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 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 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.
I was able to leave the office at a reasonable time yesterday and there was still some nice light. Now to find some harvest scenes. Problem is with the three days of rain we just had, I didn’t find any machinery in the fields on my trek home.
I did find this windmill however and since windmills are one of my favorite things to photograph I captured this image.
We see these scenes all the time but like the little bird from yesterday it’s not often that we stop and take a close look. That’s one of the many things I love about photography. Being able to freeze time and really look and enjoy what the camera captured. Click on any image if you like to enjoy a larger version.
I was surprised yesterday when I read Dennis Voy’s blog. Dennis is the owner of KMAQ AM / FM in Maquoketa. He writes a daily news and information blog and it’s read by several thousand people every day. He had one of my images of our little dog “Maggie” on his blog with the caption; “DAVE HAS GREAT CAMERAS AND TAKES GREAT PHOTOS. GOOGLE HIS WEB SITE TO SEE MORE.” I was flattered that he would post one of my pictures and give me a plug. I hope it’s not just the camera that makes the great pictures. 🙂
This is the only combine I could find last night. I was losing the light rapidly and he had a long way to go before he would get back my way so I settled for a butt shot. I don’t think a butt shot of a combine is as bad as a butt shot of a bird or is it?
That’s it for today. Hope you enjoy your Friday. Thanks for stopping by the blog and be careful.
I have a mixed bag of goodies for you today. Well actually that’s misleading. I have several disjointed and unrelated stories to share. First things first. One of the three items that have been on order for ever is coming Monday. I received an email today from the company that it is being shipped tomorrow for a Monday delivery. Of the three items I have on order it is the one I’m the least excited about. Don’t get me wrong I’m happy to finally get it, but it could have come last and that would have been just fine.
As you can see from the first image, what appeared to me to be 4 swans when I first pulled up to the pond turned out to be 4 pelicans. This is the first time in a couple of years that I have seen pelicans at the duck pond. I’m wondering if there will be a bunch more tomorrow morning. The last time they showed up there were a lot of them and it was in the morning.
I love how geese fly in pairs and groups of fours. They seem to fly in formation where ever they go and I was happy to capture this pair as they were leaving the duck pond last evening.
Still a sad scene of the destroyed nest with the abandoned eggs lying around. There was a couple of geese messing around the nest looking like they were tidying up the place when these guys came in attack mode. At one point I thought one of the geese was actually going to roll the egg back to the nest (for all the good it would do) but she just looked at it and went on her way. Very strange circumstances.
Some of the geese have goslings. I photographed a couple that had 14 little ones. They were in the pond on Wednesday but on the way home they were crossing the highway so no telling how many will be left in a few days. This is an emotional roller-coaster following some of these guys at the duck pond.
That’s it for today. Enjoy your Friday and the up coming weekend. Thanks for stopping by and be careful.
Yesterday at precisely 5:01 p.m. I and three of my friends from work walked over to the Northern most parking lot at our bank in Maquoketa and I launched the Phantom. The goal was to take an aerial image of the bank’s footprint. I’ve always been curious as to what the bank would look like from overhead. So since the temperature was a balmy 37 degrees (it felt colder than that after 5 minutes) a light wind of around 7 mph and nice sunshine what better time to fly.
I sent the Phantom to an altitude of 387 feet and took this image. Then trying to get a better composition I went a little higher and I thought a little further South. Since I’ve never seen Maquoketa from the air I got disoriented and couldn’t figure out where I was from the tiny monitor on my iPhone. Fortunately my friends never lost sight of the little speck with the green lights so they guided me back over the bank where I made a perfect two point landing. 🙂
I made another critical mistake as well. I shot about 15 minutes of video including a couple of minutes of my friends smiling at the Phantom. Unfortunately when I landed the copter I turned it off before stopping the video on the iPhone application, which corrupts the video and renders it useless. 😦
Other than that mistake it was a fun experience and my friends really enjoyed watching the Phantom fly. We drew a few other spectators as well. 🙂
Like anything, I will get better and make fewer mistakes the more practice I get. I wonder what it is like to operate the controller with unfrozen fingers?
Thanks for stopping by. Some difficult weather over the next few days so be careful.
