railroad bridge running through it. 

That’s it for today.  Hope to get some fresh images later this week.  Thanks for stopping by and enjoy your day.  As always be careful and safe.

Wednesday ~ April 24, 2019

Posted by Dave Updegraff on April 24, 2019
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , , , , .

Happy Wednesday!

Talk about déjà vu.  It was a week ago that I posted images of the pelicans at the “Duck Pond.”  I was in Maquoketa again yesterday for lunch with friends and I fully expected them to be gone.  

However on my way out-of-town I discovered they are beginning to look like permanent squatters.

This guy paddled away from me when I first arrived but I just stayed on the observation platform for about 15 minutes and he swam very close to me and didn’t seem to mind the shutter clicking.

Many of the Canada geese are nesting now and they seem to cohabit pretty well with the pelicans.

There were pelicans flying in and leaving the entire 30 minutes I was there.  Busy airport. 🙂

Enjoy your day and be careful.

Thursday ~ October 11, 2018

Posted by Dave Updegraff on October 11, 2018
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , , , .

Happy Thursday!

A great day today, which is why I’m late getting this posted.  I normally like to post in the morning but ran out of time this morning.

I had some follow-up photos for my professional assignment, I needed to take in Preston and Maquoketa and I needed to be in Preston at 9:30 a.m.  I rolled in there at 9:32 a.m. and may have exceeded the posted speed limit occasionally.

Then I had a very enjoyable lunch with a dear Friend in Maquoketa.  We visited for about an hour and a half.  We are both recently retired so it was fun discussing the experiences and feelings we’re both having with retirement.

As I was driving around the area taking pictures for the project I was amazed by the flooding in the farm fields around Maquoketa.  Some images from that at another time.

The above image is what is called “selective color.”  It is frowned upon by most serious photographers.  Well I take my photography seriously but I’m the only one who must like it and I thought this image worked better using selective color.  🙂

Most of these images were made in the Millwork District.  It is a fascinating place and I plan on spending more time there in the future.

I left this building art out of my post yesterday.  I didn’t mean to so I include it today.

Enjoy the rest of your day and be careful.

Wednesday ~ October 10, 2018

Posted by Dave Updegraff on October 10, 2018
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , , , .

Happy Wednesday!

Dubuque over the last few years has encouraged and commissioned “building art.”

It has been my intent to photograph some of this building art and finally last week I made some images of my favorite buildings.  So, I have five images of building art for today.  Click on any image to reveal a larger more detailed image.

This building was too large to capture in one image without getting a lot of distracting elements in the frame.  So I took two shots and then stitched them together in Photoshop.  Well that was my original intent but the algorithms of Photoshop failed me this time so I did it manually.  I won’t tell you how much time I spent on this image but it was a lot.  Still it was great practice.

I really like this art work but there were many electrical lines and cables running through it.  When you’re standing on the street just looking at the art I didn’t really notice the lines until I got it in post processing.  I spent over an hour on this removing all the lines.  😦

Another one of my favorite building art image.

There was no angle I could try that would get me a clean shot of this work.  So it is (as they say) what it is.

Enjoy your day and be careful.

Sunday ~ October 07, 2018

Posted by Dave Updegraff on October 7, 2018
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , , , , , , .

Happy Sunday!

I took a stroll up and down the Great River Walk (Dubuque) last week and made a few images of wildlife that I enjoy photographing.  I have four images today.

This Great Egret was actually at the 16th Street Basin.  Although the city has made an effort to clean the debris from the area it remains inundated with all sorts of garbage.  I cannot believe the insensitivity of some with regards to this wonderful place.

You know, if you’ve followed my photography for very long, that I cannot pass up a chance at photographing a Blue Heron.  The River Walk is high enough and just far enough to allow a great shot with a long lens without stressing the bird too much.

At one end of the River Walk is the barge staging area where they put together barges and load them up.  I had to capture these gulls taking advantage of this temporary resting place.

On my way back I found this guy resting.  So like the one before I had to take the shot.

Enjoy your day and be careful.

Wednesday ~ September 26, 2018

Posted by Dave Updegraff on September 26, 2018
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , , , , .

Happy Wednesday!

Fun and busy day yesterday as I worked on my second project.  This was for the MMEU (Maquoketa Municipal Electric Utilities.)

Once again I discovered how out of shape I have become when I had to get into a bucket on a lift truck to take some aerial shots of the power plant.  The guys from the line crew were extremely gracious and helpful but they agreed I would probably have trouble meeting the qualifications for a lineman.

I spent about four hours photographing the complex facilities that make up MMEU.  Lot more to it then meets the eye.  I met a lot of dedicated people who more than willing to help me get the images I wanted.  Thank you.

Now for the image above.  I saw this two nights ago when I went out on the back patio.  For those photography purists, this image was not cropped.  More on that in later posts.

Enjoy your day and be careful.

Thursday ~ September 13, 2018

Posted by Dave Updegraff on September 13, 2018
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , , .

Happy Thursday!

I had a fun day yesterday.  Spent about four hours doing a photo shoot for the city of Preston, Iowa.  Actually the company that supplies electricity to Preston hired me to photograph the community.  Shot 175 images and will edit them today.  I got to meet a lot of nice people and learned a lot of things about Preston that I didn’t know.

Wonderful community.

Enjoy your day and be careful.

Wednesday ~ August 01, 2018

Posted by Dave Updegraff on August 1, 2018
Posted in: General Posts. Tagged: , , , , , , .

Happy Hump Day Wednesday!

I thought, as did some of my friends, that I would spend a greater amount of time on photography after retiring.  I’ve actually spent less time for some reason.  My passion for and of photography has not wavered and 90% of the time I have a camera with me.  However I’ve been focused on many other things and have developed a significant case of being lazy.  🙂

I have four images for today.  Yesterday, I had lunch with a dear Friend and for the first time in recent memory I was actually early, so I decided on the way down to stop and photograph anything that interested me.  This pond sitting in the middle of a corn field has always attracted my attention for some reason but yesterday I had, for the first time in years, time to stop and photograph it.

When I went by the Duck Pond I saw this Blue Heron.  I have ten thousand photos of Herons but I just can’t pass up a chance to photograph one.  I had to make a U-turn and do some stealthy sneaking up on this guy to get a shot of him.

On the way out-of-town I stopped at the Hurstville Interpretive Center and shot a couple of images of their flowers.

I love the Interpretive Center and used to spend a lot of my lunch hours just walking around the grounds and enjoying the wildlife and echo system.

Just a word of caution for email users.  It used to be pretty easy to spot a phishing email attempt because of the wording and their look.  Not so much now.  Yesterday I received a notice from PayPal that my account had been put on hold because of a security breach.  I opened the email and it looked like every other PayPal email I’ve receive over the years.  But when I hovered my mouse cursor over the “Log-In Here” button the URL was clearly not PayPal.  I later went to the PayPal website and found there was nothing wrong with my account.  Had I been busy or in a hurry I might have clicked on it and who knows what would have happened.

Enjoy your day and be careful.

Friday ~ July 27, 2018

Posted by Dave Updegraff on July 27, 2018
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , , , , , .

Happy Friday!

I have three images for today.  Interesting day yesterday.  I had to take my  car in for some enhancements and had to have it there at 7:00 a.m.  I don’t like having to get up early or at a certain time anymore since retirement.  🙂

So, since I didn’t have transportation and Jeanne was tied up for most of the day I didn’t  plan on any activities surrounding President Trump’s arrival in Dubuque.  My car got finished sooner than expected so I got it back around 12:30 p.m.  What I really wanted to do was get a picture of Air Force 1 so I headed for the airport.

I knew of a position that would give me a great viewpoint of the airport and I was pretty sure it would be available.  Duh!  Every road even close to the airport was blocked off and I couldn’t get anywhere because of the President’s motorcade was expected shortly.  Darn!

Obviously I was hoping for the big 747 but should have realized that they probably wouldn’t bring that to a smaller regional airport like Dubuque.  Instead he flew in the 757, which is still a large airplane just not as impressive as the Jumbo Jet.  🙂

So, to finish my story, I took some side roads that finally reached highway 151 and then took some gravel roads (even though my car was sparkling clean) trying to find any vantage point where I could see the airport.  I saw this vehicle parked on the side of a gravel road and thought, oh great another law enforcement person going to tell me to leave the area.  Turned our it was a guy named Kevin and he was a very friendly and gracious individual who invited me to park behind him.  He said that with the wind direction he figure the plane would take off on the closest runway to us and we would get a great view.

While we were waiting  the President’s motorcade arrived at the airport and it was ten minutes later that a flood of vehicles came by us on the gravel road.  Apparently they had been detained while waiting for the motorcade.  We were inundated by gravel dust.  I was worried about my lens getting dirty and you could feel the grunge from the dust starting to build.  Then the plane started moving and nothing else mattered.  Many cars stopped and joined our little group to watch.  It turned out it was a great vantage point for making some images of Air Force 1.

All images were shot with the Sigma 600 mm lens.  Oh and by the was the GDP announcement today was 4.1%  🙂

Enjoy your day and be careful.