A few weeks back I took Rodan139 out to the Jay Carlson Wildlife Are for a quick flight around before the sun went down. It is a great place for flying the drone. I should really go out there more. At least before weather shuts drone season down for a few months:
I’m hope I still have a few flights left in the bird before 2020 is over. But it has been getting crazy windy lately. At least crazy windy on weekends. stupid short winter weekdays.
A few weeks back I went out to Ledges late in a Sunday evening and flew Rodan139 around and where Peas Creek empties into the Des Moines River.
Here are a few pictures:
On Sunday nights I send out a “Cool” Drone Video of the Week to a couple of friends that have requested it. It has been a blessing because it provides me with motivation to get out there with the drone on several weekends where I would’ve left Rodan139 in the hangar. This set of pictures is a set of pictures that exists for that reason.
The pictures in the folder 2010-05-07 were all taken in Brookside Park. Some during the day. Some at night.
By adding these pictures to the Photography 139 Gallery, I was able to restore the following historic “An Artist’s Notebook” entries to their original glory:
Next Saturday’s walk down memory lane will involve my Mom’s retirement.
First, I want to give thanks to Andy for giving suggestions for the next 52 weeks of themes. He was the only person to make a suggestion, but he made some good suggestions:
Music
Water
Wind(tough it would kill streak)
Hero
Sports
Hobby
Charity
Love
Funny
Celebrating
Teaching
Family
Sunrise
Sunset
Dream job
Landscaping
Rock
Red green(duct tape)
At least a few of these will definitely be included in the next set of 52 themes. Thanks Andy!
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We did it! Despite it getting dark at like 5 PM now and the chaos of the election last week, for the 58th week in a row, we had double digit submissions! Well done America!
But you didn’t come here to listen to me talk all tommyrot about participation rates, you came to see the submissions:
Kio Dettman
Andy Sharp
Aaron Barnett
Tamara Peterson
Aaron Barnett
Christopher D. Bennett
Monica Henning
Monica Henning
Kim Barker
Michelle Haupt
Cathie Raley
Micky Augustin
Mike Vest
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:
ART! What a great theme! But what is an ART picture? An ART picture is a picture of any piece of ART or supplies that are used in making ART or a picture of somebody creating ART. A truly confident person could argue that any picture they make is ART. It doesn’t have to be professional or great ART. It can be that thing your kid drew that you hung on the fridge.
Here is a look back at all the times in the past that ART has been a theme:
WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE – WEEK 70 – ART
WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE – WEEK 108 – ART
I look forward to seeing your new interpretations!
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.
OR
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 artistic Monday!
A couple weeks ago I followed the trail from the Kate Shelley Railroad Museum to the remains of the bridge that she crossed to save all those lives all those years ago.
If you don’t know the story of Kate Shelley, it goes something like this from the Wikipedia page:
On the afternoon of July 6, 1881, heavy thunderstorms caused a flash flood of Honey Creek, washing out timbers that supported the railroad trestle. A pusher locomotive sent from Moingona to check track conditions crossed the Des Moines River bridge, but plunged into Honey Creek when the bridge fell away at about 11pm, with a crew of four — Edgar Wood, A. P. Olmstead, Adam Agar, and Patrick Donahue.
Kate heard the crash, and knew that an eastbound express passenger train was due in Moingona about midnight, stopping shortly before heading east over the Des Moines River and then Honey Creek. She found two surviving crew members, Edgar Wood and Adam Agar, and shouted that she would get help, having to cross the Des Moines River bridge along the way. Although she started with a lantern, it went out, and she crawled the span on her hands and knees with only lightning for illumination. Once across, she had to cover about two miles on ground to the Moingona depot to sound the alarm. She then led a party back to rescue Edgar and Adam. Edgar, perched in a tree, grasped a rope thrown to him, and came ashore hand-over-hand. Adam couldn’t be reached until the floodwaters began to recede.[6] Pat Donahue’s body was eventually found in a cornfield a quarter mile downstream from the bridge, but A .P. Olmsted was never found. The passenger train was stopped at Scranton, with about 200 aboard.
Only the remains of the bridge are left as this set of railroad tracks was abandoned a long time ago. A lot of people think the bridge that she crossed is the Kate Shelley Memorial High Bridge, but that bridge was actually built decades later. The construction of that bridge ultimately doomed the railroad line that went through Moingona.
This map of the railroads from 1908 shows where these tracks went from leaving Boone to entering Ogden.
As near as I can tell, there is only one picture of the bridge that Kate Shelley did cross out there. It is very small:
From what I can tell, the bridge she crossed was replaced in 1894. If you go out to the remains now, there are a couple of the stone supports left, but the structures that held up the middle of the bridge had been replaced with concrete supports. Now I’m not an archaeologist, but I believe that the piles of stone that are found near the base of the concrete supports are what remains of the stone supports that they replaced. I also believe that the remains of the wood box that would’ve been built to hold the river back while they built the concrete support can also be found near the center concrete support.
All of that is 100% conjecture on my part, but I think it makes sense. You can only see these things when the river is crazy low. It was crazy low when I went out there a couple weeks ago.
If you want to get the remains of the bridge, you go to the Kate Shelley Railroad Museum and then walk the trail that goes along where the old railroad tracks were until you get to the Des Moines River. With apologies to Wikipedia, I’d guess it is closer to a mile rather than 2 miles. See map:
Any way, here are some pictures I took out there with Rodan139:
I will be going out there again in the near future for part of THE POSTCARD RECREATION PROJECT in the near future. Let me know if anybody is up for a short hike.
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This is your reminder that this week’s theme for THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE is FRAMED:
A FRAMED image is an image where the subject of your picture is framed by objects that create negative space around it.
Happy photo harvesting!
You know that BLACK AND WHITE is my favorite theme. You know darn well that I’m going to have lots of BLACK AND WHITE alternates. Lots and lots of alternates. Actually I think I have less alternates than I normally do for BLACK AND WHITE. That being said, I’m still going to break this down into multiple posts. Probably 2. Maybe 3. Definitely more than 1 though.
Plenty more, BLACK AND WHITE images still coming later this week.
I should start by pointing out that I jacked up Kalista’s submission yesterday for THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE. This is what it was:
It came in after the 11 AM deadline and in my haste to get the picture posted before the 12:01 autopublish, I didn’t double check my copying and pasting. Not the first time it has happened. Certainly won’t be the last.
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Time for another collection of flower pictures. These pictures were taken around the yard in early August.
Hope all the snow we got yesterday doesn’t mark the end of flowetrography season, but I’m sure it will be ending soon. Definitely sooner than I want it to end.
This is a collection of pictures I took a few days after the derecho struck Iowa. It is the last of damage caused by the derecho pictures that I have.
I happened about 7 weeks ago, but it feels like it was forever ago.
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This is your reminder that this week’s theme for THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE is SIGNS:
A SIGNS image is any photo where a SIGN is an important compositional element of the picture.
Happy photo harvesting!
One of my goals when I was on vacation was to hit 5 State Parks that I’ve never been to before. I made this goal, but not quite like I anticipated. The two parks I definitely wanted to hit were Mines of Spain and Preparation Canyon. The other 3 were to be somewhat negotiable. In the end, I hit 3 State Parks I’ve never been to and 2 State Forests I haven’t been to.
1. Mines of Spain
2. Walnut Woods
3. Preparation Canyon
4. Loess Hills State Forest
5. Pilot Mound State Forest
In retrospect, it is kind of shocking that I’ve never been to Pilot Mound State Forest, considering it is in Boone County, but it is also exciting to think that there are places in my own backyard that I still haven’t really explored.
The drive to Preparation Canyon was very rainy, but not very long. I consider the three most beautiful parts of Iowa to be northeast Iowa, the Loess Hills and the Des Moines River Valley. The Loess Hills area did not disappoint, even if the part of Preparation Canyon I saw wasn’t overly impressive. However, I have no doubt that I’ll revisit this area again in the future and see Preparation Canyon from a different perspective.
However, the Loess Hills State Forest did not disappoint. In fact, it might have been even more beautiful than I expected. Here are some pictures from the area taken from Rodan139:
The last few images is of one of the infamous unmaintained roads of Monona County. I badly wanted to go on it, but it had been raining all day and that road was all mud. You couldn’t even walk on it. The other problem is that I drive a Camry. Not exactly built for what basically amounts to an off-road adventure.
This concludes the drone pictures from my vacation, but there are still plenty of vacation pictures to come.
