I’ll just confess that my picture this week was not the intended picture. But I did what I could after I had some kind of memory card failure where I lost my original picture.

Here are the submissions for NIGHT:

Christopher D. Bennett


Dawn Krause


Mike Vest A


Mike Vest B

Next week’s theme will be:

A look back at last year’s submissions.

I am going on vacation next week, so next Monday at noon the theme for next week will publish, but none of the pictures will be published until I return from my sabbatical. Unless you get your picture in by Friday.

Soul Mending

This Personal Photo Project was to photograph around an Amish farm on my trip to Kalona with Sara, Cousin Amy and the Funk.

Here are a few more pictures from the farm.

Next week’s Personal Photo Project involves lilies.

A few weeks back I went on a road trip with Sara, Cousin Amy, and the Funk to have lunch at an Amish woman’s house in Kalona. The trip was set up by the Funk who has ties to the Amish community in Kalona as she is formerly Amish.

I’ve really only known the Funk for a few months now, but she is truly one of the most fascinating human beings I’ve ever met. Not just because she is formerly Amish, but I can’t lie, that part fascinates me.

I really find the Amish community to be fascinating and to have somebody to ask question after question after question after question to is really cool for me.

The pictures of the Amish woman’s (Ruby Miller) house are being held back for Personal Photo Project #77, but here are a sampling of the other pictures we took on this incredible day.

Disclaimer: I go to Kalona about once or twice a year with my Mom. I never photograph the Amish while I’m there because I know that it is not something that they would enjoy (clearly not the right word). But on this trip I did take a couple of pictures of some Amish at the urging of the Funk. One of the pictures I took was of an Amish volleyball tournament. I really wish I would have been able to stop the car and enter the tournament. I have a history of dominating religious tournaments. A Pentecostal volleyball tournament here and a Mormon basketball tournament there. However, Amish volleyball tournament was not to be added to my list of life experiences.

Cheese from the Kalona Dairy


Kalona Dairy


Kalona Dairy


Picture for The Story Project


Flower for Sale at the Bakery




The Funk in the Community Store


The Funk in the Community Store






Clematis


Good Grass Fed Beef








Sara in Stringtown

Another bonus of this trip was taking Sara to Sister’s Garden. I’ve always kind of viewed it as Sara’s mothership even though she had never been there before. Now that has been remedied.

Next week’s Wednesday random picture collection will be from a baseball game I attended in Minnesota.

The eldest of today’s birthday celebrants is Jill!

Here is my birthday photo tribute to Jill!

Alexis would be up next for the birthday tribute!

Today is also Derrick’s birthday!

Here is my photo tribute to Derrick!

Wow! I photograph Derrick a lot! I hope this makes his birthday that much happier!

There are 3 very special people that were born on July 12 and they are each worthy of their own individual birthday photo tribute. So I will start from youngest and go to oldest.

Here is my photo birthday tribute to Logan:

Mad with Joy

There can be no doubt that there are certain subjects that I photograph for certain people. For example, I photograph tulips and roses for my Mom. I photograph daisies and lilies for Jill. (A fact that lead to a rather embarrassing phone call recently that the story of which, may or may not be revealed in the next month or so.) I photograph dark alleys for Sara.

But irises? I definitely photograph irises for Jen. That shows what a deep level of friendship Jen and I have, because I HATE irises.

I know that sounds harsh. How can anybody hate a flower? After all, didn’t Henry Beecher put it best when he wrote:

“Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made, and forgot to put a soul into.”

But irises confound me for two reasons. They bloom and are gone in what feels like 45 seconds.

Second, I have never been able to figure out how to photograph irises. They are all weird angles and they never seem to reveal their best parts for the photographing.

They aren’t like daisies or roses or (my personal favorite) moonflowers (although I also like marigolds, hollyhocks, coneflowers, dahlias…) that seem to be saying, “Come photograph me!”

They seem to be saying, “Try and photograph this!”

I made a solemn vow this year that the iris was not going to get the best of me. But even after two separate trips to photograph an iris patch, I wasn’t convinced that I had captured anything that was worth looking at.

I even put off editing the pictures for close to 5 weeks.

However, after editing the images I feel that I have captured something of quality. It wasn’t an easy dance like it is with the tulip or the hollyhock, but we got to the right place in the end.

Here are more pictures from the Mad with Joy Series.

So one of these iris pictures will end up as Jen’s birthday present. Jen’s birthday was week ago and I have yet to decide which one to give her. There will be more pictures published on Saturday (at the usual time), you can help pick out Jen’s birthday present by voting on which one you think is the best in the comments section of this website. (If you vote on Facebook, I won’t count your vote.) Although be warned, if Jen votes, hers is the only vote that matters.

Stay tuned for more irises tomorrow.

I’ve put together this little photo tribute to Jay to celebrate his birthday.

Looks like Derrick, Jill and Logan are up next for birthday photo tributes!

Today is Jen’s birthday, so Happy Birthday to Jen!!!

Looks like Jay is up next for the birthday photo tribute!

These pictures come from: Backup/Old My Pictures/Labels

I once had an idea where I had my friends do a little exercise in self-realization. I asked them to pick a word. One word that they wanted the world to think of when the world saw them. Then I had them write that word on a piece of poster board and then I photographed them.

I was going to follow this up with a project where I had them pick one word that they thought was how the world perceived them.

I sometimes think about bringing this project back. Perhaps if bring back the BIG birthday party next year.

These are pictures from the Labels Project.

Next Week’s Folder will be:

Backup/Old My Pictures/Master Wentworth