THE OTHER SHOT

Autumn light, Dunnings Spring Park, Decorah, Iowa

Driving back home from another business trip this afternoon I took the time and stopped at Iowas tallest waterfall in Decorah at Dunnings Spring Park. This location is part of the Driftless Area here in the Midwest, not flattened by the glaciers of the ice age, and home of  clear trout streams, waterfalls, caves, and it is just as gorgeous as it is in our neck of the woods.

I guess you may ask, Andreas, where is the waterfall? Well, I made quite a few clicks. Used a tripod and shot with long exposure times to make the water looking smooth, tried to avoid the dappled light as much as possible, but still didn’t like the outcome. I have photographed the waterfall before and accepted somehow that this time we had a lot less water coming down the stream after a dry summer. At the end, looking at my photos on the screen of the monitor, it was not what I had in mind. They just didn’t tell the story of a ”great waterfall” as I had remembered it.

This is a very narrow side valley of the Upper Iowa River and there is only a short time during the day when the sun actually shines into it. While hiking down back to the parking lot my eyes were on the crystal clear waters of the stream and suddenly I saw another picture opportunity. It is this certain quality of light as we can only experience in autumn and that I love so much, even with the absence of fall colors in the trees. The leaves are almost gone her in eastern Iowa. It’s still warm, but winter is coming for sure…

IOWA STATE FAIR - SOME IMPRESSIONS

While a concert with the band Foreigner and special guest Melissa Etheridge in the Grandstands (stage in the background) was just about to start, many people still enjoyed a ride with the sky glider across the fair grounds into the setting sun.

Let me start with a quote from the website of the Iowa State Fair. Most Iowa readers of my photography blog probably know this already, but I’m writing this also for my family and friends in Germany, South Africa, India, Switzerland, and wherever else in the world this is viewed.

The internationally acclaimed Iowa State Fair is the single largest event in the state of Iowa and one of the oldest and largest agricultural and industrial expositions in the country. Annually attracting more than a million people from all over the world, the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines is Iowa’s great celebration, a salute to the state’s best in agriculture, industry, entertainment and achievement.

I just received a note that last Saturday the fair had a new single-day attendance record with 128,732 people coming to the fair grounds. It’s impossible to catch all aspects of this experience with only a few photos but I like to give you a few impressions from our visit last weekend.

Visitors can watch the judging of many competitions from farm animals to agriculture products or fine art and photography.

Food is available wherever you go and some of it you may find only in Iowa. Iowa is the number one state for egg production and home to approximately 45 million laying hens which produce around 15 billion eggs a year! A good reason for the Iowa Egg Council to serve ”Egg on a stick” to everybody who wants one. The gentleman was very busy to add some salt with spices to the fresh hardboiled eggs.

The young lady fixes her dress before entering a horse riding and shooting competition.

This is TEDDY BEAR, the World Super Bull. With 3,060 pounds (1391 kg) a respectable animal!

Well, when a sign is attached to a pumpkin that says ”Please do not climb on pumpkins”, they must be really big. The winner is the one in the back with a weight of 1,294 lbs (587 kg). The pumpkin in the front won only the third price but I thought it looked nicer. The girls give a great sense of scale.

At the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines you will see things you have never seen before. This artist sculptured a swine with his chainsaw from a block of ice. After he was done the kids put golden chocolate coins into the saving slot on top.

Let me introduce you to Finnegan, the Champion in the Big Boar competition. The little girl was as much impressed as we were by this 1,420 pound (644 kg) pig.

UNDER THE CANOPY

Female American Goldfinch, Walnut Woods State Park, Iowa

This is a late post from last weekend. We spent a relaxing holiday weekend in and around Des Moines, Iowa with friends. Not much photography this time but I had a chance to explore briefly Walnut Woods State Park, a nice wooded area along the Raccoon River in West Des Moines. There was a blind for watching birds but I placed my tripod outside of the building and practiced for a while shooting under the canopy of the trees, challenged by constantly changing light conditions.

Gray Catbird, Walnut Woods State Park, Iowa

To maintain some consistence I employed the Nikon SB800 speed light with a little dome diffuser to pull out some shadows and get better results for the colors of the birds feathers. As always, the speed light was mounted with a flash bracket above the long lens, which allows for better direction of the light and prevents unwanted reflections in a bird’s eye.

We saw mostly the same bird species that we have here in our woods and so I looked just for the best ”posers” among them. Nothing spectacular, just pure shooting fun!

Nikon Z6II, Nikon FTZ adapter, Sigma 150-600mm / f5-6.3 DG OS HSM S, Sigma APO Teleconverter 1.4x EX DG, Induro GIT 404XL tripod, Induro GHB2 gimbal head, Nikon SB 800 speed light,

GOING FOR THE DRAMA (NOT THE BRIDGE)

Rain front moving in over Iowa, Mississippi River, East Dubuque, Illinois

Last Friday evening I went across the Mississippi River to East Dubuque, the northwest corner of the state of Illinois. Over on the Iowa side a rain front moved in and started to cover already partially the low sitting sun. It is tempting to have only an eye for the Julien Dubuque Bridge that connects both states but there was more to consider as the subject for this photo. I was intrigued by the reflections on the water and the drama in the sky above. The bridge as a silhouette still holds the picture together and all lines, from below, above, and from the sides of the image converge near the brightest spot.

I started out shooting in color mode from different angles and distances to the bridge but non of the shots held the drama I saw as a possibility for the final photo. My monochrome settings in the Nikon Z6II apply the effect of a red filter. It gives extreme contrast, darkens the sky and makes the clouds really stand out. Seeing the effect right in the electronic viewfinder or on the camera screen gave me a good direction how I wanted to compose and how my exposure would effect the drama in the scene. Finally, later in post process at the computer, I reduced the effect of the red filter by lowering the contrast a little bit, and making it more looking like an orange filter was used.

Don’t take me wrong, the bridge is a nice subject for a picture, but this was all about the drama in the sky and its reflection on the Mississippi River.

FIRST FALL PICTURE?

Giant Sunflowers beside the road, Green Island Wetlands, Eastern Iowa

These Giant Sunflowers swayed heavily in the wind while rain clouds still moved through the Mississippi Valley. A short visit to the Green Island Wetlands yesterday afternoon didn’t lead to a lot of wildlife sightings but these yellow beauties and color contrast with the dark clouds tell the story of a cooler day after some much needed rain the night before.

I wanted to freeze the strong movement of the flowers and and started shooting with about 1/1600 s, at f/6.3 and ISO400. While this worked somehow, I was not happy with the blurred clouds in the background. Drama was missing. After closing down the aperture to f/14 I was left with 1/800 s at ISO1000. Still good enough to freeze the action and adding much more pronounced cloud shapes. Warmer weather is coming back tomorrow but I guess I have my first fall picture of the season…😉

OUT AND ABOUT IN NORTHEAST IOWA

Dunning’s Springs Park, Decorah, Iowa, Nikon D750, Nikkor 16-35mm / f4,   @35 mm, 1/25s, f/13, ISO200

If people think of Iowa, waterfalls are not coming to mind immediately, if at all. Today we explored the area around Decorah, IA. The Upper Iowa River has formed part of this landscape and is popular among kayak and canoe enthusiasts. Springs and clear streams draw trout anglers and several public parks are good destinations for hiking and other nature activities.

Nikon D750, Nikkor 70-200mm / f4, @122 mm, 1/5s, f/11, ISO100

One of them is Dunning’s Springs Park. It is not far from downtown Decorah and a 200’ waterfall is the biggest attraction. It is easy to reach after a short walk. I didn’t take the tripod with me and for both photos I went to the limits of my handholding capabilities.

ALONG THE FROZEN RIVER

Mississippi River, view from the Wisconsin side to the Iowa side

I was on another business trip again. This time I went up north to La Crosse, Wisconsin. The drive along the mighty Mississippi River is one of my favorite routes. Yesterday we had an almost clean blue sky. Not really great for a good photo but it always makes an impression on me how wide the river is above the dams. We had a lot of snow and it was not so easy to find a spot where you can pull off the road to make a picture. I crossed over the bridge into Wisconsin in Prairie du Chien. From there the road follows the river below the bluffs on the east side and offers great views across the ice covered stream to the Iowa and Minnesota side. This is all part of the driftless area, the region that escaped glaciation during the last ice age and, consequently, is characterized by steep, forested ridges, and deeply-carved river valleys. Today I drove back home on the west side of the river in Minnesota and northeast Iowa. It is as pretty as the Wisconsin side but the camera stayed in the bag due to a gray overcast this afternoon. I’m glad I made the stop yesterday…

NATURE CLICKS #395 - HERMIT THRUSH

Hermit Thrush, Backbone State Park, Iowa --------

Joan had to work this weekend, so I took our little dog Cooper for an Easter hike to an area that I have a little neglected during recent years. Backbone State Park is the oldest state park in Iowa, dedicated in 1919 (2001 acres, 820 ha), and it is only an hour drive west of our area. It is named for a narrow and steep ridge of bedrock carved by a loop of the Maquoketa River originally known as the “Devil's Backbone” (source: Wikipedia). I always hope to see some wildlife during a hiking tour but I didn’t want to carry the heavy 150-600 mm lens with me. Instead the 70-200 was on the camera.

Only fifteen minutes into the hike I came across this Hermit Thrush, an inconspicuous little bird, that wasn’t very shy but nevertheless kept a safe distance to Cooper and me while searching for food between leaf litter. The Hermit Thrush breeds further north and that makes me believe that this was a migrating bird.

The thrush decided to pose between thorny branches and unfortunately one of them covers part of the bird. I still decided to use this photo for today’s post because it was the closest and sharpest image I was able to make. It isn’t ideal for identification because you can’t really see the spots on its chest, but other pictures, from a wider distance, helped me to compare the field marks. The last time I had this bird in front of the camera was in April 2014 in our front yard. I guess I’ll keep my eyes open during the next days…

Nikon D750, Nikon Nikkor AF-S 70-200mm, f/4G ED VR, @ 200 mm, 1/1250 s, f/4, ISO 200

CAN’T DO THIS ONE ANYMORE…

February 18, 2018

On February 18, 2018 I crossed for the first time the new bridge over the Mississippi River between Sabula, Iowa and Savannah, Illinois. I thought it was interesting to see both, the old truss bridge and the new one, side by side and so I stopped and made a few clicks. Since around 10:30AM today the same picture cannot be made anymore because the old bridge was demolished and imploded with a big BOOM and clouds of smoke and sits now in the river. I read that cutting apart the remains started immediately and the pieces will be transported away by barges.

I didn’t really plan to publish this photo here in the blog. I was a little sloppy while taking the picture, not paying enough attention to the details around the edges and a different view point would have been probably better. After reviewing my photos on the computer screen I thought even about going back and shoot it again. Well, it is too late now…😏

Below are a couple pictures I took almost three years ago when I heard for the first time that the old truss bridge will be replaced. I even wrote a blog post about it. http://www.exnerimages.net/blog/2015/4/7/mississippi-river-stories-2015-5

It’s good to have these images!

April 5, 2015

‘ROMANCING’ A RAILROAD BRIDGE

Mississippi River, Swivel-Railroad bridge, Dubuque, Iowa -----

Some of my favorite subjects for architecture photography are the bridges across the Mississippi River. Unless it is a totally new subject that I haven’t shot before, there has to be a certain quality of light before I consider to take the camera out of the bag. This happened one evening earlier this month at the swivel railroad bridge in Dubuque. I had never made any close photos at the north side of the bridge and discovered just recently the access for this shooting location.

By the way, these bridges are a great subject to become familiar with new gear, like cameras, lenses, or teleconverters. Learning about depth of field, light fall off, sharpness, etc. in a controlled environment, but still with an interesting subject in front of the lens, is priceless (beats test shots in the backyard by far 😊).

This photo is another try to ‘romance’ my landscape photos with Macphun’s Luminar software. I still have a tear in my eye because the good old NIK collection is on it’s way out, but any time I gain more experience with Luminar I love it a little more. It is intuitiv for someone who has worked with Adobe Lightroom and NIK before, but I can see why it might be a little overwhelming in the beginning for someone who is new in post processing their images. There are a lot decisions that can be made how to process an image and I will be the first one to admit, overdoing it is very easy…

THROUGH THE FENCE

Red Fox (captive) --------    

This photo has nothing to do with our main activities last weekend. We went out camping to the Volga River Recreation Area near Fayette, Iowa and paddled the lake and finally the Volga River this weekend. It was a gorgeous tour and time well spent. The river had a good water level and was much faster than other times in July according to the park ranger. Unfortunately I’m not brave enough to take the D750 on a river tour with some whitewater challenges. With other words, no images from the paddle tour.

On our way home we stopped at the Conservation Park and Iowa Welcome Center in Osborne. Beside a lot of other interesting places, like an arboretum, a nature center, and a pioneer village, the center has a native wildlife exhibit. Owls, hawks, a black bear, wolf, coyote, and other animals that can’t make a living on their own in the wild anymore are hosted in this facility.

To be honest, I’m not a big fan of animals in captivity, although I understand the value for education. I’m just not excited anymore. However, the light on this Red Fox intrigued me and making a picture with the fence between me and the critter was a challenge I could not let pass by…

SPRING BIRDS AND MORE

White-throated Sparrow, near Durango, Iowa

I don’t mind to travel and it is an essential part of my job, but it is nice to be home again, especially at this time of the season. It’s getting green here in eastern Iowa, a little earlier than other years, and with the warm weather more birds arrive in our woods.

Yesterday I heard the wonderful sound of the male House Wrens for the first time this spring. He will wake me up in the morning during the next days and weeks by his melodious songs that hopefully will attract a female to one of our nest boxes.

There were several White-throated Sparrows in the grass below our bird feeders and they look never more beautiful than during this time of the year.

In addition a pair of Chipping Sparrows has arrived and unfortunately a Brown-headed Cowbird is around already. They like to lay their eggs into the nest of other birds and that doesn’t always go well for the offspring of the host bird.

Owlet, Great Horned Owl, Mississippi River, Mud Lake, Iowa

After being away for an entire week I had to go back to Mud Lake Park at the Mississippi and find out how the little owlet is doing. Other photographers kept me up to date during my time in California but since I watch this nest since five years I wanted to see it with my own eyes. The young owl has grown tremendously since I saw it the first time peeking out from under the mother’s feathers (Click HERE for the first photo). There is definitely only one owlet in the nest this year (last year we saw two) but it is so nice to see this episode continue.

MIGRATING GEESE, STILL COMING THROUGH

Snow Geese, Mississippi River, near New Albin, Iowa

This is a late photo from our trip along the Mississippi River last weekend. I was traveling this week and had planned to post this on Monday already, but made the “beginners mistake” of leaving my card reader at home. A good reminder to pay more attention while packing the photo gear for a trip…

We saw several hundred White-fronted Geese near the boat landing in New Albin, just south of the Minnesota border. Among them were about a dozen Snow Geese, feeding in the marsh land that surrounds the road to the main channel of the river. I have watched these species since several weeks along the Mississippi and was surprised to see still so many of them. I thought they were all gone already and they would be way further north on their journey to the arctic region of North America. A look on the migration map reveals that especially the Greater White-fronted Goose travels from as far south as Mexico.

Greater White-fronted Geese

I shot most of the pictures from my car, using the DX-crop mode, equivalent to a 900 mm focal length. Another photographer told me that a little earlier they were so close that he had to zoom out to 150 mm focal length. I wished I was that lucky…

SUNDAY AFTERNOON, HERE AND THERE

Nikon D750, Carl Zeiss Distagon T*, 35mm / f2 ZF ------------     

Our streak of days without sunshine seems to continue. We really didn’t see the “big bulb” much lately. Well, that doesn’t mean we can’t go out and make any pictures. Yesterday I went downtown for a visit of the Dubuque Museum of Art, followed by a little photo walk in town. I had it almost for myself, there were hardly any people in the streets. This is so different to probably any city in my home country Germany. On a Sunday afternoon people over there like to go out for walks and maybe sit in a cafe or beer garden, no matter how hot, cold, wet, or dry it is.

Dubuque has a number of old brick stone buildings and I looked around for interesting perspectives. This facade had drawn my interest and I waited about ten minutes for someone walking by, but that didn’t happen due to the lack of people in the streets. I liked the graffiti art anyway and made the click. Can’t sit home because of a few rain drops…😉

LUNCH-N-LEARN

Black-capped Chickadee ----------

Last year I have been asked by the Dubuque County Conservation to be part of a new program series “Lunch-N-Learn” for adults and seniors in the Swiss Valley Nature Center. Date and time were now officially announced and I like to invite those of you who live in or not too far from Dubuque, Iowa to join my presentation about nature photography. 

When: Wednesday, February 08, 2017, 11.00AM - 12.30PM

Where: Swiss Valley Nature Center, 13606 Swiss Valley Road, Peosta, IA 52068

The event is free but if you like to register for the catered lunch ($10) or want more information, please use the link below:

http://www.mycountyparks.com/County/Dubuque/Park/Swiss-Valley-Nature-Preserve-and-Nature-Center/Events/9396/Lunch-n-Learn.aspx

“Creating awareness by visual story telling” is the topic of my photo presentation. I will talk about favorite locations, the best times to find critters, how to approach wildlife, and how we can tell a story with our photographs to make other people aware about our natural treasures. It will not be so much about the technical aspects, like f-stop, exposure time, etc., but all about passion and the fun nature photography can create. Of course, I will try to answer any question someone may have after the presentation. I’m very excited and I hope you can join me February, 08.