Category Archives: Boone County Fair

9 Emotions Project, Alexis, Animals, Birthdays, Black & White, Boone County Fair, Flowers, Grandma, Kanoa, Mark, Mission Trip, Mom, Nature, Railroad, Self-Portrait, Steph, WPC - Reminder

WEEK 245 THEME REVEAL

May 18, 2020 Christopher D. Bennett

I need to start this post by pointing out that today is a very important day. Today is Stephanie’s birthday! Happy birthday Stephanie!

I hope your birthday is safe and amazing!

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I’m going to be away from computers for much of today, so I won’t be able to reveal the RULE OF THIRDS submissions until some point tomorrow. However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t start working on this week’s theme right away:

SELF-PORTRAIT

A SELF-PORTRAIT picture is quite simply, a picture of yourself. Almost, but not quite as easy as RULE OF THIRDS.

I look forward to seeing your interpretations!

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I also recently added to THE CANVAS WALL PROJECT. I eight new 16×20 images to the wall. I’m almost done with the project. I have basically the bottom row to finish. Most of those pictures have been ordered too and should arrive sometime this week.

However, these are the eight 16×20 images that were most recently added to the wall:

After I get the pictures that should arrive on Wednesday in place, I believe I will only need 4 more pictures to finish this project off. But it could be more. I could also be less. But my initial calculations indicate 4 more.

But I’ve been wrong before. Don’t want to be wrong any more.

Animals, Black & White, Boone County Fair, Street Photography, Vest, WPC - Reminder

Sunday at the Fair

January 31, 2020 Christopher D. Bennett

Hitting up the 2019 backlog for a collection of pictures I took while wandering around the Boone County Fair on the last day of the Fair. I was mostly just still playing a bit with the RXO II as I looked to capture many of the animals that were being exhibited.

I recall buying the RXO II because we got a rando bonus at the Computer Mine. I should’ve done something smart with that money, but instead I bought a really, really small camera to photograph sleeping pigs with.

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This is your reminder that this week’s WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE theme is WORK:

WORK

A WORK photo is any image of a person engaged in WORK or tools that are used in WORK or anything that might remind you of WORK. Remember, WORK doesn’t just happen at your place of employment.

Happy photo harvesting!

Animals, Boone County Fair, Calendar, Commercial, Contests, Drone, Kio, Macro, Michelle, Nature, State Fair

Dogs with Papers

December 31, 2019 Christopher D. Bennett

Today is the last day of 2019. Therefore, I will reveal the November and December images for the 2020 Photography 139 Calendar.

November Image:

November

The November image is a collection of dew drops that were trapped in a spiderweb. The spiderweb was located on a evergreen bush in my front yard. This picture was selected to be entered in the Boone County Fair Photography Contest by Michelle Haupt. It received a Blue Ribbon. This picture was taken July 14, 2018.

Details

Camera: Sony ILCA-77M2
Focal Length: 60mm
Aperture: f/2.2
Exposure: 1/100
ISO: 100

December Image:

December

The December image is of Old Highway 30 crossing through the Des Moines River Valley between Boone and Ogden. The image looks west towards Ogden as the sun begins to set. On the left is the Jay Carlson Wildlife Area. In the distance Seven Oaks can be seen. This picture was entered in the Iowa State Fair Photography Salon, but was not selected for display. This picture was taken March 8, 2019.

Details

Camera: Hasselblad L1D-20C
Focal Length: 10.3mm
Aperture: f/5.6
Exposure: 1/400
ISO: 100
Altitude: 343.7 meters above sea level

That concludes the 2020 Photography 139 Calendar images. I hope you enjoyed them and I hope if you got a calendar, you enjoyed it too.

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Before I left for the Mission Trip, I agreed to photograph the graduation of the Boone Area Humane Society’s Dog Obedience Class for Kio. Here are some of my favorite images from the experience:

Guess I’ll see you in 2020. Happy New Year’s Eve if you’re the type that celebrates. I believe I have successfully escaped being invited to a New Year’s Eve Party for like at least the 10th straight year!

Animals, Boone County Fair, Calendar, Contests, Flowers, Macro, Running, Shannon

July/August Reveal

December 29, 2019 Christopher D. Bennett

Today we reveal the images that graced the 2020 Photography 139 Calendar for the months of July and August.

Here is the July image:

July

The July image was taken of the Pig Races held at the Boone County Fair in 2018. I took this image for THE PHOTO JOURNAL PROJECT, Page 77. The theme for Page 77 was “Instill a powerful sense of narrative in your picture.” It was selected to be entered in the Boone County Fair Photo Contest by Shannon Bardole-Foley. It earned a Purple Ribbon. It was taken on July 22, 2018.

Details

Camera: Sony ILCA-77M2
Focal Length: 50mm
Aperture: f/5
Exposure: 1/2000
ISO: 250

The August image:

August

The August image is of a yellow lily that lives in the lily patch that surrounds the old clothesline pole in my backyard. I nominated this picture for the Pufferbilly Days Photo Contest in the Nature category, but it did not get enough votes to be entered. It was taken July 14, 2018.

Details

Camera: Sony ILCA-77M2
Focal Length: 60mm
Aperture: f/5.6
Exposure: 1/200
ISO: 100

Tomorrow I will reveal the imagees from September and October.

Animals, Black & White, Boone County Fair, Calendar, Candid Portrait, Contests, Event, Geri, Iowa State, Jaycees, Jesse, Music, Nature, Road Trip

2009-08-05

December 28, 2019 Christopher D. Bennett 3 Comments

Today we reveal the images for May and June from the 2020 Photography 139 Calendar.

The May Image:

May

The May image is of the Dunning Spring waterfall in Decorah, Iowa. Jesse and I took a road trip to check them out and to photograph them as my birthday road trip. I entered this picture in the Iowa State Fair Photography Salon, but it was not selected for display. In fact, the picture that was selected for display is not in the 2020 calendar. It is the September image for the 2019 calendar. This picture was taken on May 17, 2019.

Details

Camera: Sony ILCA-77M2
Focal Length: 20mm
Aperture: f/18
Exposure: 1/2
ISO: 50

The June Image:

June

If you think it was weird that there was a picture from 2013 in the calendar, then this one will really mess with your head. This black and white image of a swan was taken at Lake Laverne on the beautiful campus of Iowa State University. I came across it when during our Saturday walks down memory lane as I restore old entries of “An Artist’s Notebook”. I liked it and I decided to throw it into the collection of nominees for the pictures I would enter in the Boone County Fair Photo Contest. I didn’t expect anybody to pick it, but Logan did. It won a Purple Ribbon. It was taken May 10, 2006.

Details

Camera: Konica Minolta Dynax 5D
Focal Lenght: 300mm
Aperture: f/5.6
Exposure: 1/500
ISO: 200

Tomorrow we’ll reveal the images for July and August.

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The pictures in the folder 2009-08-05 are from the last Ames Jaycees event I ever attended. It was at that point just a formality. I had joined the Ames on the Half Shell Committee, therefore I was going to fulfill my duties. The moment that last not of the Ames on the Half Shell season faded from existence, I was Audi 5000.

Now that you have sat through several entries about my ill-fated time with the Ames Jaycees, I think you, loyal reader, deserve an explanation for why it came to an end.

I joined the Ames Jaycees for two reasons. First, a friend asked me to join. This person, we will refer to as “1”, was like 1000% into the Ames Jaycees. Her passion was somewhat contagious. I was also doing her a favor because recruiting a new member made her like a 33rd degree Mason. I don’t know, the inner workings and rankings of the organization were something I never cared about. Even when I was at my peak Jayceeness. Which I’m guessing was about January of 2009. my passion for the Jaycees was about a 5 on a scale of 1-10.

By March of 2009, I knew that that my time with the Jaycees was over, but I also knew, I would finish out the Ames on the Half Shell. I was a quitter, but I always finish out my commitments.

In January of 2009 I joined the Board as a Vice-President in some capacity. VP of Promotions or something like that. All it really meant was that I ran the website and had to go to an extra meeting a month. Which was okay, even though I am a person that to their very core, loathes meetings.

Which brings me to the other reason I joined the Jaycees. I needed an excuse to leave my house now and again. This provided that. I didn’t realize it would put so much undesired drama into my life.

The Board was split into basically two factions. There were 1’s friends, who were also all 1000% into the Jaycees. The other half of the boardroom was dominated by the President and his cronies. The President was apparently buggering one of the vice-presidents, which wasn’t cool because he was married, but not to the vice-president he was buggering. I can’t even recall how this even factored into the story, but it provided me with a chance to use the term buggering.

The President and the VP he was buggering didn’t like one of 1’s friends, we will call her 2. I think it was because 2 knew about the buggering, but I don’t know that to within a degree of certainy. What I do know is that what happened next is that the Buggered VP accused 2 of some creative accounting involving some kind of Halloween drinking outing that involved the Jaycees.

One reason why I was a 5 on the Jaycees at my peak Jayceeness was that they like to talk about drinking. I don’t mean they liked to drink. They liked talking about drinking. You know that thing that high school students and college students do when they drink, they can’t stop talking about it. “Look at me I’m drinking.” Yeah, nobody cares. Shut up and drink your Zima Chad.

This is all hypothetical at this point. I haven’t been around a high school student or college student that is drinking alcohol, since I left the service of the Evil Clown Empire, but I’m sure it hasn’t changed much. Other than, I assume that nobody drinks Zima now. White Claws?

But I digress…

The charges were at least 76% hokum that stemmed from some kind of personal grievance with 2. Plus, there might have been a bit of a power play in there. A chance to show dominance. A chance to show that the Buggered VP wasn’t the President, but she was still running this beach.

I think there was some kind of trial. Not really, it was really just one person’s word and then there was some kind of vote. 2 got sent to Jaycee prison. I think she wasn’t allowed to touch money for a year.

Almost as soon as the sentence was handed down, 1 and all of her friends resigned. Grabbed their Jaycee ball and went to Nevada and Des Moines. That left me alone. Like I said, I was a 5. In January. at this point, I was a 3. Even at a 3, I was willing to stick around and fight for the soul of the Ames Jaycees. When the people who were at a 1000% were like deuces and checked out, I was like make that 3 a -2.

The funny thing is that after everybody else left, 2 stuck around. I’m not sure if I respect that or not. Maybe I’ll have to talk to her about it someday.

I fulfilled my obligations and haven’t been to a Jaycee event since. I sometimes see them at the unofficial reunions and I chalk this up as a life lesson. I don’t leave my house now.

(This is how I remember everything going down, I’m sure some of my details aren’t 100% accurate, but if you are going to complain about that, you can bugger off.)

If you want to look at the pictures from the 2009 Ames on the Half Shell season, you can click on the link below:

Ames on the Half Shell – 2009

Next Saturday’s walk down Memory Lane will involve things I grew in my backyard.

Animals, Baby Got Rack, Boone County Fair, Drone, Jaxon, Jesse, Naima, Scottie D., Self-Portrait, Self-Portrait Project, Teresa

Selfie Project – July

August 21, 2019 Christopher D. Bennett

Usually I don’t like to get this late into a month before I publish my favorite photos from the previous months SELFIE PROJECT, but I guess I’ve been busy and I’ve really been trying to be diligent with hitting up that 2018 backlog.

I don’t know that I did anything that was as interesting as what I did in June, but it wasn’t the worst month of the year for me.

Here are my favorites from July:

July 3

July 5

July 6

July 8

July 9

July 11

July 12

July 13

July 14

July 15

July 18

July 19

July 20

July 21

July 24

July 26

July 27

July 28

July 31

I’d like to think that I’ve done some borderline interesting stuff in August so far, with a couple things left to go. A trip to Zeno’s. A trip to the Minnesota State Fair. The first Iowa State football game are all left to go!

Black & White, Boone County Fair, Formal Portrait, Railroad, Scottie D., WPC - Reminder

A Photo Journal – Page 73

July 26, 2019 Christopher D. Bennett 1 Comment

A week or so ago the largest steam engine in the world pulled into Boone and spent the night. I wasn’t able to get a lot of great pictures of it because of its location and my work schedule at the computer mine. However, I was able to get a picture for Page 73 of THE PHOTO JOURNAL PROJECT.

Page 73 – Turn form into rhythm.

The idea of this photo page is to take a picture concentrating on the shapes that make up an object, rather than the object itself.

I can only physically adhere one picture into the physical THE PHOTO JOURNAL, but I did take a few other pictures:

These are the pages I still need to photograph:

Page 18 – Shoot the other half of this picture by Jason by Jason Evans. – This is a profoundly stupid page, but I guess I’ll have to bite the bullet and do it at some point.
PAGE 27- Create drama around the edge of your frame.
Page 28 – Recreate a famous photograph without looking it up.
PAGE 31 – Tell a joke with two pictures.
Page 64 – Head out with a fellow photographer and play a game of photography dare.
PAGE 66-67 – Make a sequence of four pictures inspired by the rise and fall of Britney Spears (or another celebrity).
PAGE 101 – Find an object, close your eyes and compose your shot using touch rather than vision.
Page 106-107 – Email one of your pictures to your photography hero and ask them what they hate about it.
PAGE 116 – Shoot an advert where the image says it all without need for any additional copy.
Page 117 – Freeze the frame exactly 57 minutes and 32 seconds in to your favourite film. Take a picture inspired by what you see.
PAGE 121 – Show us that photography is a form of magic.
Page 123 – Don’t take any more photographs -none- until you see something that emotionally moves you. Only then pick up your camera.

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Here is your reminder that this week’s theme for THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE is BLACK & WHITE:

BLACK & WHTIE

A BLACK & WHITE picture can be of any subject, as long as it is a BLACK & WHITE picture.

Happy photo harvesting!

Baby Got Rack, Black & White, Boone County Fair, Candid Portrait, Jaxon, Melissa, Scottie D.

Baby Got Rack Takes the Boone County Fair

July 23, 2019 Christopher D. Bennett 3 Comments

Last Saturday was the annual Boone County Fair barbecue contest. Baby Got Rack decided to take a different tact this time. Rather than entering the pizza, we decided to enter something new. Meatloaf Cupcakes. This was a big risk just based on the fact that the pizza was a surefire winner.

However, Scottie D. had become bored with winning with the same item over and over and over and over again.

The other risk we decided was to enter pork ribs. Pork is easily the most popular category and hardest to win.

One last risk Baby Got Rack decided to take was to do little to no planning. Scottie D. thought that certain things would just take care of themselves. It turns out that Melissa does those things for Scottie D and she was in the horrible place known as Nebraska on Friday night. So things didn’t get taken care of.

Baby Got Rack stumbled out the starting blocks. We didn’t get our desired spot on the end. We didn’t have any of our stuff prepared. So Scottie D. dropped Hammer and I off at the fairgrounds to get everything setup and get the fire going. He went back home and worked on getting food prep done.

It all worked out because Baby Got Rack walked out of the Boone County Fair with 2 big victories. We won best Specialty AND more importantly Best Overall. Both for the Meatloaf Cupcakes.

This means that Baby Got Rack will be competing at the Iowa State Fair again. So if you go to the Fair on Tuesday, August 13 in the morning, look us up. We will be in the Grand Concourse.

Here are some pictures from what ended up being a humid, wet, and victorious day!

Last year we won the specialty category at the Iowa State Fair. Here is hoping for a repeat!

Andy, Animals, Baby Got Rack, Black & White, Boone County Fair, Formal Portrait, Kim, Micky, Monica, Scottie D., Tamara, WPC - Submissions

WPC – WEEK 201 – ANGER

July 22, 2019 Christopher D. Bennett

I thought for sure that this week would not be a double digit week, but it was! The 4th straight week! That makes me happy that so many of you found your ANGER, which I consider to be one of the hardest them of this set of 52.

A note, if you have an idea for a theme for the next set of 52, leave it in the Comments section of this here blog.

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

Andy Sharp

Monica Henning

Kim Barker

Christopher D. Bennett

Micky Augustin

Michelle Haupt

Shannon Bardole-Foley

Stephanie Kim

Tamara Peterson

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:

BLACK & WHITE

BLACK & WHITE! What a great theme! This is the closest you get to a wild card theme. You can literally take a picture of anything, and as long as that picture is in BLACK & WHITE, it qualifies for this theme.

You may have to do some editing after you take the picture, but a lot of digital cameras have a BLACK & WHITE setting.

This is my favorite theme, so I definitely look forward to your interpretations!

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HOUSEKEEPING

A 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 monochrome Monday!

Animals, Black & White, Boone County Fair, Contests, Flowers, Jesse, Logan, Macro, Michelle, Monica, Shannon, State Fair

Boone County Fair Photography Contest Results

July 21, 2019 Christopher D. Bennett

Now that the Boone County Fair is winding down and my collection of Boone County Fair Photography Contest entries are bagged up and safely stowed in one of the now TWO trunks that archive my past photo contest entries, I can release the results to the general public that didn’t make it to the Boone County Fair this year. A fair that I can safely say if Family-Friendly Fun & Entertainment, Right here in Central Iowa! I would dare say that this year’s fair was “Picture Perfect”.

Here are my submissions, along with who selected them for entry and the result:

Purple Ribbon – Logan Kahler

Blue Ribbon – Michelle Haupt

Red Ribbon – Monica Henning

Blue Ribbon – Jesse Howard

Purple Ribbon – Shannon Bardole-Foley

A reminder that I do have one picture that will be displayed at the Iowa State Fair Photography Salon. I don’t know what it is, but I will find out at the Photographer Reception here in a couple weeks. I’ll release that photo at the conclusion of the Iowa State Fair on August 18.

There is still good seats available to join me at the Iowa State Fair on August 18. But they are filling up fast!

As for the last photo contest I enter this year, the Pufferbilly Days Photo Contest. I will again be selecting my entries by poll. I will be putting that poll together in the next couple of weeks. So stay tuned to this station. Information will be forthcoming!