False Start

I’ve wanted to do a photo series based on the Ten Commandments for quite sometime now. This was originally an idea for, “Hey, don’t be murderizing anybody.” However, I’ve decided to take this in a different direction. So this is not a true start of that project.

Here are a few other False Start pictures.

Special thanks to Sara for securing an ask from her dad, no questions asked. He even sharpened it for me, even though he knew it was just a photo prop.

These pictures came from: backup

I’m not really sure what the common bond of these pictures would be. I’m guessing that I just placed them here until a better home could be found and never returned to them.

This was a scene from the Anders’ opus Project: Universe.

Next week’s folder will be:

Backup/My Pictures/A Scene from the Woods

The exciting part about this little adventure is that we will be moving into almost exclusively digital images. So these images will actually look WAY better since they were digital from the time they were birthed into this world.

I hate the phrase “things happen for a reason” more than I hate any other phrase in the world. That doesn’t mean that I don’t necessarily believe in fate, but for the most part I don’t like fate. Its plans run contrary to my plans, no matter how hard I work on my plans. So fate can go suck an egg.

However, sometimes fate works out in my favor, even though I don’t know it.

One of those fate just screwed me over, but it ended up working out pretty well for me moments was when my wheel flew off my car on my way to Minnesota a few weeks back. I had a pretty sweet vacation planned, but it all went into the ditch with my wheel and more money than I care to think about.

I rescheduled my vacation for the last week in August. That movement of my vacation just a few days allowed me to complete Operation Puppy sooner than I anticipated.

I knew when I finally got a puppy, it would be while I was on vacation and I didn’t think that I would be taking a vacation for several more months, but I still checked several websites and newspaper (okay newspaper websites) for the puppy that I wanted. A female golden retriever.

A simple enough request, but there weren’t many in the area. Then an ad for a bunch of puppies showed up in the Des Moines Register.

I wrote them and they gave me the sad news, all of their female puppies were probably claimed. 2 were for sure. The other two were most likely claimed.

I wrote them back and let them know that if one of the females became available, I wanted to be at the front of the list. That was on a Wednesday. I resigned myself to the fact that I wouldn’t be getting a puppy for several more weeks or months.

Then on Friday they wrote me to tell me that they thought that one of the females might be coming available, but could not make any promises.

I made plans to drive up near Hubbard on Saturday to see the puppies. I figured that it would be a fruitless trip, but it wouldn’t hurt to see some puppies. The cutest most adorable kind of puppy: golden retrievers!

Then on Saturday morning I got an email saying that they had a female for me.

That afternoon Jason, Alexis, and I drove up to see the puppies. I put down a deposit and set up a day and time to come pick up my puppy. I worked it out so that I could pick her up on the Wednesday of my vacation as I came back down from Minnesota.

The next step was coming up with a name. I struggled with a name, but eventually with the help of friends a name was found. Here are some of the suggestions I received:

Willy: Cuddles or Miss Wiggles
Faust: Steele & Melanie
Jen: Mila
Jill: Daisy
Sara: Astrid, Mahtob and then she sent me a list of about 200 other suggestions.
Carla: Chloe, then she went out and bought a puppy and named it Chloe.

But it was actually a suggestion by Derrick that put me on the road to the name. While we were sitting on a bench at the State Fair resting, he asked if there was a female character from a Kubrick movie that I liked. I have to confess that Kubrick movies aren’t filled with extremely strong female characters. If you take out the prostitute from Eyes Wide Shut or the sniper from Full Metal Jacket, that really leaves you with Lolita and I’m not naming a dog after Lolita.

I toyed with the idea of Kubrick and then Coltrane as a name, but those were just too male sounding names. I was stalled.

Then fate took a hand again. Every morning I run shuffle on Media Player and then post whatever the first song that comes up to Twitter. Now, I know that nobody in the world cares at all what song I am listening to during that exact moment of the day. I do it as a reminder to the world that I have better taste in music than they do.

On August 24th a Miles Davis song was the song that shuffle landed on and I posted the following to Twitter:

“In a Silent Way/It’s About That Time…”-Miles Davis-In A Silent Way-If I were getting a male (puppy), I would name it Miles, Coltrane or Kubrick.”

Dawn replied to my tweet with this tweet:

“How about Naima? Unusual & fits the jazz theme…”

It was a great idea and while I marinated on the idea for a couple of days, in the end, I decided it was too great of an idea to pass up. So I named my puppy after one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite musicians.

I had a name and a week later I had a puppy. Here are a few of the pictures from my first few days with Naima:

Next week’s Wednesday randomness will feature pictures from the mini family reunion I hosted Labor Day weekend.

These pictures came from backup/Old My Pictures/UnHingd

These are a mixture of concert pictures from an Iowa State game, practice and recording their first demo.

The phallic nature of the “I” was a constant source of debate.














This is a Jay Janson Photoshop original.

Next week’s folder will be:

Backup/Old My Pictures/Unhingd/Concert

As you may recall, I like to check in on some statistics every 100 posts or so to see how things are doing in popularity. However, this statistical check-in will mark the end of an era. I am officially retiring the Snapshots Gallery and the Artistic Gallery.

The advent of the store has made them obsolete and why bother with galleries where you can’t buy anything, right Andree Jauhari, Marla Gorshe, and Jennifer Wohlgemuth of Minnesota! Right. Right?

Therefore, the only gallery that will remain is the Store. Check it out:

So here are the final rankings of the 10 most popular pictures in the Artistic Gallery. For the record, these are heavily skewed by spammers:

1. 669 Views


2. 497 Views


3. 410 Views


4. 375 Views


5. 352 Views


5. 352 Views


7. 351 Views


8. 350 Views


8. 350 Views


8. 350 Views

Here are the 10 most popular pictures from the Snapshots Gallery. Data heavily skewed by spammers.

1. 2010 Labor Day – 915 Views


2. Jesse & I Netting My Trees – 643 Views


3. Derrick & a Gunderburger – 245 Views


4. Tailgating Games – 229 Views


5. Baier & I at Chiefs Game – 169 Views


6. Shannon & I at an Inebriated Saints Show – 89 Views


7. Shannon in Backbone – 54 Views


8. Holding the White Trash Elixir – 49 Views


9. Brandon Tailgating – 45 Views


10. Gunderburger! – 43 Views

Here is the list of the ten people that have contributed (in some way shape or form) to this blog the most in the first 1199 entries. Plus how many entries they have been in since we last looked at these numbers. Plus where they were the last time we looked at these numbers.

1. Jesse – 174 – +9 – 1
2. Jay - 165 – +13 – 2
3. Shannon – 153 – +6 – 3
4. Derrick – 138 – +14 – 4
5. Jen – 124 – +16 – 6
6. Teresa – 118 – +9 – 5
7. Sara – 112 – +15 – 8
8. Willy – 110 – +8 – 7
9. Vest – 95 – +14 – 9
10. Carla – 84 – +10 – NR
10. Mom – 84 – +17 – NR

Who are the 3 greatest movers outside of the Top Ten?

1. Dad – +16
2. Jill – +14
3. Evie – +6

Thanks to this group of friends and family for their consistent efforts in aiding me in my photographic pursuits, either through assisting, modeling, inspiring, listening, or just being around a whole lot. I couldn’t do what I do with out them. And so many other people too!

The pictures are from:

Backup/Old My Pictures/Real to Life/Color

Apparently at one time I thought these were some of the most important color pictures I had taken. In retrospect, I have no clue why.

Willy on our last day as roomies.








Peterson Pits




I’m pretty sure Scottie D. gave me that bird feeder.






At one time, I’m pretty sure I thought this was the best picture I was ever going to take. Thank God I was wrong!






This sweet orange couch’s demise is still a sore subject to this day.


Jay needs to go back to his days of sweet facial hair.




The hallway to Eric and Suzie’s first apartment.













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Next week’s folder will be:

Old My Pictures/Real to Life/Special Effects

Seems like most of my folders have a subfolder named New Folder. This New Folder contains some pretty random pictures. Some of these were taken by Carla.

This week’s folder:

Backup/Old My Pictures/New Folder

Next week’s folder will be:

Backup/Old My Pictures/New Photos

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!

Not really sure why I entitled this journal entry Guy’s Night because it isn’t as if this group of friends has a shortage of Guys’ Nights. However, it has been awhile since Jesse, Willy, Jay (unpictured party pooper), and I have spent a night in the woods communing with nature, fire, and the dirty raccoons that try to sneak up on us and steal from our picnic baskets.

I didn’t take many pictures of what was an epic night. We got to listen to the antics of the date rapists (frat guys, so I just assume) one campsite to the south of us and the hippie flower children beating on their drums one campsite to our north. However, despite the fact that we are rapidly becoming old men, our 3 man party (the best type of party, right?) lasted at least a good hour or two longer than their weak sauce parties.

Here are a few pictures from Guys’ Night Campathon 2011:

The last 2 pictures are of a hot dog that Jesse claimed had “mystic” powers.

Next week’s Wednesday random collection is of some work I did for the United Way.

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