Back in October I went down to Nate and Laura’s in Manhattan to celebrate the triplets birthday party.
Did I take pictures? Boy did I!
Baby Triforce 1st Birthday Party – Alpha
Category Archives: Becca
Minnesota State Fair – Pixel Pictures
This is the final collection of pictures from my trip to the Minnesota State Fair with Bethany, Becca, Jonah, and Shawn. These are the cruddy cell phone pictures.
One thing that I found disappointing when I went back and looked at these is that I didn’t take pictures of my food OR even the bucket of cookies. It is a genetic marker of being a Bennett to take pictures of your food. Bennetts invented hipsters, I fear.
The fact that I only took a picture of my delicious pineapple drink makes me worried that I might have been adopted, for the first time in my life.
The other thing you will learn from this collection of photos is how big of a Stan I am for British period television shows. I badly miss DOWNTON ABBEY. I grieved the recent end of POLDARK. I can’t wait for the next season of VICTORIA. All these are shows I watch with my Mom.
We started watching the DURRELLS IN CORFU, but it is only okay. I might have to look into BELGRAVIA, but I don’t have my hopes up.
Weird to see the globe Earth cover-up in person.
Teach them the globe lie young.
By the way, I know the Earth isn’t flat.
It looks like as of now, the Iowa State Fair is still a go. I got my information about the Photography Salon in the mail on Tuesday. I need to start thinking about getting my entries ready.
Minnesota State Fair #3
Here is the final collection of Minnesota State Fair pictures that came from a real camera. This highlight being pictures of Becca and Jonah going down the giant slide. A secondary highlight is the extremely creepy statue right next to the giant slide.
The final place we visited before calling it a day was the “photo contest”. It was actually the biggest disappointment of the fair. There were hardly any photos and they were just mixed in with the rest of the art. Fortunately, the rest of the art contest was actually pretty cool.
I still have one more collection of cruddy cell phone pictures to share. Then we can close the door on the 2019 Minnesota State Fair.
Minnesota State Fair #2
In this second collection of pictures from my trip to the Minnesota State Fair with Bethany, Becca, Jonah, and Shawn, I reveal a picture of the All You Can Drink Milk Stand. It is a good half mile, at least from the famous cookie place.
There are also a couple places that we walked by but couldn’t stop at that I will stop at if a future trip to the Minnesota State Fair is in my future. The butterfly building. The reptile building. Those are tops on the list.
John Deere Powered Ice Cream Machines!
Reminds me of that scene in ELF.
The Governor of Minnesota
247 miles to a better State Fair
Bernie Sanders was there. Must’ve been a big thrill for people from a state that doesn’t have a first in the nation caucus.
This is what overcrowded looks like.
Yes, that is poop.
My actual biggest disappointment in the Minnesota State Fair was the DNR exhibit. It is at least 25 times the size of Iowa’s. Somehow it isn’t as good. But it has great facilities, so there is lots of potential there. Although the fire tower is admittedly pretty badass.
Still more pictures from my trip to the Minnesota State Fair on the way!
Minnesota State Fair #1
14 work days of working from home in the books. I think the last time I indicated that I was starting to get a system going. Now I can say that I’m starting to get comfortable working from home. I don’t mean that in a bad way. I’ll pumped when it is safe to work from the office again, but I mean that my FOMO is tamping down quite a bit.
That being said, Naima has been pretty much a Sleepy McGee during the day and left me alone to work. However, today she was a ball of fire. I think it is because I have new neighbors that have moved in next door and they have a dog named Gator. Naima and Gator like to “play” by running up and down the fence together. It is a positive that Naima has a new friend. If there is anybody that is really bad about social distancing, it is golden retrievers.
The new neighbors seem good. When Linda moved out, she left a Hawkeye windsock hanging off the back of the house. As the new neighbors have moved in, I’ve been watching that windsock. After 5 days, it is still there. Unfortunately.
Last night I got to introduce myself to the patriarch of the household. I mentioned that I have been waiting for that windsock to go down. The windsock will be staying up. They are Hawkeye fans. Other than this obvious shortcoming, they seem like they will be good neighbors.
An update on what I have been listening to while I work from home:
I still listen to 96.1 from 7 to 9 in the morning. Listening to Christian music does help center me and is a good reminder that while we may feel alone in this pandemic, we are not alone. Not by a long shot.
Then from 9-11 I listen to the Master Playlist. You don’t know about the Master Playlist. It is a playlist of songs I put together for my last birthday party. It is 1,585 songs. 102 hours of music. I am listening to it to cut some of the fat. I’m up to track #307 right now. The acoustic version of “100 Years” by Five For Fighting. Not to be confused by the radio version of “100 Years” by Five for Fighting. That is track #303 silly.
Then from 11 to noon I eat lunch. Watch one episode of THE OFFICE. Then I shower. Lotion up. Gotta keep them feet soft. Put on a fresh set of clothes. Then I’m ready to take the world back on.
From 12-2 or so, I listen to the Master Playlist some more. At I turn on Murph and Andy and they take me to 4, when I clock out and call it a day.
14 days done. Who knows how many more to go, but I am beyond blessed to still be able to work 40 hours a week, have health insurance, and collect a paycheck every other week.
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Here is part of devotional I found on the Methodist Women website that I thought I would share:
John 13:34-35
“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.
By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” -John 13:34-35Jesus calls out the importance of love to his disciples, the importance of loving one another. Love is the only way, the only path to grow with, the mark of a disciple as beloved, the keeper of the fellowship of disciples. Love is central to Jesus’ mission.
Even as he knows the pending betrayal by Judas and Peter’s denial of him, Jesus demonstrates love by washing their feet like a slave does.
Jesus is focused in his teachings on the centrality of loving one another, so that love will not be broken by troubles and doubts among the disciples.
Jesus glorifies God as the highest, the one source of the new commandment to love and act as one beloved community. The parallel verse to this new commandment is in John 15:12-14, laying down one’s life for the love of friends, and for all friends to do the same. It lifts up the heroic act, giving one’s life for others. Love is the formation of community, and love becomes eternal.
Jesus’ pronouncement in John 10:10 is made real.
Prayer: Dear Lord Jesus Christ, help us to rest in your words of love, and loving our neighbors who are suffering, be with us in search of the true meaning of life you offered and find us to be faithful in helping build communities of love, nurture and care. In your name we pray, Amen.
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Last August I went to the Minnesota State Fair with Bethany, Becca, Jonah, and Shawn. I do have to say this, “whoever said that the Minnesota State Fair is better than that Iowa State Fair is seriously disturbed.”
That being said, the Minnesota State Fair is definitely worth visiting. It is crazy overcrowded, but there is more than enough to keep a person entertained!
Here are some pictures:
I can’t tell if this is genius or madness, but I love them!
I don’t know what Swedish Egg Coffee is, but it sounds disgusting.
The one thing I was told not to miss at the Minnesota State Fair is the cookies in the bucket. We did get some and they did not disappoint, but that that is a story for another entry though.
What I want to point out is that another thing the Minnesota State Fair is famous for is a place that sells bottomless cup of milk. The tragedy of this situation is that they aren’t right next to either. In fact, they aren’t even close.
Oh the humanity!
Gratitudo
Happy Thanksgiving! Every year on Thanksgiving I like to think about my many, many blessings. I know, real original. You should feel free to try it sometime. But make sure you let everybody know that I invented gratitude.
I am thankful for my family, no matter how family is defined:
I am thankful for my friends:
I am blessed with an amazing church family:
I am blessed with a decent job and work friends that I don’t mind seeing more than 40 hours a week:
I’m blessed to share my house with Naima:
This is only a small sampling of my blessings, but I feel to go on much longer would sound like boasting. Thank all of you for choosing to be part of my life!
2009-06-22
Better strap it on. This post is going to be a LONG one, covering a ton of diverse ground! There are a ton of pictures in the folder known as 2009-06-22. I considered breaking this into multiple posts, but then I decided, “Nah, bro. We got this.”
Thee are night flower pictures, pictures from Ames on the Half Shell, pictures from Ottumwa, family pictures, and pictures of cherries.
The pictures from Ames on the Half Shell were from when The Josh Davis Band played there. It must have been rained out because the pictures are from DG’s Taphouse. The Josh Davis Band is my second favorite band to play Ames on the Half Shell. Not including Against the Grain or whatever Derrick’s band was called when they crashed Half Shell. It appears that I never published those photos.
The pictures from Ottumwa are from when I went there to help Jen & Derrick help with the house that Jen inherited from her uncle.
The cherry pictures are from when Shannon came over and baked me a cherry pie from the cherries from my cherry trees. It feels good to be self-sustaining.
There are pictures in here of people that are gone now. Gone, but definitely not forgotten:
By adding these photos to the Photography 139 Gallery, I was able to restore the following historic “An Artist’s Notebook” entries to their original glory:
Night Flowers: Session 1
Next Saturday’s walk down memory lane will involve Little League baseball.
Selfie Project – August
Now seems like a good time to check-in with my favorite pictures from my August SELFIE PROJECT pictures.
It would seem that I had a successful month of August. I met Vice-President Joe Biden. I competed in a barbecue contest at the Iowa State Fair. I also competed in a photography contest at the Iowa State Fair. I dine at a Brazilian Steakhouse totally not for Jay’s birthday. I went to an air show. I met my great nephew. I went to the Minnesota State Fair. I dined at Zeno’s. I went to an Iowa State football game.
Here are my favorites:
August 1
August 2
August 3
August 4
August 5
August 9
August 10
August 11
August 13
August 15
August 17
August 18
August 23
August 24
August 25
August 26
August 29
August 30
August 31
I’m not sure I’ve had as busy of a September, but I guess we’ll find out in October when I get a chance to look back at it.
Miller-Peterson Christmas
Dipping in to the 2018 backlog to share some of the photos from the Miller-Peterson Christmas.
We celebrated in the Fellowship Hall of my church. Almost everybody made it except for the Manhattan Millers. The triplets, I think were still in the hospital at the time.
Hopefully everybody is able to make it this year.
Christmas is just 8 months away!
A Photo Journal – Henry Carroll – Page 90
A couple weekends back up I went to Minnesota to check out the Final Four festivities and check-in with a few people I hadn’t seen for a long time.
On Sunday morning I hit a donut shop with Becca and Shawn. Then I went to Minnehaha Falls to kill sometime before meeting Sarah, Shawn, and Addie at Revival. I figured that this trip was a great time to knock out Page 90 of THE PHOTO JOURNAL PROJECT. Even though it was absolutely just pouring down.
I made the walk to from the parking lot to Minnehaha Falls, protecting the camera as best as I could. I took a few pictures and then it really started pouring down. By the time I got to the car every inch of me was completely soaked.
I was so soaked that even after a 30 minute or so wait at Revival and about an hour eating and talking, my shirt only had a few dry spots on it.
Here is the picture that will be physically adhered to Page 90 of the physical PHOTO JOURNAL:
Page 90 – Create ambiguity with a blend of artificial and natural light
Pretty much every camera (even your cell phone) has white balance. This is where you set the kind of light that is dominant in your scene. It is set on Auto White Balance so that you don’t have to think about it. This is the type of thing that in the olden days you had to do with film. Film was balanced for different kinds of light. Pretty much all consumer film was balanced for daylight. Which is why when you took pictures inside, there was often a strange color cast to it.
The same thing happens when you take your color balance off of auto and set it for a type of light that isn’t in your picture. For example, in the picture of Minnehaha Falls, I set the white balance to tungsten. Since the lighting of this picture could be best described as shady, it the camera cast a blue hue on the image, thinking it was seeing tungsten light. Different kinds of lights have different color temperatures. You can make surreal images by setting your white balance against type.
One of the advantages of shooting in RAW is that you can change the white balance to whatever you want it to be. So I changed half the white balance from the image above to shady, so you can see what the image would have conventionally looked like:
Admittedly, I did play up the blue cast of the images a bit in post.
Here are a few other images I took at Minnehaha Falls:
I’m still on goal to knock out one page of the PHOTO JOURNAL PROJECT a week. This week I’m looking at knocking out one of these pages:
Page 97 – Photograph a human as though it were an animal.
Page 84 – Photograph a lie.
Page 43 – Take a picture that only works in Black & White.
Page 37 – Use aperture to capture melancholy
You could be featured in just such a picture.
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Reminder that the theme for this week’s WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE is RELIGION:
RELIGION
A RELIGION picture is any picture that involves the practice of a RELIGION. From a picture of a religious building, to a religious symbol, to a religious book, to a religious service.
Happy photo harvesting!