Category Archives: Nora

Angie, Bethany, Black & White, Candid Portrait, Kim, Nora, Steph, Suzie, Vest, WPC, WPC - Submissions

WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE – WEEK 71 – HAPPY

January 23, 2017 Christopher D. Bennett

Not a ton of submissions for HAPPY this week. This makes me sad, how little happiness was out there this week.

But you don’t want to listen to me talk all tommyrot about happiness. You want to see the submissions for HAPPY!

Suzie Brannen

Kim Barker

Stephanie Kim

Angie DeWaard

Mike Vest 1

Mike Vest 2

Christopher D. Bennett

Sorry it was late this week. This morning was like getting kicked in the face. Helped up. Then kicked in the balls. But I digress.

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:

RELIGION!

This should be an easy one. Everybody has one, whether they want to admit it or not. I know a guy who’s RELIGION is conspiracy theories. I know a guy who’s RELIGION is the Green Bay Packers. I think I know lots of people who worship at the idol of Facebook “Likes”. If you’re thinking of a more traditional RELIGION, there is one pastor that subscribes to this blog and another that is a youth pastor. Maybe you are going to Winter Jam on Friday. Maybe you live a few blocks from a church, synagogue, temple, or mosque. Get out there and have a religious experience of some kind.

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. 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

Nothing new to report. I’ll try to do better next week.

Want your own Photography 139 email subscription? Call, email, or text me and I’ll get you the hook up.

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 religious Monday!

Black & White, Candid Portrait, Dae Hee, Nora, Photoshop, WPC - Alternate

And My Time is a Piece of Wax Fallin’ on a Termite

December 22, 2016 Christopher D. Bennett

There weren’t many, but here are the images that didn’t make the cut for LOVE when it was the theme for the WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE:

Thanks for taking the time to mock this pathetic collection of losers!

Angie, Becky, Candid Portrait, Cathie, Dae Hee, Dawn, Kim, Nora, Shannon, WPC - Submissions

WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE – WEEK 63 – LOVE

November 28, 2016 Christopher D. Bennett 1 Comment

There wasn’t as much LOVE in the world this week as one would have hoped. I’ll just hope that when we get to HATE, it isn’t a more popular option. But it is the world that we live in.

But you don’t want to listen to me talk all tommyrot about LOVE and HATE. You want to see the LOVE submissions:

Kim Barker

Shannon Bardole

Becky Perkovich

Christopher D. Bennett

Cathie Raley 1

Cathie Raley 2

Cathie Raley 3

Angie DeWaard

Dawn Krause

TOWN!

But what is a TOWN? Here is one definition:

an urban area that has a name, defined boundaries, and local government, and that is generally larger than a village and smaller than a city.

But for our purposes here, a village or a city work perfectly fine. This theme is a slight derivation of last year’s theme of HOMETOWN. This theme is a little more expansive because it doesn’t suggest a picture of a HOMETOWN, but of any town. What is it about that town or city or village that is unique to that town. A picture of any old downtown would do. A cityscape would work. A Christmas parade would work. A town sign would work. Let your imagination go wild! Define the theme any way you see fit.

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

Nothing new to report. I’ll try to do better next week.

Want your own Photography 139 email subscription? Call, email, or text me and I’ll get you the hook up.

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 townie Monday.

Bethany, Black & White, Formal Portrait, Nora

Impromptu

July 28, 2016 Christopher D. Bennett 3 Comments

A few weeks back when Bethany and Nora were back for a wedding, we had a little impromptu photo shoot in Shorty’s living room.

This is one of my favorite photos from that photo shoot:

There might be a few more of these that I’ll publish at some point.

PARTICULARS

CAMERA: SONY SLT-A65V
ISO: 1000
FOCAL LENGTH: 60mm
APERTURE: f/4
EXPOSURE: 1/100
DATE: 07/09/16 – 13:31
NO GPS DATA RECORDED
PHOTO ASSISTANT: BETHANY
EDITING SOUNDTRACK: Cheers for the families of fallen police officers. (The DNC.)

Baseball/Softball, Bethany, Dae Hee, Jesse, Nora, Pastor Sarah, Road Trip, Shawn Karber

The Twins vs. The Indigenous Persons of Cleveland

July 19, 2016 Christopher D. Bennett 4 Comments

Last weekend I took a trip up to Minnesota with Jesse and Nader to visit Bethany, Dae Hee, Nora, Sarah, and Shawn.

Most of the pictures are on my phone, which I won’t publish, but they are on Instagram if you are interested. I did take a few pictures at the Twins game with my point & shoot.

Here are a few of them:

Before the game, we ate chicken at Revival. Big recommend! Then we had ice cream at Milkjam Creamery. Big recommend!

Maybe next year, but sometime soon, Jesse and I are going to take 2 weeks and drive from New York City to San Francisco. I don’t know many people that could survive going on Jesse and I’s adventures, for that long. This trip was Nader’s audition. He will be getting the results in the mail sometime soon.

Alexis, Anders, Andree, Baier, Bethany, Birthdays, Brandon, Carla, Dae Hee, Dawn, Derrick, Evie, Geri, Gretchen, Jason, Jeff Daniel, Jeff Kewer, Jen, Jesse, Johnathan, Kelly, Kim, Layla, Linda, Logan, Michelle, Mom, Monica, Nader, Naima, Nora, Sara, Scottie D., Shannon, Shawn Lockner, Steph, Steve, Suzie, Teresa, Tim, Willy, Yin

The Birthday Party of Fate (Roundup)

May 15, 2016 Christopher D. Bennett 1 Comment

I’ve thanked all these people in person, but I’d like to publicly thank everybody that helped out in some either small or big way with my birthday party on Saturday.

Big shout out to Scott for making tons of delicious mouth watering chicken and jalapeno cream corn. I only wish I would have had time to help do more than just brine the chicken. If I am so inclined to do this again next year and you are so inclined to help with the food next year, I will have to schedule this so I can be more hands on with the process. I may have been The Master, but Scott was undeniably the Smoker Master. I just can’t overstate how amazing the chicken was people.

Much love to Scott’s (better-other-less high maintenance) half for making the Pick and Pluck. If I would’ve thought of it, I would’ve bought several gallons of ice cold chocolate milk to knock down while setting up shop on that thing.

Thanks to Logan and Corinna for holding down the grill and making an assortment of hot dogs and sausages to compliment the mouth watering chicken. I don’t really have any photos of the event, perhaps next year I can talk him/them into doing some candid photography for the party.

I’m always able to count on Dae Hee when I need some assistance. He came over and helped put up the canopies for the outdoor dining area, the tent for an additional child area, moved all the chairs from the basement to the outdoors, and watched 2 hours of GAME OF THRONES. A pretty solid effort!

Thanks to Jason for loaning me his Cornhole set.

Thanks to Shannon for loaning me her canopies, although I’m still unclear where one gets tailgating tents that don’t have Iowa State colors. Or why a person would even want such a thing.

Thanks to Jesse for laminating the beverage identification signs.

Thanks to Teresa for helping out in various tasks before the party started.

Thanks to my Mom for making a copious amount of side dishes and desserts. Nobody went home hungry. That is for sure.

Finally, thanks to everybody that took time out of their lives to come visit me:

Teresa
Brandon
Logan & Corinna
Aunt Linda
Kio
Steph, Katie, Jeff, & Yin
Carla, Jason, Alexis, and Johnathan
Mom
Scott, Melissa, Austin, and Porter
Steve
Dawn, Kevin, Scott, and Kayelee
Jen, Derrick, Evie, and Layla
Sara, Shawn, and Gretchen
Jesse, Kelly, Kalista, Saydie, and Taylan
Willy
Dan and Angie
Suzie
Monica and Jeff
Bethany, Dae Hee, and Nora
Jason, Will, Ben, and Nader
Andree
Anders & Nicholas
Shannon and Jason
Geri
Michelle, Craig, and Lily
Kim and Kevin

A special thanks to Dae Hee, Bethany, and Nora who came from Minnesota. Aunt Linda who came from Kansas. Stephanie who came all the way from Brooklyn. I guess I’m morally obligated to visit her in October now. Right?

Since I think that this party was a success on some level, I am tentatively planning on doing it again next year. Tentatively thinking about some time on Memorial Day Weekend next year. We’ll see how the cookie crumbles.

Now to the less than stellar news…

The Photo Booth was a success, but far from perfect. It turns out that the photo booth program I used has a painful little quirk. If the “Finish” button wasn’t pushed at the conclusion of the photo session, the program timed out and didn’t save the photo strip! The good news is that it did save the original images. The bad news is that there will be a night in my future where I’ll be piecing together photo strips from saved images. Yeah me!

For that reason, I did load up all the images into the party gallery. Not just the “finished” photo strips.

To see those images, click on the link below… (You can also download them by clicking on the down arrow icon.)

MANOS & PHOTOBOOTH IMAGES

However, thought I would share a few of them here as well:

But the good news is that I now have a thousand different ways to improve the photo booth for next year. Tentatively.

Bethany, Dae Hee, Laura, Nate, Nora, Road Trip

Mora

May 4, 2016 Christopher D. Bennett

A couple weekends back I went up to Minnesota with Nate and Laura to visit Bethany, Dae Hee, Nora, and Colleen.

Here are a couple photos from that weekend.

I’m sure you’ll get exposed to many more Nora pictures. You lucky dogs!

Carla, Geri, Kim, Micky, Nora, Vest, WPC - Submissions

WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE – WEEK 33 – WINDOWS

May 2, 2016 Christopher D. Bennett

A slight dip in submissions this week, but that was to be expected with a bit harder of a theme. It wasn’t too much of a challenger for first time contributor Geri Derner though! Here are the submissions for WINDOWS:

Kim Barker 1

Kim Barker 2

Kim Barker 3

Kim Barker 4

Micky Augustin

Mike Vest

Carla Stensland

Christopher D. Bennett

Geri Derner.

What is this week’s theme? Keep scrolling!

PORTRAIT!

This is a nice and easy theme. The only person I would expect to struggle with this theme would be a true Lone Wolf. For the sake of this theme, a PORTRAIT would be considered a posed photo of somebody. That somebody could be a person, an animal, or a stuffed animal. Interpret away! As always, I can’t wait to see the submissions.

No HOUSEKEEPING today. I’ll try to do better next week.

Bethany, Dad, Dae Hee, History, Laura, Music, Nate, Nora, Road Trip, Teresa, Travel

Paisley Park

April 27, 2016 Christopher D. Bennett 7 Comments

This last weekend I made a trip up with Nate and Laura to visit Bethany, Dae Hee, Nora, and Colleen. On Saturday night we made our way to Long Lake to eat at Primo. Dae Hee and I left early so we could swing by Paisley Park to see the Prince Memorial.

Below are some pictures.

So part of the reason I went to Paisley Park is because it was history. It was like going to Graceland after Elvis died. However, it wasn’t the majority of the reason that I went.

I don’t normally get too caught up in celebrity deaths. It is usually a time when people flock to social media to overstate their “relationship” with the deceased celebrity.

However Prince’s death to have an effect on me. I can’t claim to be a huge fan of Prince’s music, although I did enjoy it. I also admired his musicality and he was without a doubt one of the foremost musical geniuses of the last 50 years. He produced an album a year for over a decade. There are rumors that he has well over a thousand unreleased songs that he has recorded and not released. On some of his biggest hits he played every instrument on the recording. Often recording the song in one day. Often recording more than one song in a day in this manner.

One of my favorite Prince stories is when he played the Super Bowl halftime show in the pouring rain. The producers of the halftime show were worried that he would want to pull out. When they called him and asked him about the rain he gave a great response.

“Can you make it rain harder?”

The rain didn’t stop until he played his final song of the night, Purple Rain. Despite this fact, he gave what was easily the best Super Bowl Halftime show in history. A show that will stand the test of time for its pure virtuosity alone.

I’ll miss Prince because one of my fondest memories of my childhood was my eldest sister Teresa’s friends infatuation with Prince (even though I think Teresa was more into Phil Collins). One even dressed like Prince and his license plates matched Prince’s from PURPLE RAIN. It is up there with listening to Casey Kasem’s Top 40 on family road trips. Or Dad telling Teresa that if she wanted to go Hall some Oates, he could take her to a farm.

Prince dying is like a piece of my childhood dying.

I may have to become an adult yet.

Bethany, Candid Portrait, Carla, Dae Hee, Jim, Laura, Mom, Nate, Nora

Nora

April 22, 2016 Christopher D. Bennett 1 Comment

Bethany and Dae Hee recently brought forth new life into this world. Nate, Laura, Jim and rolled up I-35 (or 35 Interstate in Kansan) and visited little Nora Olivia Yoon.

I don’t normally post pictures of people in the hospital, but I’ll make an exception, this one time.

Here is Nora:

Nate is unpictured because there was a limit of 3 people in the NICU at a time and I was never in there with him.

I should point out that to be allowed in the NICU with Nora, you had to have your flu shot. I was never so happy that my Mom’s incessant nagging to get my flu shot actually paid dividends. Nate, Laura, and Jim had to scramble the day before we went up to get theirs. Meanwhile, I was kicking back with Carla taking pictures of the remains of the Wagon Wheel Bridge.

Oh wait. I forgot I have some cruddy phone pictures to share as well. You can see Nate’s arm in one of those.