Category Archives: Photography

Andy, Becky, Carla, Dawn, Jaxon, Kim, Linda, Michelle, Photoshop, Road Trip, Ruins, Shannon, Tamara, Teresa, WPC - Submissions

WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE – WEEK 135 – SIGNS

April 16, 2018 Christopher D. Bennett

Another big week for the WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE. People didn’t let the weather stop them from harvesting all sorts of SIGNS pictures. This week the Photography 139 empire stretched as far north as downtown Boone, Iowa. As far south and east as Kentucky. As far west as Folsom, California. There are 2 special notes need to be made about the submissions this week:

SPECIAL NOTE #1

Jaxon made his first submission this week. I’m very excited and I expect big things in the future.

SPECIAL NOTE #2

Pay special attention to Linda Bennett’s submission. It is a very special submission. Many of you will be able to figure out why.

But you didn’t come here to listen to all that tommyrot, you came to see the submissions:

Becky Parmelee

Dawn Krause

Jaxon Schoff

Christopher D. Bennett

Kim Barker

Linda Bennett -I found this in a trunk filled with cards and letters from the last 70 years. Made me smile.

Kim Barker

Teresa Kahler

Shannon Bardole-Foley
“All license plates in California are made in Folsom Prison. So it seemed fitting for the closed sign for the museum to be a license plate. However, we were there when the museum was open, so it was partially hidden.”

Tamara Peterson

Andy Sharp

Michelle Haupt

Carla Stensland – Form of sign..?

A very solid week of submissions!

But enough dwelling on the past. Time to look to the future. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future! This week’s theme:

GOVERNMENT

GOVERNMENT! What a great theme! But what is a GOVERNMENT photo? A GOVERNMENT photo is any photo that shows the GOVERNMENT at work. There is the obvious, a picture of a court house. GOVERNMENT. City Hall. GOVERNMENT. Police Station. GOVERNMENT. Fire Station. GOVERNMENT. But there also many GOVERNMENT activities you might not think about. That road you drove to work on today. GOVERNMENT. That public school where you dropped your kid off (I’m talking to those of us in the lower and middle class here) at this morning. GOVERNMENT. City Park. GOVERNMENT. County Park. GOVERNMENT. State Park. GOVERNMENT. National Park. GOVERNMENT. Iowa State University. GOVERNMENT. Other public universities. GOVERNMENT. The military. GOVERNMENT. A county hospital. GOVERNMENT. The Post Office. GOVERNMENT. The clean water (assuming nobody from Flint, Michigan or a state that allows fracking is reading this) coming out of your tap. GOVERNMENT.

Even organizations that aren’t the GOVERNMENT, are GOVERNMENT. That youth sport organization that you allegedly resigned from the Board, but sit my basement have 30 minute conversations about who should mow the lawn and chalk the fields. (That got strangely specific.) That board is a GOVERNMENT.

As you can see, there are a plethora of options and there are a ton more.

As always, I look forward to seeing your interpretations!

HOUSEKEEPING

A MESSAGE FROM THE PHOTOGRAPHY 139 RULES DIVISION

1. The picture has to be taken the week of the theme. This isn’t a curate your pictures challenge. This is a get your butt off the couch (my personal experience) and put your camera in your hands challenge. Don’t send me a picture of you next to the Eiffel Tower, when I know you were in Iowa all week. I will point out that I have let that slide some in the past. I will not in the future. Since it is literally about the only rule.

2. Your submission needs to be emailed to bennett@photography139.com by 11 AM on the Monday of the challenge due date. It should be pointed out that this blog auto-publishes at 12:01 on Mondays. So it wouldn’t hurt to get your picture in earlier.

That is it, them’s the rules.

A MESSAGE FROM THE PHOTOGRAPHY 139 SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION DIVISION

The latest person to show taste, class, and sophistication and sign on for a Photography 139 Email Subscription is Linda Clark. I honestly don’t know much about her, other than she is a relative of Andy Sharp and he says she has an interest in photography. Welcome aboard Linda! If you see her, feel free to give her a knowing glance and teach her the super-secret Photography 139 Handshake.

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That’s all I got for today, so if the good Lord’s willin’ and the creek don’t rise, we will commune right here again next Monday. Hopefully it will be a very governed Monday!

Art, Black & White, Boone FUMC, Kio, Photoshop, Scottie D., Suzie

An Afternoon with O’Keeffe, Hopper, Basquiat, and Suzie

April 15, 2018 Christopher D. Bennett

A couple Sundays back I met Suzie at the Des Moines Art Center to take in one of Des Moines’ most underappreciated attractions. The Des Moines Art Center is actually one of my favorite art museums that I have ever visited. It’s collection is surprisingly impressive and to top that off, it is FREE!

This was the 3rd or 4th time that we had tried to get together to visit the Des Moines Art Center, but something always seemed to get in the way. Made me think that the trip was never going to happen, much like Scottie D. and I’s next great tenderloining adventure to Winterset may never happen.

This trip to the art center ended up being kind of strange. Part of the way through the museum I started to sweat profusely and I was overcome with an overwhelming sense of hunger. We sat down for awhile and Suzie gave me a stick of gum. I felt better after a few minutes.

It was very bizarre. Not sure Suzie will want to visit the Art Center with me again at any time in the near future.

Here are a few pictures I took before my hot flash:

This is called Klingon Mustaches

After I felt better, I bid Suzie a fond adieu and then headed to the March for Our Lives via quick pit stop at Ted’s Coney Island.

++++++++++++++++++++++

So I had an amazing day today. On a couple of strange fronts I had some new knowledge dropped on me and I’m still reeling from the info.

KNOWLEDGE BOMB #1

Today was the Methodist Men’s Annual Chicken Noodle Brunch. While we were taking a break from our arduous labor, I asked Kio if he had seen why Jefferson, Iowa was in the news this week.

Kio is a top dog at the Boone Area Humane Society, so I was referring to the story that was on the news about Jefferson coppers catching feral cats and then busting a cap in them.

Kio has unfortunately bought into the massive misinformation campaign to paint me as a cat hater. When in reality, I don’t hate cats. Cats suck and I report the facts. I don’t get any joy in this truth.

Because of his perception on my perception of cats, he thought I was going to push for Boone to follow suit with this efficient way to deal with an excess feline population.

However, all I really wanted to know is what the Boone Area Humane Society thought about this policy.

Now Kio can’t speak for the Boone Area Humane Society (okay, that is literally one of his jobs), but he can tell me what they do in Boone with what he termed “community cats”. Boone picks up these cats and makes sure they have all their shots and then microchips them, so they can track them. Then they return them to the neighborhood where they were trapped.

I was literally shocked to find out that this was happening. Boone has community cats.

Kio gave me the rough estimate that there are in the ballpark of 25 of these community cats in Boone. They are all registered, but he did not know whether or not the public had access to this registry.

I’ve had a few cats show up in my neighborhood and I had them dealt with before they could have an adverse effect on my property value.

However, I had no clue that some parts of Boone have sanctioned cats just strolling around.

I have decided that if I ever move, I will be finding out about how to check out this registry to make sure there isn’t one of these community cats in the neighborhood of a potential new home. Much in the same way that I made sure there were very few rental properties in my neighborhood when I bought my current homestead.

KNOWLEDGE BOMB #2

I now know the purpose and the story behind “The Shrine” between Boone and Ames. If you don’t know about “The Shrine”, it is a mysterious building on a country road between Boone and Ames, built by a guy that is known to run gawkers away from it. It is a source of frequent internet speculation and sometimes “investigative journalism” by local media outlets. It has its own thread on Reddit.

I have my information from a high placed source. While I would tell you what it is, I don’t want to ruin the mystery for you.

Here is a YouTube documentary on “The Shrine”:

I’ll just leave it that the documentary gets a few things right and quite a few things wrong.

Animals, Commercial, Event, Iowa State, Jeff Daniel, Shannon, Yin

04-13-08

April 14, 2018 Christopher D. Bennett 8 Comments

The following pictures were located int he folder 04-13-08:

By adding these images to the Photography 139 Gallery, I was able to restore the following classic An Artist’s Notebook journal entries to their original glory:

SHAVE AND A HARICUT
VEISHEA
LWL PHOTO SHOOT

The majority of these pictures were taken at VEISHEA, back before Iowa State (and it’s incredibly corrupt president at the time) mistakenly canceled VEISHEA. I spent a good part of that day hanging out with Jeff and Yin. This was before Jeff and Yin got married. Their wedding was one of the best weddings I’ve ever attended. You know how most weddings are incredibly lame and a complete waste of a Saturday? Well there wedding was actually fun and not a waste of a Saturday. Which is doubly amazing because their wedding was in Nebraska, the worst state in the union. The secret to the greatness of their wedding? Ice cream truck.

Jeff and Yin now have a little baby running around and I have yet to meet him, because at times, I am a horrible friend.

The photos of Shannon were taken during a photo shoot for Little White Lye Soap from back when I had that account.

Next Saturday’s stroll down memory lane will involve an Iowa State Spring Game and more Little White Lye Soap.

Road Trip, Ruins, Town Sign Project

The Town Sign Project: Vol. 3

April 13, 2018 Christopher D. Bennett

On my recent sojourn to Marshalltown, I was able to collect a few more signs for the TOWN SIGN PROJECT.

Mackey, Iowa

Story City, Iowa

Randall, Iowa

Jewell, Iowa

Radcliffe, Iowa

Garden City, Iowa

Gilbert, Iowa (Side 1)

Gilbert, Iowa (Side 2)

Most towns have multiple town signs. I only pick one for the project. For example, Story City has a couple nice, brand new looking signs. BORING! I almost fell asleep looking at them and I was driving at the time. I’m sure I’m not able to find all of the town signs in the towns I’m tooling through. My preference is old decrepit signs like the Garden City sign.

I should point out that Mackey isn’t really even a town any longer, but somebody put up a sign to mark where it used to be. I’m not above photographing town signs for towns that don’t exist any longer. I’m looking forward to my dance with the Zook Spur sign at some point in the near future.

You can review other signs that I’ve harvested for this project by clicking on the link below:

TOWN SIGN PROJECT

I hope to more than double the current number in the next month or so.

NOTE: The Gilbert sign was taken on a different road trip.

Christianity, Photoshop, Tamara, WPC - Reminder

WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE REMINDER – SIGNS

April 13, 2018 Christopher D. Bennett

A friendly reminder that this week’s WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE theme is SIGNS:

SIGNS!

Earlier in the week I described two hypothetical situations and gave an interpretation of what those SIGNS were saying. I want to backtrack on those. I believe these to be the correct interpretations of the hypothetical SIGNS.

Bro, if she has posted on 3 different social media platforms since you texted her and she still hasn’t texted you back, that is a SIGN(S) that she is SO into you that she needs time to craft the perfect response to your text message.

Girl, if he acts like he doesn’t know you when he is around his friends, but is constantly trying to slide into your DMs at 2 in the morning, that is a SIGN(S) that he thinks you are so special that he doesn’t want to share you with anybody else in the world.

Of course, you could also take a picture of real SIGNS, but I will warn you on this front, Tamara Peterson has already set the bar pretty high on this front.

Happy photo harvesting!

Boone FUMC, Christianity, Event, Teresa, Youth Group

Romans 8:14

April 12, 2018 Christopher D. Bennett

Here are a few Easter pictures from both the Rise of the Son Service and the breakfast that followed:

Photo credit for the majority of these photos go to Jaxon. I’m still waiting for the day he submits a photo for the WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE!

Art, Black & White, Mom, Night, Photoshop, Railroad, Road Trip, Ruins, WPC - Alternate

I Get So Frustrated, Take A Look at What I Created, Time is Wasting and I Ain’t Waiting!

April 11, 2018 Christopher D. Bennett 2 Comments

The world wasn’t ready for these ROAD TRIP photos on Monday. The world still wasn’t ready for them on Tuesday. I’m not sure the world is ready for them now, but I can’t hold them back any longer:

After Jewell, I tooled through Ellsworth. From Ellsworth I moved onto Radcliffe. Radcliffe is notable for the shortest water tower I have ever seen. From Radcliffe I went through Garden City. Garden City gave me a DELIVERANCE type vibe. I’ve only really felt that similar vibe, to that degree in Beaver. Beaver, Iowa creeps me out. There is a reason why I once created a series of photos called “The Beaver Machete Massacre” I don’t believe those photos are online anywhere. So don’t go looking for them.

In Garden City, I realized I was going to be late for my supper appointment with some of my favorite miners. I pressed on the gas and made haste for Marshalltown. Only stopping briefly in Zearing.

If you have never been to Zeno’s in Marshalltown, I would highly recommend it. Zeno’s gets the Christopher D. Bennett Endorsement. In particular, I can’t recommend the BBQ Brisket pizza enough. Smoked beef brisket, red onion, peppadew peepers. Drizzled with sriracha bourbon bbq sauce. It is even more amazing than it sounds. Even people with questionable taste in food products like Elizabeth endorse it. She normally only likes meat paste pizza.

The final picture with my Mom (dinking with her phone like a millennial) was taken on our way back from Wingstop on Sunday after our post-church lunch.

That is all the ROAD TRIP alternates I have. You’re welcome world!

Art, Automobiles, Baseball/Softball, Black & White, History, Photoshop, Politics, Railroad, Road Trip, Ruins, Small World, Town Sign Project, Travel, WPC - Alternate

I’m Not Complaining, I’m Just Being Honest, I Promise That I Will Not Beg for Respect, No!

April 10, 2018 Christopher D. Bennett 2 Comments

The world was not ready for these ROAD TRIP pictures on Monday. It is highly doubtful that the world is ready for these ROAD TRIP pictures now, but I can’t hold them back any longer.

This is not an endorsement of Rick Young for Hardin County Supervisor, although he has a sweet website.

I took a little ROAD TRIP on Saturday on the way to Marshalltown to meet some fellow miners for supper. On the way there I decided to head north a little bit before heading east and to pursue some signs for THE TOWN SIGN PROJECT.

I left Boone and went through the remains of Mackey. Took a few moments in Story City before heading north and spending quite a bit of time in the fascinating town of Randall. One of the fascinating things I found in Randall was the Dodge truck. I find it fascinating that on the hood ornament was the Star of David. I wonder when they took the religious symbol out of their marketing.

I looked into this and found the following:

1. The Dodge brothers were not Jewish. It is not a Star of David.
2. But nobody seems to know what it means. It might represent the Greek letter delta or it might be a masonic symbol or it might have to do with medieval mysticism.
3. It was not done to taunt Henry Ford, who was a noted anti-Semite as has often been theorized.
4. They symbol disappeared from Dodge cars when the 1939 model was introduced. Hmmm… what was going on in the world in 1939.
5. The Dodge brothers both died in 1920 as victims of the influenza epidemic of that year. They took the truth of the symbol with them to their graves.

Here endeth the lesson.

The small world picture is of Randall. From Randall I headed north. I stopped briefly at Little Wall Lake to take a couple of self-portraits. I also took a couple lake pictures, but they did not please me.

After Little Wall Lake, I spent a few minutes cruising Jewell. Just to the east of the Jewell town signing (heading north of 69) is the fascinating remains of the animal sculptures. They’ve sadly fallen into a degree of disrepair. I could analyze this piece of of art for days.

It feels like the kind of tableau that should be in any respectable roadside curiosity book about the great Cyclone State!

There are a few more images from this ROAD TRIP in the hopper. You’re welcome America!

Andy, Becky, Black & White, Carla, Cathie, Christianity, Kim, Michelle, Micky, Photoshop, Road Trip, Ruins, Shannon, WPC - Submissions

WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE – WEEK 134 – ROAD TRIP

April 9, 2018 Christopher D. Bennett

A healthy amount of people hit the open road for a ROAD TRIP photo. I think this week’s WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE EMPIRE extends as far north as Randall, Iowa. As far south as Arkansas. As far west as West Wendover, Nevada. As far east as Virginia, I’m guessing.

But you didn’t come here to listen to me talk all tommyrot about geography and participation rates. You came to see the submissions:

Micky Augustin

Kim Barker

Shannon Bardole-Foley

Michelle Haupt

Andy Sharp

Tamara Peterson

Andy Sharp

Becky Parmelee

Carla Stensland

Christopher D. Bennett

Cathie Raley

SIGNS!

SIGNS! What a great theme! But what is a SIGNS photo? The obvious answer is any picture of a SIGN(S) is a SIGNS photo. But there are more than just the SIGNS that tell you to stop, yield, sit down, and shut up. If she hasn’t responded to your text message, but she has posted on Facebook twice, added to her Snapchat Story and tweeted 3 times… those are SIGNS that bro, she just isn’t in to you. If he doesn’t acknowledge your existence around his friends, but at 2 AM he is always sliding into your DMs, that is a SIGN(S) that grilfriend, you can do better!

As always, I look forward to seeing your interpretations!

HOUSEKEEPING

A MESSAGE FROM THE PHOTOGRAPHY 139 RULES DIVISION

That is it, them’s the rules.

A MESSAGE FROM THE PHOTOGRAPHY 139 SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION DIVISION

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That’s all I got for today, so if the good Lord’s willin’ and the creek don’t rise, we will commune right here again next Monday. Hopefully it will be a very signed Monday!

Animals, Black & White, Naima, Nature, WPC - Alternate

I Need Some Money to Pay for My Rent, I Need Some Money to Pay for My Gas!

April 8, 2018 Christopher D. Bennett

The world wasn’t ready for these BLACK & WHITE pictures on Monday. It wasn’t ready on Tuesday. Not on Wednesday. Not on Thursday. Not even on Friday. I’m not even sure the world is ready for them now, but I can’t hold them back any longer:

That is it. The last of 114 BLACK & WHITE alternates. To take (pretty much) all of these pictures, I set my camera to High Contrast Monochrome. This actually isn’t how I would recommend taking BLACK & WHITE photos. I’d recommend taking all your images in color and then converting them to BLACK & WHITE in post. You can’t add something back that isn’t there. Of course, before you take the photo, you should know whether or not you are going to convert it to BLACK & WHITE. You need to imagine what the final product is going to look like before you ever, ever, ever, ever, think of clicking that shutter button.

I did it this time because it was a fun little exercise.

All of these pictures of Naima were taken at Dickcissel Park. To this day, I’ve never seen a dickcissel at Dickcissel Park.