Category Archives: Family

Andy, Animals, Baby Got Rack, Contests, Flowers, Football, Holidays, Iowa State, Kio, Linda, Macro, Michelle, Micky, Mom, Nature, Pastor Sarah, Photoshop, Shannon, Teresa, Travel, Vest

Freedom and Flowers

July 4, 2018 Christopher D. Bennett 2 Comments

With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy?
-Oscar Wilde

Before we get into the meat of today’s blog, we need to start with…

Happy 4th of July!

I hope you had an continue to have an enjoyable 4th of July!

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Time to hit up the back log and publish more pictures from Donna Jones’s flower bed!

There are more of Donna Jones’ flowers in the hopper. For those of you that are fans of “flower porn” as Micky likes to call it.

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The votes have been tabulated and these are the photos that I will be entering in the Boone County Fair:

Technically there was a frog picture that got more votes than the picture of Shorty, but I’m not going a photo contest without entering a black & white image.

Thanks to the people that voted: Sarah Karber, Michelle, Micky, Vest, Mom, Teresa, Shannon, Kio, Aunt Linda, Jordan, Andy, and all of the fellow SmugMuggers that voted.

If you want to see the photos in the flesh (so to speak) they will be on display at the Community Building at the Boone County Fairgrounds. on July 21 and 22.

Baby Got Rack will also probably be competing on July 21. So mark your calendar!

We will do something similar when it comes to the Pufferbilly Days Photo Contest.

9 Emotions Project, Animals, Bethany, Black & White, Contests, Flowers, Formal Portrait, Macro, Nature, Travel

The 9 Emotions Project – Bethany

July 3, 2018 Christopher D. Bennett

Reminder, tonight at midnight is the deadline to vote on what pictures I enter at the Boone County Fair Photo Contest. Click on the link below to vote:

If the website isn’t working for you, email/text me your votes.

BOONE COUNTY FAIR PHOTO CONTEST ENTRY SELECTION

You must have a Facebook account or a Google+ account to vote. You vote by leaving a comment on a photo. You can vote for up to 5 photos.

If the website isn’t working for you, email/text me your votes.

Here are the currently leaders:

There are several pictures that are tied for the last 2 spots.

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Bethany was the most recent victim… subject of THE 9 EMOTIONS PROJECT. She is the 23rd person to participate in the project. I always have my eye on the next person to participate in the project. I can think of at least 3 people that have claimed that they were interested, but have yet to full under the aperture blades.

If you want to be #24, just contact me and we will get you on the calendar.

Bethany’s sitting was unique in the fact that I was experimenting with a new lighting set up for her session. She was a good sport.

Bethany – The 9 Emotions

In case you have forgotten, these are The 9 Emotions:

Joy

Sadness

Anger

Amusement

Fear

Jealousy

Surprise

Sympathy

Boredom

Hopefully I’ll publishing #24 very soon.

If you want to see past THE 9 EMOTIONS PROJECT subjects, click on the link below:

THE 9 EMOTIONS PROJECT

Maybe you’ll be inspired!

Angie, Animals, Carla, Cathie, Contests, Kim, Macro, Nature, Photoshop, Shannon, Tamara, Vest, WPC - Submissions

WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE – WEEK 146 – BLACK

July 2, 2018 Christopher D. Bennett

If you are having difficulty leaving a comment, just email/text me the numbers.

Reminder, you have until Tomorrow at midnight to vote on what pictures I enter at the Boone County Fair Photo Contest. Click on the link below to vote:

BOONE COUNTY FAIR PHOTO CONTEST ENTRY SELECTION

You must have a Facebook account or a Google+ account to vote. You vote by leaving a comment on a photo. You can vote for up to 5 photos.

If you are having difficulty leaving a comment, just email/text me the numbers.

As of this writing, there have been about 25 votes. Here are the currently leaders:

If future votes don’t change things, these will be the 5 photos that I enter in the Boone County Fair Photo Contest.

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It would seem that BLACK inspired a few people to crack out their cameras this weekend.

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

Carla Stensland

Kim Barker

Tamara Peterson

Christopher D. Bennett

Shannon Bardole-Foley

Cathie Raley

Mike Vest

Angie DeWaard

A 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:

HANDS!

HANDS! What a great theme! But what is a HANDS picture? A picture that features HANDS! That is it! But remember that there is more than one definition of the word HANDS.

I look forward to seeing your interpretation!

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

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 handsy Monday.

Animals, Art, Black & White, Flowers, Iowa State, Macro, Mom, Naima, Nature, Railroad, Road Trip, Ruins, Shorty, Travel, Willy

Boone County Fair Photo Contest Entry Selection Process

June 26, 2018 Christopher D. Bennett

It is time to select my photos for the Boone County Fair Photo Contest and you get to help select the pictures that go.

I have placed 50 images in a SmugMug Photo Gallery. I would like you to go to that Photo Gallery and vote for up to 5 images in the gallery. You can also rate the images on a 5 star scale.

I will enter the 5 pictures with the most votes. The tie-breaker will be image with the highest star rating.

You will vote for an image by leaving a comment on the image you want to vote for.

Once you are at the gallery, look for something that looks like this:

The one caveat is that you need to have either a Facebook or a Google+ account to leave a comment.

Click on the link below to go to the gallery to vote:

BOONE COUNTY FAIR PHOTO CONTEST ENTRY SELECTION

The deadline to vote is next Tuesday at midnight.

Here are the nominees:

Thanks for helping pick the Boone County Fair Photo Contest Entries!

Andy, Angie, Candid Portrait, Cathie, Kim, Linda, Mission Trip, Photoshop, Road Trip, Self-Portrait, Tamara, WPC - Submissions, Youth Group

WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE – WEEK 144 & WEEK 145

June 25, 2018 Christopher D. Bennett 3 Comments

It was a great and trans-formative trip, but it is good to be back in the Cyclone State!

Here are the submission for SELF-PORTRAIT:

ANGIE DEWAARD

CHRISTOPHER D. BENNETT

CATHIE RALEY

TAMARA PETERSON

LINDA BENNETT

Here are the submissions for FACELESS PORTRAIT:

Andy Sharp

Kim Barker

Shannon Bardole-Foley

Christopher D. Bennett

Andy Sharp

Tamara Peterson

BLACK!

BLACK! What a great theme! What is a BLACK picture? A BLACK picture is a picture of anything that is BLACK. Of course, there is more than one definition of BLACK. I look forward to 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

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 black Monday.

Alexis, Animals, Art, Black & White, Nature

05-19-08

June 23, 2018 Christopher D. Bennett

The pictures in the folder were from the folder 05-19-08. They were taken on my birthday, as the artwork by Alexis might reveal.

I don’t recall everything I did on my birthday that day, but I know for sure I went to Jester Park.

Jester Park is one of my favorite parks that I don’t visit nearly enough. Not anywhere nearly enough.

By adding these images to the Photography 139 Photo Gallery, I was able to return the following historic “An Artist’s Notebook” post to its original glory:

Mt. St. Helens Anniversary

The next time we stroll down memory lane, it will involve a flood and a rock concert.

Art, Black & White, History, Mom, Photoshop, Travel, Vacation

The Mount Rushmore of Presidents Vol. 3

June 20, 2018 Christopher D. Bennett

This is the final collection of photos from my trip to Mount Rushmore with my Mom.

Here are a few final facts about Mount Rushmore from the Wikipedia:

The Sculptor’s Studio – a display of unique plaster models and tools related to the sculpting – was built in 1939 under the direction of Borglum. Borglum had planned to make a secret room behind the hairline of Abraham Lincoln which was supposed to be a doorway to a chamber originally intended to hold some of America’s most treasured documents but was left unfinished due to his death. Borglum died from an embolism in March 1941. His son, Lincoln Borglum, continued the project. Originally, it was planned that the figures would be carved from head to waist, but insufficient funding forced the carving to end. Borglum had also planned a massive panel in the shape of the Louisiana Purchase commemorating in eight-foot-tall gilded letters the Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution, Louisiana Purchase, and seven other territorial acquisitions from Alaska to Texas to the Panama Canal Zone. In total, the entire project cost US$989,992.32. Unusual for a project of such size, no workers died during the carving.

In a canyon behind the carved faces is a chamber, cut only 70 feet (21 m) into the rock, containing a vault with sixteen porcelain enamel panels. The panels include the text of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, biographies of the four presidents and Borglum, and the history of the U.S. The chamber was created as the entrance-way to a planned “Hall of Records”; the vault was installed in 1998.

Here are the balance of pictures:

Now that the South Dakota trip is all published, might be time to get into the Independence Bowl Road Trip or finish up with the Caves Road Trip.

Art, Black & White, History, Mom, Nature, Photoshop, Travel, Vacation

The Mount Rushmore of Presidents Vol. 2

June 13, 2018 Christopher D. Bennett 1 Comment

Time to check in on more pictures from my trip to Mount Rushmore with my Mom.

One of the debate topics that occasionally rises is who is the next President to go on Mount Rushmore. Say that Washington, Teddy Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln were the 4 greatest Presidents of the United States before construction was started on Mount Rushmore in 1927, won’t there some day be a President as great as them, that should also be placed alongside them.

To be honest, I don’t think that they will ever add another President to Mount Rushmore. Our country doesn’t spend money on projects like this any longer.

But say that they would, the choice for the 5th President according to the Presidents & Executive Politics Presidential Greatness Survey is pretty obvious. Next to nobody else even got any votes:

1. Franklin Roosevelt – 108 votes
2. Barack Obama – 12 votes
3. Ronald Reagan – 8 votes
4. Dwight Eisenhower – 6 votes
4. James Madison – 6 votes

It would be hard to argue that FDR wouldn’t be the next President to go up. He steered the country through its greatest economic collapse and then most of the way through WWII.

Let us say that some day another face was added to Mount Rushmore, the truth is that it might not even be a President. In 1937, a bill was proposed to Congress to add Susan B. Anthony to the mountain. I’d imagine there would be a pretty strong movement to add Martin Luther King Jr. to the mountain today.

Although it would be hard to imagine putting a Civil Rights Leader on the mountain after the mountain was stolen from the Lakota in 1876 in violation of the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie.

But I digress…

There are still more Mount Rushmore pictures coming!

Alexis, Animals, Becky, Blogging, Brandon, Carla, Commercial, Elainie, Flowers, Holidays, Jason, Johnathan, Logan, Mom, Russ, Shannon, Teresa

05-12-08

June 9, 2018 Christopher D. Bennett

There are 3 sets of images to be found in the collection of pictures in the folder 05-12-08.

The first set are pictures from a Mother’s Day celebration at my Mom’s house.

The second set are a collection of pictures of flowers at my Mom’s house. A Mother’s Day Peony and a tulip.

The final set of pictures is from the first part of making a batch of Little White Lye Soap.

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

The Most Fun You Can Have with Caustics

Mother’s Day Barcecue

Mother’s Day

On our next walk down the lane of memories, we will look at the first Jaycees activity I participated in. All the signs were there, I wasn’t paying attention.

Art, Black & White, History, Iowa State, Mom, Politics, Travel, Vacation

The Mount Rushmore of Presidents Vol. 1

June 6, 2018 Christopher D. Bennett

It is time to crack into the final spot I hit in South Dakota with my Mom last year. Mount Rushmore.

People (particularly bored sports talk show hosts) are always trying to make comparisons in the sports world to Mount Rushmore. Who would be on the Mount Rushmore of Iowa State athletics? (Dan Gable, Fred Hoiberg, Troy Davis, Jack Trice) Who would be on the NBA’s Mount Rushmore? (Lebron, Magic, Jordan, Wilt) Who would be on Cyclone basketball’s Mount Rushmore? (Hoiberg, Niang, Tinsley, Grayer) Who would be on Cyclone football’s Mount Rushmore? (Troy Davis, Jack Trice, Seneca, Matt Blair)

That type of thing?

But does the Mount Rushmore of Presidents have the 4 best Presidents on it?

According to the official results of the 2018 Presidents & Executive Politics Presidential Greatness Survey, they did a pretty good job.

A little about the survey:

The 2018 Presidents & Executive Politics Presidential Greatness Survey was conducted online via Qualtrics from December 22, 2017 to January 16, 2018. Respondents were current and recent members of the Presidents & Executive Politics Section of the American Political Science Association, which is the foremost organization of social science experts in presidential politics.

Here is their Top 10 Greatest Presidents

1. Abraham Lincoln
2. George Washington
3. Franklin Roosevelt
4. Teddy Roosevelt
5. Thomas Jefferson
6. Harry Truman
7. Dwight D. Eisenhower
8. Barack Obama
9. Ronald Reagan
10. Lyndon Johnson

Therefore, the creators of Mount Rushmore did manage to pick the 4 top Presidents that were available to them. FDR hadn’t been President when Mount Rushmore began. He was President when it was abandoned however. During WWII, the United States couldn’t afford to spend any more on the project. At this point, it is safe to assume it will never be finished.

Here some pictures from the trip to Mount Rushmore:

A few more pictures of Mount Rushmore are still stretching their legs, waiting for the call to get into the game.