Category Archives: Photography

Pre-Work

April 19, 2016 Christopher D. Bennett 8 Comments

There is an old timey hamburger joint in Manhattan (Kansas) that I want to photograph at night at some point. On my recent trip to visit Nate, I was never in Manhattan at night. So it didn’t happen.

However, I did scout the area out and took a few test photos. Maybe a few months down the road I’ll post the photo that this scouting trip helped make possible.

Here are some scouting photos:

A Kansas State area restaurant that calls their desserts Cyclones? I get your subliminal message Vista Drive In. Loud and clear!

Angie, Bill, Kim, Pastor Sarah, WPC - Submissions

WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE – WEEK 31 – OLD

April 18, 2016 Christopher D. Bennett 8 Comments

So I made a rookie mistake and left my camera battery at work over the weekend. Good thing that I had already taken a plethora of pictures of old things on Wednesday.

This week’s submissions for OLD:

Kim Barker

Shannon Bardole

Bill Wentworth

Sarah Karber

Christopher D. Bennett

Angie DeWaard

A pretty good selection of submissions methinks.

So what is this week’s theme…

COUNTRY!

So what is COUNTRY? When I wrote this theme down and put it on a Post-It note, my basic concept of country was anything that isn’t within a city limits. Anything rural would qualify. However, you can take the theme any way you want it. Want to saunter down to your local honky tonk and grab a picture of a pretend cowboy. That would qualify. Have a cherry collection of old Tom T. Hall 8 tracks? Take a picture of that. If you want to take a picture of a map and say “look, it’s a country!” Do that. Express the theme however you see fit.

No HOUSEKEEPING today. I’ll try to do better next week.

If the Lord’s willing and the creek don’t rise, we’ll see you next Monday. With a sweet collection of COUNTRY pictures, I have no doubts.

Art, Road Trip, WPC - Alternate

Baby’s in Reno with the Vitamin D

April 15, 2016 Christopher D. Bennett 2 Comments

These are the SHAPES pictures that didn’t make the cut. All eerily similar to the one that did make the cut. Almost like they were all taken in the same place. Interesting Richard. Yes provocative.

When I stopped to photograph all of these magnificent SHAPES, I got quite the history lesson about them. The lady at the information booth was very passionate. I like passion.

Carla, Ruins

Destructo

April 14, 2016 Christopher D. Bennett 2 Comments

Time for another look at the fallen Wagon Wheel Bridge.

Probably have quite a few more of these sad images in the hopper.

PARTICULARS

CAMERA: SONY SLT-A65V
ISO: 100
FOCAL LENGTH: 24mm
APERTURE: f/8
EXPOSURE: 1/320
DATE: 03/11/2016 – 14:07
LATITUDE: 42.06252
LONGITUDE: -93.96999
PHOTO ASSISTANT: Carla Stensland

Alisa, Boone FUMC, Fisheye, Pastor Sarah

Can I Get Confirmation?

April 13, 2016 Christopher D. Bennett 2 Comments

Last Sunday was Confirmation Sunday at the church. I wasn’t directly involved in the confirmation process, but my morning was filled with church activities.

As a member of the Methodist Men, I was there to help prepare the Confirmation Breakfast for the confirmands, their families, and their mentors. During a break in the action I ran up and fixed the network problems of our financial computer. During the church service I ran the PowerPoint portion of the worship. After the service, once again as a member of the Methodist Men, I helped serve treats and beverages as part of Fellowship.

However, what matters to this post is the PowerPoint part of my day. Since I was running PowerPoint, I was up in the balcony. I don’t normally take photographs during worship service, because the people around me consider it to be a distraction.

However, since I was in the balcony and since Alisa is in Haiti doing God’s work (similar to the time I went to fake Haiti, but with less time laying on the beach and bartering over hat prices I’m sure) I decided to snap a few photos, so she could see them on her return.

Anna’s Faith Statement

Mackenzie’s Faith Statement

I’d just like to say that the two confirmands that read their Personal Faith Statements to the congregation were VERY impressive! If I had a transcript of their words, I would’ve published both of them.

Photoshop, Road Trip

High Ding Dong Range Toning

April 12, 2016 Christopher D. Bennett 5 Comments

I felt before I went into the HDR Nik Plugin, I should cover the HDR Toning features that are built into Photoshop.

So here is a quick look at the High Dynamic Range toning options in Photoshop.

Original Image

Color Correction and the Chain has been Removed

Flat

City Twilight

Monochromatic

Monochromatic Low Contrast

Monochromatic High Contrast

Monochromatic Artistic

Saturated

More Saturated

Photorealistic

Photorealistic Low Contrast

Photorealistic High Contrast

RC5

Scott5

Surrealistic

Surrealistic Low Contrast

Surrealistic High Contrast

Now that we have established a good baseline, you’ll be ready when we hit up the HDR EFEX PRO 2 Photoshop Plug in some point soon.

Bill, Carla, Jesse, Kim, Willy, WPC - Submissions

WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE – WEEK 30 – RUINS

April 11, 2016 Christopher D. Bennett

I’ve been looking forward to this week’s theme since I wrote it on a green Post-It Note and dropped it in the hat. Jesse Howard, long time Photography 139 supporter and apparent beard lover, entered his first submission. Hopefully it is the beginning of many more.

Let’s look at the submissions for RUINS:

Carla Stensland 1

Carla Stensland 2

Carla Stensland 3

Bill Wentworth

Christopher D. Bennett

Jesse Howard

Kim Barker 1

Kim Barker 2

Time to look to the future. This week’s theme is…

OLD!

Maybe it is unfortunate that these two themes got drawn back to back, but they are different ya know. While RUINS calls for you to photograph something that is deteriorating. This just calls for you to photograph something that is old. OLD can still be in very good shape. See William MacAlpine.

HOUSEKEEPING

No new email subscribers this week. Maybe next week.

As we are over halfway home, now is a good time to share the remainder of the themes. If this continues into another year, please put ideas for new THEMES in the COMMMENTS section of this here blog.

THE REMAINING THEMES

BLUE
HOMETOWN
PORTRAIT
MACRO
COUNTRY
FLOWER
PERSPECTIVE
ARCHITECTURE
LETTERS OR NUMBERS
GLASS
ART
SKY/CLOUDS
WINDOW
SMOKE
TRANSPORTATION
ROAD TRIP
SPORTS
REFLECTIONS
EMOTIONS
SUNSET/SUNRISE
WILD CARD

Animals, History, Nature

Snow

April 9, 2016 Christopher D. Bennett 1 Comment

This folder, entitled SNOW, comes from January of 2007.

Next week’s folder is entitled 02-22-07. Probably pretty obvious what is in that folder.

Flat Earth Joe, Nate, Photoshop, Road Trip

Analog Efex Pro

April 8, 2016 Christopher D. Bennett 5 Comments

Recently my WB Joe stumbled across an article that Google had made their Nik Plugins free.

I rushed to the website and downloaded this collection of 7 plugins to play with immediately.

I thought I would give you a quick overview of some of the settings of these plugins, starting with the Analog Efex Pro plugin.

The description of this plugin from the website is as follows:

Get the photo you’re looking for, even if you don’t own the equipment. Let effects inspired by traditional cameras bring you back to the vintage age of photo development.

There are 9 default classic cameras you can start from and I’ll show you what those look like.

Let’s start with the original image from a gas station in tourist hot spot Cottonwood Falls, Kansas (photo assistant – Nate Miller).

Original Image

When I took this photo, this was my original vision.

Original Vision

Here is a look at the 9 default Classic Camera settings in the Plugin.

Classic Camera 1

Classic Camera 2

Classic Camera 3

Classic Camera 4

Classic Camera 5

Classic Camera 6

Classic Camera 7

Classic Camera 8

Classic Camera 9

But these Classic Cameras are just a jumping off point. Within this plugin you can play with roughly 50 different DIRT & SCRATCHES settings, 3 different LENS VIGNETTE settings, and roughly 50 different FILM TYPE settings.

I played with it a bit and came up with this image that feels like Cottonwood Falls, Kansas to me: