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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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% 🙂
I have two images, a short video, and a long story for today.
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Yesterday was the culmination of a month-long project. I never imagined how much was involved in the project in both time, work, and money.
I have close to 80,000 digital images on my computer and back up hard drives. Out of those I have probably printed no more than 20 over the last 18 years as the bulk of my work has been posted digitally.
About a year ago I was offered the opportunity to present my photography work at the wonderful Maquoketa Art Experiencein Maquoketa, Iowa. It is truly a remarkable place and if you are in the area you owe it to yourself to pay a visit. They have learning experiences and workshops for young children through senior citizens and allow artists the chance to show their work to the public.
So my showing was originally scheduled for December 2017, which gave me seven months to prepare. Being a chronic procrastinator I didn’t do anything about it and was notified in October that my showing (because of a scheduling conflict) was being moved to May 1, 2018. Even more procrastination followed plus retirement and then I received an email with a notice of the scheduling of my showing and when I needed to have my work to the Art Experience. PANIC!
I spent hours looking through those 80,000 images trying to pick a wide representative range of my work from wildlife, landscape, portraiture, farm scenes, and of course trees. I visited the Art Experience to see the layout of where I would be presenting and went to the wrong section of the building. The photographer, that was currently displaying had 47 images. Wow, I thought, that’s a lot of printing, matting, and framing not to mention the expense involved.
A commitment is a commitment so I started the process. I selected 43 images and sent them off to be printed. Then I shopped for and purchased 45 frames and matting materials. UPS was delivering boxes almost every other day. 🙂
All that “stuff” had to be un-boxed and unwrapped and then assembled. It was a daunting project to say the least. Our dinning room table became my storage space and the breakfast counter my work space. Jeanne was very supportive and put up with all the materials without complaint.
I got everything done and ready to transport so I sent an email to my contact at the Art Experience telling them I had 43 images to show. I received a reply the next day which stated, “You have too many photographs, we don’t have room for that many.” Ugh! Now what.
To shorten the story, the wonderful folks that make the Are Experience work said to me, bring what you have and we’ll make it work. WOW! They were so gracious and helpful I was very moved. One of my friends, who volunteers at the Art Experience came to my retirement celebration and told me that they had it all planned out and bring all my images. I was very happy.
So yesterday I loaded up the car and took my work to Maquoketa. Ted, Dick, Wayne, and Helen helped me with the hanging, wiring and placement of the images. We worked for four hours getting it ready. It was a fantastic experience that I will not forget. Wonderful people.
I have a 38 second video below if you want to see the work in progress.
Last week I received a call from my friend Vicki asking me to join her and others for a lunch in Mason City to support long-time Rotary District Secretary John Last.
I hesitated a moment because I realized that Mason City is a 3 hour drive from Dubuque and then said okay. 🙂
In 2003 I was the District 5970 Web Master and held that position for five years. I worked very closely with John and built a lasting friendship with him. Vicki (right side of image) was District Governor for one of those years and Richard (left side of image) was also a District Governor. I served under 5 District Governors during my tenure.
We had a two-hour lunch and had a lot of fun reminiscing about the past.
John is being asked to retire from his District Secretary position. I won’t go into the details of the situation but I am disappointed in the way it was handled, which in my view is not the Rotary way.
It was a long day but I was glad to see Dick, Vicki, and John. It and they made the drive worth while.
I have three images for today. Yesterday was a miserable day weather wise. Constant rain, temperature only about 42 degrees and windy. Not a good day for photography. I had an appointment to get my hair cut yesterday morning and then an hour to kill before meeting my good friend Mike for lunch at Mario’s Italian Restaurant. One of my favorite places to eat in Dubuque.
Even though the weather was unfavorable for photography I decided to drive down to the river to see what was going on. As luck would have it there were two large barges parked one in front of the other waiting their turn to lock through the dam. I have never seen that before and decided on my return trip I would capture some images. I drove on to the lock and as I pulled into the parking lot there was a turkey vulture sitting on the asphalt. I have never been that close to one of them before. Now the camera is in the back seat still in the bag, it’s raining hard, and the vulture is giving me a close look.
Sure enough when I stopped the car he started unfolding his wings and as soon as I opened my door to get the camera he flew a few feet away to a large rock. Not too bad, still well within range of my big lens. Just got the camera out and a train came though. The tracks run between the bluff and the parking lot, so away he flew and I couldn’t find him after that. 😦
This lonely pelican was floating near the lock so I thought I would capture him since I already had my long lens on the camera. Back in the car, I dried off the equipment and then headed out to see if anything was going on at McDonald park. Of course I had forgotten about the two barges sitting there. It was raining harder and I’ll admit I didn’t want to get out and change lenses in the rain. So I just continued on my way to the park.
The only thing I found of interest at the park were some Common Grackles feeding on some berries. They looked miserable in the cold rain but at least I was able to photograph them from the dryness of the car. 🙂
Do you get the idea that I’m somewhat of a fair weather photographer? I don’t mind getting wet but I don’t like getting my gear wet and of course I forgot to pack my rain pouch for the camera.
Anyway it was time to meet my friend for lunch. We had a great lunch with wonderful conversation and a few self-deprecating jabs. Then home for a nap. 🙂
I have three snapshots for you today. We celebrated Mother’s Day by having a picnic at Eagle Point Park with Angie, Ben, Mark, and the Grand Kids. Been a long time since I’ve been to a picnic. Ben offered to do the grilling on this obsolete charcoal grill, which proved to be quite the challenge. He did a great job the burgers and brats were prefect.
Considering it was a celebration of Mother’s Day I don’t have any images of the two Mothers. I didn’t take many shots as the kids wanted to play. 🙂
After the picnic we stopped at the DQ near the park and stood in line for a long time to get an ice cream treat. It was a fun day and a great way to honor these two wonderful women in our lives.
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