Rodan139: Three Bridges

October 11, 2020 Christopher D. Bennett

A couple Saturdays ago I had a couple of less successful drone flights with Rodan139 than I was hoping for. One was my messup with a battery charging situation that I mismanaged. The other one I cut short because of tourists. Ugh! Tourists!

Have a look at what I did get:

I’m trying to make a concerted effort to take the drone out once a week, before the weather makes it impossible to take it out. For example, this week was extremely windy, but I was able to take it on a brief flight on Saturday down by the Des Moines River. I have a couple targets I want to get before the weather gets nasty. But one is really hard to get to, but I have a plan. We’ll see how it works out.

Flowers, Football, Iowa State, Nader, Willy

2010-04-19

October 10, 2020 Christopher D. Bennett

The grand majority of pictures from the folder 2010-04-19 are from the Iowa State’s Spring Game in 2010. There is also one picture that was used for Week 15 of Year 1 of THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE. The theme was LONG EXPOSURE.

Looking through these pictures really made me miss the Spring Game. It was pointless. You learned nothing. It was frequently boring. But you got to be at Jack Trice Stadium with thousands of your closest friends!

WEEK 15 - LONG EXPOSURE - CHRISTOPHER D. BENNETT

By adding these pictures to the Photography 139 Gallery, I was able to restore the following historic “An Artist’s Notebook” entries to their original glory:

PERSONAL PHOTO PROJECT OF THE WEEK NO. 17

RWPE #15 – LONG EXPOSURE

Next Saturday’s walk down memory lane will involve birds, mail, and flowers.

Art, Birthdays, Drone, History, Railroad, Ruins, Sara, Self-Portrait, Shawn Lockner, Town Sign Project, WPC - Alternate, WPC - Reminder

Maybe I’m a Man and Maybe I’m a Lonely Man

October 9, 2020 Christopher D. Bennett

I need to start today by wishing Shawn a happy birthday. Happy birthday Shawn!

I hope your birthday is as wonderful as you want it to be!

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I do love pictures of SIGNS. My sister-in-law Laura once told me that this makes me a hipster. She is wrong about that, but even if it did make me a hipster, I’d still love pictures of signs. Battered. Beat up. Barely hanging on. My kind of SIGNS. With that in mind, here are the alternate pictures for last week’s THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE theme SIGNS:

I also took a couple pictures of unincorporated towns in Boone County:

Centerville, Iowa
Unincorporated

Ridgeport, Iowa
Unincorporated

Here is an interesting fact about Ridgeport. It was originally called Mineral Ridge. It took that name from the ridge that the town sits on. It was giving that name because the surveyors that were exploring the area, their compass wasn’t working correctly. The figured that this was because the ridge was filled with minerals. Turns out that they just had a broken compass. At least this is what I read in the latest issue of “Trail Tales”.

I wish more of these unincorporated communities had signs like Centerville. I looked for one in Logansport and didn’t find one. Also looked for some kind of marker where Zenorsville was once located, but found nothing. However, of all the unincorporated communities in Boone County, the lack of any kind of marker for Jordan makes me the saddest. Not just because of my family connection (I also have a family connection to Centerville) to Jordan, but because of its historical significance because of the Jordan tornado. C’est la vie!

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This is your reminder that this week’s theme for THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE is SELF-PORTRAIT:

SELF-PORTRAIT

A SELF-PORTRAIT is simply a picture where the photographer and the subject are the same person. Obviously, there are some creative ways to get around that, if you don’t like take pictures of yourself. Even if that doesn’t make sense to anybody else.

Happy photo harvesting!

Fisheye, Flowers, Macro

Painted Without Instruction – 2020 – Beta

October 8, 2020 Christopher D. Bennett

Today I want to share the balance of the images from the sunflower field at Badger Creek Recreation Area near Van Meter.

I’ll definitely have to try to get back there next year. Could be an annual trip. Like my trips to State Center and Pella. At least they are supposed to be annual.

Animals, Vacation

Cervus Canadensis

October 7, 2020 Christopher D. Bennett

On the second day of my vacation I went down to Walnut Woods in Des Moines to knock off a State Park I haven’t been to. But on the way there, I stopped at Jester Park, which is better than a ton of State Parks and not just because of the elk, but I did take pictures of elk. Have a look.

There weren’t any buffalo out when I was there, but the elk more than made up for that!

Flowers, Macro

Who You Are to Me

October 6, 2020 Christopher D. Bennett

Here is a collection of flower pictures I took with a flash ring back in late July. Lilies. Hollyhocks. Moonflowers. Oh my!

I think I’ve finally started to put a dent into all the flower pictures I’ve taken during the pandemic. Maybe not a big dent, but you can definitely see it in the right light.

Alexis, Art, Birthdays, Brandon, Carla, Cathie, Drone, Elainie, Elizabeth, Jason, Jesse, Johnathan, Kim, Kio, Logan, Mom, Politics, Self-Portrait, Shannon, Tamara, Teresa, Vest

WPC – WEEK 264 – SIGNS

October 5, 2020 Christopher D. Bennett

Sorry that this is several minutes late today. I went to cast my ballot for the 2020 election during my lunch break from the mine:

A reminder that if you live in Iowa, early voting starts today! It might be easier and safer than voting on November 3. But you have to make the choice that is best for you.

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I need to start today by wishing Johnathan a happy birthday. Happy birthday Johnathan!

I hope your birthday is as amazing as you want it to be!

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WooHoo! 53 straight weeks of double digit submissions!! Once again, I didn’t even have to send out any reminder texts.

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

Kio Dettman

Tamara Peterson

Shannon Bardole-Foley

Jesse Howard

Christopher D. Bennett

Teresa Kahler

Cathie Raley

Kim Barker

Elizabeth Nordeen

Carla Stensland

Mike Vest

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:

SELF-PORTRAIT

SELF-PORTAIT! What a great theme! But what is a SELF-PORTRAIT? This is simply a portrait where the subject and the photographer are one and the same. If you don’t like taking your own picture, you can always take a picture of somebody else taking a SELF-PORTRAIT. That is a pro tip for ya!

Here is a look back at the previous 7 times SELF-PORTRAIT was a theme:

RWPE #8 – SELF-PORTRAIT

RWPE Y2 #52 – SELF-PORTRAIT

WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE – WEEK 25 – SELF-PORTRAIT

WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE – WEEK 68 – SELF-PORTRAIT

WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE – WEEK 144 & WEEK 145

WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE – WEEK 179 – SELF-PORTRAIT

WPC – WEEK 245 – SELF-PORTRAIT

HOUSEKEEPINGA MESSAGE FROM THE PHOTOGRAPHY 139 RULES DIVISION

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.

Your submission needs to be emailed to bennett@photography139.com by 11 AM on the Monday of the challenge due date.

I now allow people to text me their submissions. In the past, I had made exceptions for a couple people that aren’t real computer savvy, even though it was an inconvenience for me and required at least 3 extra steps for me. I am now lifting that embargo because I have a streamline way of uploading photos. I’m not giving out my phone number, but if you have it, you can text me.

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

Nobody showed class, taste, and sophistication this week by signing up for a Photography 139 email subscription. I’ll try and do better next week.

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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 selfish Monday!

Flowers, Macro, Still Life

SupercalifragilisticMACROlidocious

October 4, 2020 Christopher D. Bennett

Back in August I started experimenting with bellows to take macro images. Here is a handful (and by handful, I mean a handful if you are the man who killed Inigo Montoya’s father) of images from the fist trial run.

These pictures are only the slightest cropped to remove a little bit of vignetting in the upper corners. I can’t remember what the gold thing is in one of the pictures.

Birthdays, Candid Portrait, Event, Formal Portrait, Jen, Music, Nader, Photoshop, Sara, Scottie D., Shawn Lockner

2010-04-11

October 3, 2020 Christopher D. Bennett

I need to start off this day by wishing Sara a happy birthday. Happy birthday Sara!

I hope your birthday was as amazing as you wanted it to be!

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It is also Scottie D.’s birthday! Happy birthday Scottie D.!

I hope your birthday was as amazing as you wanted it to be!

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The majority of the pictures in the folder 2010-04-11 are from a benefit event I photographed. I don’t even remember what it was a benefit for, but it was put on by a lady I used to work with. There were also pictures of Nader in there.

I don’t remember much of the night of the benefit, other than I left shortly after a bar fight that left the floor covered in the most blood I’ve ever seen from a fight. It was a lot of blood.

By adding these pictures to the Photography 139 Gallery, I was able to restore the following historic “An Artist’s Notebook” entries to their original glory:

A Benefit

RWPE #14 – SYMMETRY AND PATTERNS

Next Saturday’s walk down memory lane will involve Iowa State Football.

Black & White, Nature, Ruins, WPC - Reminder

The Last Derecho

October 2, 2020 Christopher D. Bennett

This is a collection of pictures I took a few days after the derecho struck Iowa. It is the last of damage caused by the derecho pictures that I have.