Maquoketa

All posts tagged Maquoketa

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 ~ April 27, 2018

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

Happy Friday!!

I have two images, a short video, and a long story for today.

For my Friends on Facebook {Click Here}   if you want to go directly to my Blog Post.

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 Experience in 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.

Enjoy your day and be careful.

Wednesday ~ May 06, 2015

Posted by Dave Updegraff on May 6, 2015
Posted in: General Posts. Tagged: , , , .

May-02-2015-4B

Happy Hump Day!

Today I continue with the training fire burn of the Maquoketa Fire Department and show you the progress of the burn.

May-02-2015-4C

More images with less babble.  🙂

May-02-2015-4D

You can see on the left that the structure is starting to concave and is getting ready to collapse onto itself.

May-02-2015-4E

It finally gave up and fell onto the floor of the structure.

May-02-2015-4A

Ever vigilant and ready to control any unexpected activity of the fire.  Where these guys were standing the heat of the fire was really quite intense.

That’s it for today.  Hopefully tomorrow some aerial video of the fire and some other interesting side photos of the event.

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

Friday ~ October 17, 2014

Posted by Dave Updegraff on October 17, 2014
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , , , , , .

Windmill

Happy Friday!

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.

Rural Heartland

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. 🙂

Harvesting The Crop

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.

Friday ~ May 09, 2014

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

There Be Pelicans

Happy, Happy Friday!!  ~  315

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.

A Pair of Flying Geese

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.

Turf Protection

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.

Thursday ~ February 20, 2014

Posted by Dave Updegraff on February 20, 2014
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , .

Maquoketa State Bank From The Air

Happy Thursday! 

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.

 

Saturday ~ February 01, 2014

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

Asher and Lisa

Happy Saturday!  I usually do not have a post on Saturday but I will make an exception this Saturday to tell briefly about an exceptional man, whom I’ve had the good fortune to have met and known these past 14 years through Rotary.

His name is Asher Schroeder and he is of our greatest generation.  The young lady next to Asher is his neighbor and good friend Lisa Clark.  Lisa works at Maquoketa State Bank in Maquoketa and her and her husband have two sons.  Everyone knows Lisa as one of the most caring and considerate people you will ever meet.  She watches over Asher and makes sure he is taking care of himself.

Ashers' Medals

In August of 1943 Asher was inducted into the Army to serve in the theater of War and was shipped to Europe.  He landed at Utah Beach on June 10th and he recounts his amazing story from that period on.

I have heard Asher speak of the war on different occasions but only in casual conversations and only bits and pieces Two weeks ago he gave the program at Rotary and it was a captivating recollection of an event that happened more than 70 years ago with specific dates and vivid memories.  He did this without notes or any other visual aids.  It was a remarkable story to listen to.

Asher Schroeder

Yesterday our bank, Maquoketa State Bank, had Asher come and speak to the entire staff at their weekly meeting.  He told his story again and it was just as remarkable hearing it two weeks later as it was the first time.

Dennis Voy, a fellow Rotarian and owner of KMAQ FM / AM Radio in Maquoketa was on hand as well and he video taped the presentation.  He posted it on YouTube® and I have linked to it below.  It is 46 minutes long but I can tell you that you won’t find a better 46 minutes to watch.  We are losing this generation at an alarming rate and anytime we can share in their remarkable giving and sacrifice is well worth the time.  I encourage you to click on the link and listen to his story.

As always thank you for stopping by the blog.  Enjoy your snowy Saturday and be careful.