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Self-Portrait Project Week 7
04/16/2012 10:43 AM
Category Archives: Willy
04/16/2012 10:43 AM
Self-Portrait Project Week 6
04/09/2012 5:45 PM
04/10/12 5:12 PM
04/11/12 8:40 PM
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04/15/12 10:05 AM
Sadness Ensues
It is the time of year that is filled with sadness. Another college basketball season has come to an end. But despite the gloom that will set upon the land for many more months, it is a time of joy as well. We get to crown a new King of the Roundball Oracles. A new name goes on the plaque of immortals with these past champions:
Roundball Oracles Past Champions.
2011 – Carrie Baier
2010 – Mark Wolfram
2009 – Mark Wolfram
2008 – Mark Wolfram
2007 – Tim Peterson
2006 – William McAlpine
2005 – William McAlpine
The latest immortal is…
Lowell Davis
In the closes Roundball Oracle competition ever, Lowell beat Corey Faust on the tiebreaker.
I will be ordering Lowell’s trophy soon and will be presenting it to him in the very near future. I’m sure there will be photographic evidence to back this up presented in this forum in due time.
Another reason why it was a good year for the Roundball Oracles is that we set a new record with 29 combatants. Shattering the previous participation mark by several people.
Without further adieu, here are the final standings of the 8th Roundball Oracles Challenge:
Rank/Name/Points/National Title Choice/Last Year’s Finish
1. Lowell Davis – 275 – Kentucky – 13th
2. Corey Faust – 275 – Kentucky – 6th
3. Jason Baier – 265 – Kentucky – 5th
4. Angie DeWaard – 255 – Kentucky – DNP
5. Robert Henning – 245 – Kentucky – 8th
6. William McAlpine – 236 – Kentucky – DNP
7. Mark Wolfram – 235 – Ohio State – 15th
8. Jason Stensland – 229 – Ohio State – DNP
9. Dawn Krause – 228 – Kentucky – 4th
10. Jesse Howard – 225 – Kentucky – 2nd
11. Jon DeWaard – 222 – Kentucky – DNP
12. Derrick Gorshe – 220 – Kentucky – DNP
13. Nader Parsaei – 216 – Connecticut – 14th
14. Jackson Faust – 214 – Michigan State – DNP
15. Bill Wentworth – 211 – North Carolina – DNP
16. Tim Peterson – 209 – Kansas – 11th
17. Mike Donner – 206 – Michigan State – DNP
18. Jen Ensley-Gorshe – 199 – North Carolina – DNP
19. Michael Augustin – 196 – North Carolina – DNP
20. Carrie Baier – 194 – Michigan State – 1st
21. Shawn Lockner – 189 – Baylor – DNP
22. Russell Kennerly – 176 – North Carolina – 9th
23. Shaun Kirsch – 175 – Iowa State – 16th
24. Teresa Kahler – 173 – Iowa State – DNP
25. Yours Truly – 164 – North Carolina – 7th
26. Toby Sebring – 157 – North Carolina – DNP
27. Brandon Kahler – 142 – Kansas State – DNP
28. Jordan Toot – 119 – North Carolina – DNP
29. Becky Perkovich – 0 – Undecided – DNP
Some people might think that I need to explain why somebody with my nearly infinite basketball knowledge could have fared so poorly, but I will not defend my lowly ranking. Truth is that my goal is just to beat Russell and the fact that I didn’t this year means that I will have to try harder next year. I cannot let RMK get the best of me two years in a row!
Even though the dust has barely settled on this year’s NCAA tournament, I am already very excited for next year’s season. I think that the Cyclones will be even better next season and I can’t wait to see them prove me right. I guess until the season begins anew, I will look forward to the Spring Football Game that is only days away!
Personal Photo Project of the Week #101
Reason and Faith
I’m not sure I ever really got the picture of Willy that I wanted, but I do know for sure that I didn’t want Naima in the picture. It is funny how a dog that has a knack for being extremely difficult to photograph, would fight her way into this picture of Willy.
Oh well, she adds some humor to this photo.
Here are a few other pictures from the Reason and Faith Series.
If you are sensing a special glow in Willy it is because these pictures were taken the same day that he won a 5K in Nevada, with a certain amount of ease it should be pointed out.
Personal Photo Project of the Week #99
I only had time last year to make a handful of calendars. If you didn’t get a calendar this year, I am sorry. I only had one left and I gave it to Nader because he actually called and asked for one. If somebody begged I suppose I could print another one off, but who would want a calendar that is almost 25% useless?
Here are the images from this years Photography 139 Calendar:
Front Cover
January
February
March
April
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
As usual, Mike Vest helped finish up the calendars with his hole punching and binding skills. Thanks Mike!
Personal Photo Project of the Week #91
False Start
I’ve wanted to do a photo series based on the Ten Commandments for quite sometime now. This was originally an idea for, “Hey, don’t be murderizing anybody.” However, I’ve decided to take this in a different direction. So this is not a true start of that project.
Here are a few other False Start pictures.
Special thanks to Sara for securing an ask from her dad, no questions asked. He even sharpened it for me, even though he knew it was just a photo prop.
The Archives: Edition Forty-One
These pictures came from: backup
I’m not really sure what the common bond of these pictures would be. I’m guessing that I just placed them here until a better home could be found and never returned to them.
This was a scene from the Anders’ opus Project: Universe.
Next week’s folder will be:
Backup/My Pictures/A Scene from the Woods
The exciting part about this little adventure is that we will be moving into almost exclusively digital images. So these images will actually look WAY better since they were digital from the time they were birthed into this world.
Giant Steps
I hate the phrase “things happen for a reason” more than I hate any other phrase in the world. That doesn’t mean that I don’t necessarily believe in fate, but for the most part I don’t like fate. Its plans run contrary to my plans, no matter how hard I work on my plans. So fate can go suck an egg.
However, sometimes fate works out in my favor, even though I don’t know it.
One of those fate just screwed me over, but it ended up working out pretty well for me moments was when my wheel flew off my car on my way to Minnesota a few weeks back. I had a pretty sweet vacation planned, but it all went into the ditch with my wheel and more money than I care to think about.
I rescheduled my vacation for the last week in August. That movement of my vacation just a few days allowed me to complete Operation Puppy sooner than I anticipated.
I knew when I finally got a puppy, it would be while I was on vacation and I didn’t think that I would be taking a vacation for several more months, but I still checked several websites and newspaper (okay newspaper websites) for the puppy that I wanted. A female golden retriever.
A simple enough request, but there weren’t many in the area. Then an ad for a bunch of puppies showed up in the Des Moines Register.
I wrote them and they gave me the sad news, all of their female puppies were probably claimed. 2 were for sure. The other two were most likely claimed.
I wrote them back and let them know that if one of the females became available, I wanted to be at the front of the list. That was on a Wednesday. I resigned myself to the fact that I wouldn’t be getting a puppy for several more weeks or months.
Then on Friday they wrote me to tell me that they thought that one of the females might be coming available, but could not make any promises.
I made plans to drive up near Hubbard on Saturday to see the puppies. I figured that it would be a fruitless trip, but it wouldn’t hurt to see some puppies. The cutest most adorable kind of puppy: golden retrievers!
Then on Saturday morning I got an email saying that they had a female for me.
That afternoon Jason, Alexis, and I drove up to see the puppies. I put down a deposit and set up a day and time to come pick up my puppy. I worked it out so that I could pick her up on the Wednesday of my vacation as I came back down from Minnesota.
The next step was coming up with a name. I struggled with a name, but eventually with the help of friends a name was found. Here are some of the suggestions I received:
Willy: Cuddles or Miss Wiggles
Faust: Steele & Melanie
Jen: Mila
Jill: Daisy
Sara: Astrid, Mahtob and then she sent me a list of about 200 other suggestions.
Carla: Chloe, then she went out and bought a puppy and named it Chloe.
But it was actually a suggestion by Derrick that put me on the road to the name. While we were sitting on a bench at the State Fair resting, he asked if there was a female character from a Kubrick movie that I liked. I have to confess that Kubrick movies aren’t filled with extremely strong female characters. If you take out the prostitute from Eyes Wide Shut or the sniper from Full Metal Jacket, that really leaves you with Lolita and I’m not naming a dog after Lolita.
I toyed with the idea of Kubrick and then Coltrane as a name, but those were just too male sounding names. I was stalled.
Then fate took a hand again. Every morning I run shuffle on Media Player and then post whatever the first song that comes up to Twitter. Now, I know that nobody in the world cares at all what song I am listening to during that exact moment of the day. I do it as a reminder to the world that I have better taste in music than they do.
On August 24th a Miles Davis song was the song that shuffle landed on and I posted the following to Twitter:
“In a Silent Way/It’s About That Time…”-Miles Davis-In A Silent Way-If I were getting a male (puppy), I would name it Miles, Coltrane or Kubrick.”
Dawn replied to my tweet with this tweet:
“How about Naima? Unusual & fits the jazz theme…”
It was a great idea and while I marinated on the idea for a couple of days, in the end, I decided it was too great of an idea to pass up. So I named my puppy after one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite musicians.
I had a name and a week later I had a puppy. Here are a few of the pictures from my first few days with Naima:
Next week’s Wednesday randomness will feature pictures from the mini family reunion I hosted Labor Day weekend.
The Archives: Edition Thirty-Seven
These pictures came from backup/Old My Pictures/UnHingd
These are a mixture of concert pictures from an Iowa State game, practice and recording their first demo.
The phallic nature of the “I” was a constant source of debate.
This is a Jay Janson Photoshop original.
Next week’s folder will be:
Backup/Old My Pictures/Unhingd/Concert
Post 1200
As you may recall, I like to check in on some statistics every 100 posts or so to see how things are doing in popularity. However, this statistical check-in will mark the end of an era. I am officially retiring the Snapshots Gallery and the Artistic Gallery.
The advent of the store has made them obsolete and why bother with galleries where you can’t buy anything, right Andree Jauhari, Marla Gorshe, and Jennifer Wohlgemuth of Minnesota! Right. Right?
Therefore, the only gallery that will remain is the Store. Check it out:
Gallery/Store
So here are the final rankings of the 10 most popular pictures in the Artistic Gallery. For the record, these are heavily skewed by spammers:
1. 669 Views
2. 497 Views
3. 410 Views
4. 375 Views
5. 352 Views
5. 352 Views
7. 351 Views
8. 350 Views
8. 350 Views
8. 350 Views
Here are the 10 most popular pictures from the Snapshots Gallery. Data heavily skewed by spammers.
1. 2010 Labor Day – 915 Views
2. Jesse & I Netting My Trees – 643 Views
3. Derrick & a Gunderburger – 245 Views
4. Tailgating Games – 229 Views
5. Baier & I at Chiefs Game – 169 Views
6. Shannon & I at an Inebriated Saints Show – 89 Views
7. Shannon in Backbone – 54 Views
8. Holding the White Trash Elixir – 49 Views
9. Brandon Tailgating – 45 Views
10. Gunderburger! – 43 Views
Here is the list of the ten people that have contributed (in some way shape or form) to this blog the most in the first 1199 entries. Plus how many entries they have been in since we last looked at these numbers. Plus where they were the last time we looked at these numbers.
1. Jesse – 174 – +9 – 1
2. Jay – 165 – +13 – 2
3. Shannon – 153 – +6 – 3
4. Derrick – 138 – +14 – 4
5. Jen – 124 – +16 – 6
6. Teresa – 118 – +9 – 5
7. Sara – 112 – +15 – 8
8. Willy – 110 – +8 – 7
9. Vest – 95 – +14 – 9
10. Carla – 84 – +10 – NR
10. Mom – 84 – +17 – NR
Who are the 3 greatest movers outside of the Top Ten?
1. Dad – +16
2. Jill – +14
3. Evie – +6
Thanks to this group of friends and family for their consistent efforts in aiding me in my photographic pursuits, either through assisting, modeling, inspiring, listening, or just being around a whole lot. I couldn’t do what I do with out them. And so many other people too!