I have to confess, I was a little worried about this week. As I crawled out of bed this morning to head to the Computer Mine, I had only received 1 submission in my email inbox. Despite one person telling me at the State Fair that they had just taken their picture and another person messaging me to ask me if a certain subject met the criteria of the theme.

SPOILER ALERT:

Every time you ask me that question, my response is going to be: “Define the theme any way you see fit.”

I mean yes, if you just send me a picture every week of your kid, dog, cat, chinchilla, iguana, ’64 Impala, Uncle Art… I’m eventually going to call poppycock on your “interpretations” of the theme. However, if your subject makes sense to you. It makes sense to me. I’m not going to question it.

But I digress.

The good news is that my worries were for naught, as REFLECTIONS submissions flooded my inbox this morning. Including 2 first time submitters in Debra Krause and Scott Krause. A brother-sister tandem that hails from Boone, Iowa. Hopefully, this is just the beginning of their submitting ways.

But I could stand here and talk tommyrot about this morning, or I could show you the submissions. I know you guys love tommyrot, but here are the submissions:

Angie DeWaard

Mike Vest

Christopher D. Bennett

Stephanie Kim 1

Stephanie Kim 2

Debra Krause 1

Debra Krause 2

Dawn Krause 1

Dawn Krause 2

Dawn Krause 3

Dawn Krause 4

Kim Barker

Scott Krause 1

Scott Krause 2

Becky Perkovich

Bill Wentworth

Shannon Bardole

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:

Macro!

But what is this MACRO you speak of? Is it pictures of carrots?

No, that’d be crazy! (Picks up a pencil and writes down CARROTS as a theme for the next 52 weeks.) There is a terribly sterile definition of MACRO that involves a 1:1 ratio of subject to 35mm film and you don’t want to hear it and while I want to tell you about it, I’ll restrain myself and define MACRO like this:

MACRO photography is all about getting up into something/sombebody’s grill and telling it “I’m here. I’m up in your grill. I’m not backing down. I’m taking your picture.”

Another way to look at it is that MACRO photography is close-up photography.

But as always, feel free to define the theme anyways you want.

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

Nobody this week showed class, taste or sophistication by signing up for a Photography 139 Email Subscription. I’ll try to do better next week.

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 no-personal-space kinda Monday.