Category Archives: Portrait

Black & White, Boone FUMC, Formal Portrait, Movies, Nader, Night, Self-Portrait, Teresa

2009-01-05 & 2009-01-25

April 20, 2019 Christopher D. Bennett

There aren’t many pictures in the folders 2009-01-05 and 2009-01-25 so I decided to combine them into one post.

The pictures are mostly from a trip around Boone during a snowstorm and Nader and I’s last trip to the Varsity Theater.

Many people may not remember the Varsity. It was on Lincoln Way across the street from Lake Laverne. It showed foreign, independent, and arthouse movies. It still hasn’t been properly replaced. Now Ames have two multiplexes that devote almost all their screens to whatever mindless Marvel or Star Wars movie is being released that week.

Then if you want to see something original or thought provoking you have to take a ride down to Des Moines. Even Des Moines recently lost one its independent cinemas. Also, call The Varsity.

Here are some pictures to look at:

The sweet Iowa State scarf was a Christmas present from Teresa. She also took the pictures of Nader and I.

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:

Denouement

Snowy Pictures

Sweet Christmas Present

By restoring these journal entries, I was able to finish completely restoring all the journal entries from January 2009.

Next Saturday’s walk down memory lane will involve a Boone fire.

Andy, Becca, Boone FUMC, Formal Portrait, Nature, Pastor Sarah, Photoshop, Shawn Karber, Travel, WPC - Reminder

A Photo Journal – Henry Carroll – Page 90

April 19, 2019 Christopher D. Bennett

A couple weekends back up I went to Minnesota to check out the Final Four festivities and check-in with a few people I hadn’t seen for a long time.

On Sunday morning I hit a donut shop with Becca and Shawn. Then I went to Minnehaha Falls to kill sometime before meeting Sarah, Shawn, and Addie at Revival. I figured that this trip was a great time to knock out Page 90 of THE PHOTO JOURNAL PROJECT. Even though it was absolutely just pouring down.

I made the walk to from the parking lot to Minnehaha Falls, protecting the camera as best as I could. I took a few pictures and then it really started pouring down. By the time I got to the car every inch of me was completely soaked.

I was so soaked that even after a 30 minute or so wait at Revival and about an hour eating and talking, my shirt only had a few dry spots on it.

Here is the picture that will be physically adhered to Page 90 of the physical PHOTO JOURNAL:

Page 90 – Create ambiguity with a blend of artificial and natural light

Pretty much every camera (even your cell phone) has white balance. This is where you set the kind of light that is dominant in your scene. It is set on Auto White Balance so that you don’t have to think about it. This is the type of thing that in the olden days you had to do with film. Film was balanced for different kinds of light. Pretty much all consumer film was balanced for daylight. Which is why when you took pictures inside, there was often a strange color cast to it.

The same thing happens when you take your color balance off of auto and set it for a type of light that isn’t in your picture. For example, in the picture of Minnehaha Falls, I set the white balance to tungsten. Since the lighting of this picture could be best described as shady, it the camera cast a blue hue on the image, thinking it was seeing tungsten light. Different kinds of lights have different color temperatures. You can make surreal images by setting your white balance against type.

One of the advantages of shooting in RAW is that you can change the white balance to whatever you want it to be. So I changed half the white balance from the image above to shady, so you can see what the image would have conventionally looked like:

Admittedly, I did play up the blue cast of the images a bit in post.

Here are a few other images I took at Minnehaha Falls:

I’m still on goal to knock out one page of the PHOTO JOURNAL PROJECT a week. This week I’m looking at knocking out one of these pages:

Page 97 – Photograph a human as though it were an animal.
Page 84 – Photograph a lie.
Page 43 – Take a picture that only works in Black & White.
Page 37 – Use aperture to capture melancholy

You could be featured in just such a picture.

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Reminder that the theme for this week’s WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE is RELIGION:

RELIGION

A RELIGION picture is any picture that involves the practice of a RELIGION. From a picture of a religious building, to a religious symbol, to a religious book, to a religious service.

Happy photo harvesting!

Animals, Candid Portrait, Formal Portrait, Kio, Mom, Pufferbilly Days

Pufferbilly Days Dog Show

April 17, 2019 Christopher D. Bennett 2 Comments

I thought I had published every picture I have taken for the Boone Area Humane Society, but while checking out the backlog I realized that was in error.

I never published pictures from the Pufferbilly Days Pet Show. Now the subject of this post called in the Pufferbilly Days Dog Show, but it was actually a pet show, where wisely, nobody entered a cat.

I would guess that these would be the final pictures I will ever publish that I took for the Boone Area Humane Society, but Kio tells me that I might not be retired yet. As far as the Humane Society goes, I do whatever Kio wants.

Here are a few of my favorite pictures from the day:

My Mom was a judge for the pet show.

If you are wondering why I’ve never entered Naima into a pet show, well the pet show world isn’t ready for what she brings to the table.

Andy, Angie, Animals, Boone FUMC, Carla, Formal Portrait, Jen, Jodie Cue, Kim, Logan, Micky, Naima, Photoshop, Tamara, WPC - Submissions

WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE – WEEK 187 – FAVORITE COLOR

April 15, 2019 Christopher D. Bennett 1 Comment

The weather last week was all over the place in Central Iowa. Beautiful one day. Windy enough to blow down one side of the Burger King garbage corral the next. Then beautiful again. Then a few snow flurries the next. Then beautiful again. While the weather was all over the place, it didn’t dampen participation rates for FAVORITE COLOR at all.

But you didn’t come here to listen to me talk all tommyrot about participation rates. You came to see the submissions:

Jodie Cue

Kim Barker

Jodie Cue

Logan Kahler

Micky Augustin

Tamara Peterson

Andy Sharp

Christopher D. Bennett

Andy Sharp

Carla Stensland

Jodie Cue

Angie DeWaard

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:

RELIGION

RELIGION! What a great theme! I can feel what you’re thinking. I can feel it from here. I see through you. All the way to your back button. You are thinking that it sure is super convenient that RELIGION is the theme the same week as Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter and Passover for that matter.

You’re thinking that I rigged it so that RELIGION would be the theme the same week that all the chreasters will be going to church.

There are two things you need to know:

#1. I don’t use the term chreaster. I don’t look down on chreasters. They obviously feel there is at least some need in their life for church, otherwise they wouldn’t show up twice a year. If they are only coming twice a year, the church needs to do a better job of making them want to come the other 52 weeks of the year.

There is a story for why they only show up twice. It could be that they tried to get active in the church and had a bad experience with an overbearing volunteer supervisor. It might be that they sat in somebody else’s pew and were told to move. It can be that they were made to feel unwelcome because of the way they dressed, wore their hair, their personal hygiene, or whatever. Maybe the time they came, the reverend’s sermon made them feel like they weren’t rich enough to belong because he mocked people that buy suits from JC Penney.

Time would be better spent figuring out why some people only show up twice a year rather than pointing out that they don’t reach your gold standard for church attendance

I don’t know their story. I don’t judge their story. Everybody is walking their faith journey and I won’t judge people for where they are on it. I hope people won’t judge me for where I am on mine.

#2. Themes are assigned randomly. I have no control over it.

But, what is a RELIGION photo? A RELIGION photo is any photo that deals with RELIGION. It doesn’t have to be Christianity. It could be Islam. It could be Judaism. There are 12 major religions. Christianity is the largest with 2.04 billion followers. The smallest is Judaism which as 14.5 million followers. Which is a startling number when you recall that 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust.

That is the 12 major religions. Overall there are over 4,300 religions practiced worldwide. That is a tremendous amount of RELIGION photo opportunities.

I look forward to seeing your interpretations!

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. 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

Jen Ensley-Gorshe is the latest person to show taste, class, and sophistication by signing up for a Photography 139 email subscription. Jen, in fact was the first person to sign up using the tools on the website to sign herself up. You may not have heard that this was a possibility because I haven’t actually made them public knowledge yet, so I was super impressed with her diligence. Jen is married to longtime subscriber Derrick Gorshe. They have 4 amazing kids and recently moved to a new house. I have known Jen since we were wage slaves to the Evil Clown Empire. Both of us are now fabulously wealthy and only show up for work because we want to.

If you see Jen out and about, feel free to give her a knowing glance and teach her the super-secret Photography 139 handshake.

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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 religious Monday.

Becky, Black & White, Candid Portrait, Carla, Derrick, Geri, House, Jay, Jen, Night, Self-Portrait

2009-01-02 & 2009-01-03

April 13, 2019 Christopher D. Bennett 3 Comments

The pictures from the folders 2009-01-02 and 2009-01-03 involved a trip to ACTORS theater in Ames. Plus a trip to Ottumwa to work on the house that Jen inherited. Plus there are some pictures of when I had winnowed down what house I would purchase down to two similar ranch style houses.

The house that I would ultimately purchase was the lucky winner mainly because it had the better yard. It had the better yard times a million. The intention was always to get a golden retriever when I was back up on my own feet and living on my own again.

As I look at the pictures of the runner-up, I assure you Naima would not have been happy with that yard. I also wouldn’t have been happy with such a small yard too. I mean, if you’re going to care about my happiness.

Here are the pictures:

I do confess though, I could have has some pretty great parties with that carpeted bar.

By adding these images to the Photography 139 Gallery, I was able to restore the following “An Artist’s Notebook” entries to their original glory:

Blitz

Intermission

The Ballad of House Buying: Part 2: Initial Look

The Ballad of House Buying: Part 4 – A Closer Examination

Next Saturday’s walk down memory lane will involve saying goodbye to an old cinematic friend and a winter storm.

Animals, Black & White, Jay, Jesse, Naima, Self-Portrait

Shaving Says A Lot About A Man, Like, “I’m Not One”

April 11, 2019 Christopher D. Bennett 3 Comments

Immediately after the beautiful beard go its final photo shoot Jay and I trudged from the Photography 139 Basement Studio to the kitchen where the unpleasantness was set to be done. “O Fortuna” from Carmina Burana playing through my head.

I still had time to back down. It was now spring and the weather was starting to heat up and I was well past time for a shearing, there was no reason to do it now. It could wait a few days. Maybe even a week. Maybe there was no reason to shave at all? Despite the naysayers, the beard had a near cult like following. There were beard fanatics out there and didn’t I have a certain obligation to them?

I shook all these thoughts out of my head as we reached the kitchen. I sat down in the chair. Jay got out his clippers. The following pictures document what transpired:

It was then that the battery on Jay’s clippers died. I spent the rest of the night with that cheeseball mustache. When I woke up in the morning I shaved down to full dirty naked face.

Thanks to Jesse for document the horror of it all.

House, Linda, Ruins, Self-Portrait

Who’s Afraid of Thomas Wolfe?

April 10, 2019 Christopher D. Bennett 6 Comments

My Mom moved out of my boyhood home 20 years ago. I loved that house and to some degree it will always be home to me.

While one can debate whether or not the 20 years that have passed have been kind to me, there is no doubt that it has not been kind to that boyhood home. If that house were an animal, the owners would be prosecuted for neglect.

There was a time when I would even avoid driving down the street where that house sits. Just the look of it falling deeper and deeper into a decrepit state would cause waves of anger to come crashing to the surface.

Then a couple years back, I heard through the grapevine that the house had been condemned. Anger turned to sadness. While I still avoid that street, it is a different emotion that cause the boycott.

The grapevine wasn’t 100% accurate though. While the house feels like it is a good blast of wind away from falling over, it isn’t exactly condemned. It isn’t fit for living, but it isn’t condemned either. In fact, it recently was put back on the market with an asking price of $15,000.

I recently toured the house with my Aunt Linda and took a few pictures of what it has become:

The upstairs bathroom.

My old bedroom.

I would still gladly take this tub off their hands.

Carla’s old bedroom.

The den.

The living room.

The old darkroom.

Basement shower.

My model railroad track used to sit there.

Living room.

I believe Grandpa Bennett put up that thermometer.

Garage is cleaner than the inside of the house.

No window though.

That poor owl thermometer.

I wish I could say that my old hoop was about to fall over because of my numerous thundering dunks.

Carla, Teresa, and Mom had all toured the old stomping grounds at some point, but this was my first time in the place. I was shocked to see that all the carpet and paint was the same as when Mom moved out. Okay, shocked might be overstating it.

I’m glad that the old place isn’t being torn down, but at the same time, I won’t be driving down that street anytime soon.

Drone, Equipment, Jason, Nature, Panorama, Self-Portrait, Tenderloining

Lazarus Come Out!

April 9, 2019 Christopher D. Bennett

A few weeks back Rodan139 took a tremendous tumble from the sky. According to the flight log, Rodan139 fell out of the sky from 190 feet. It was going 40.3 MPH when it hit sweet, round, Mother Earth.

Rodan139 was a hurting unit when I got to it. A couple arms were broken off, the camera was barely hanging on, and most of the body was considerably damaged.

To be brutally honest, it sucked. However, Rodan139 is just a machine. So I picked up his pieces and threw them in the Sir Pixalotmobile and Jason and I drove to Luther to have a tasty lunch.

Let me tell you, nothing mends the cracks in an emotional broken heart while at the same time clogs up the plumbing of a physical heart like a tasty, tasty tenderloin*.

After lunch I went home and did some research on the level of fiscal pain this accident was going to cause me. I knew it wasn’t going to be cheap, but the worst case scenario was that I was going to have to push off the purchase of the Sony RX0 that I have been coveting for a few months now (but that is another dilemma for another time).

I contacted DJI Repair and they sent me a UPS Label to send Rodan139 into them. I boxed it up and sent it off and waited. What happened next surprised me.

They covered the whole thing. All the parts. All the labor. All the shipping. Covered. And what was covered wasn’t cheap.

Here is a list of everything they covered and what it would have cost:

Item List

Gimbal Axis Arm Module (Pro)

Quantity: 1

Net Price : 160.00

Total Price: 160.00

Upper Cover Module

Quantity: 1

Net Price : 11.00

Total Price: 11.00

Middle Frame Module

Quantity: 1

Net Price : 13.00

Total Price: 13.00

Core Board Module

Quantity: 1

Net Price : 320.00

Total Price: 320.00

Vibration Absorbing Board (Upper)

Quantity: 1

Net Price : 2.00

Total Price: 2.00

Rear Arm Module (Left)

Quantity: 1

Net Price : 21.00

Total Price: 21.00

Front Arm Module (Left)

Quantity: 1

Net Price : 24.00

Total Price: 24.00

Front Arm Module (Right)

Quantity: 1

Net Price : 24.00

Total Price: 24.00

Repair Service Fee

Quantity: 2

Net Price : 65.00

Total Price: 130.00

Tax

0.00

Shipping Cost

0.00

Total Amount

705.00

Discount

705.00

Total Payment (USD$)

0.00

You read that right. It could have cost me $705.00, but it cost me nada. Zilch. The big goose egg. Hmmmm…. I wonder what also costs about $705? That is a discussion for another time though.

What is not a discussion for another time is how amazing DJI’s Customer Service is. I was very impressed and I was glad that I decided to go with DJI when I decided to take a stab at aerial photography.

Yesterday at approximately 4:05 PM I was reunited with Rodan139. Now that I am complete again, I feel I can share a couple of pictures taken from that last fateful flight that ended in carnage of twisted wire and broken plastic.

Yesterday it was a little windy, so I took Rodan139 out for another very shorty maiden voyage.

The last picture I took in my backyard as I wanted to test a night photography setting.

I definitely was the most nervous I have ever been on one of these little flights. In particular, there was a moment when I was out at the Harrier Marsh when Rodan139 was surrounded by a flock of birds. Visions of a bird smashing it to it and it tumbling to the ground danced in my head. I quickly rose above the birds, but I was shocked out how close they came to it. A mental note was made for future trips out to Harrier.

The weather on Saturday and Sunday does look promising. Although Saturday, Baby Got Rack might be doing a little research project. Oh… I’ve said too much.

*At this time, there will not be a review of the tenderloin. While I have very good perspective on what is actual tragedy and what is just “well that sucks”, I still wasn’t in the proper state of mind to properly assess the tenderloin.

Animals, Automobiles, Basketball, Candid Portrait, Commercial, Formal Portrait, Iowa State, Jeff Daniel, Monica, Night, Ruins, Schmidt, Self-Portrait, Shannon, Still Life, Yin

12December2008

April 6, 2019 Christopher D. Bennett 4 Comments

Sometime in late 2008 my organizational process of my photos went all FUBAR. The result is that it appears that I have actually lost several images from late 2008 and early 2009.

None of the lost pictures are of much consequence, but it is annoying nonetheless.

Part of this breakdown in the system was that it seems that rather than breaking images into folders by date, I just dumped a ton of pictures into the December folder.

Fortunately for you, I don’t usually take a ton of pictures in December. However, this still potentially might be one long journal entry.

There are pictures from Iowa State at night, Toys for Tots, an American Legion event in Roland, Iowa State basketball, Shannon dressed nice for once, a night with the Daniels, and crayfish that took home from a Chinese buffet.

Here we go:

Looking at those pictures something that struck me is that I had forgotten how badly Greg McDermott had destroyed Iowa State’s basketball program. Thank you Creighton for taking him off of our hands! It is a debt that can never be repaid!

All those pictures added to the Photography 139 Gallery enabled me to restore the following historic “An Artist’s Notebook” journal entries to their original glory:

Thelma and Louise

Boone Taxi Driver

Saturday Night

Toys for Tots

Burying the Lead

Muskrat Carcass

Beavers

Plus Five

Roland, Iowa

Next Saturday’s walk down memory lane will involve hanging around the ACTORS Studio.

Flat Earth Joe, Formal Portrait, Photo Journal, Photoshop, WPC - Reminder

A Photo Journal – Henry Carroll – Page 82

April 5, 2019 Christopher D. Bennett

Last Saturday I continued on my goal to try to finish THE PHOTO JOURNAL PROJECT as Joe agreed to pose for Page 82.

Before you ask, yes, Joe legitimately think the world is flat. Not only does he believe that the world is flat, he is an evangelical for the theory. He spends hours upon hours posting on Facebook and YouTube about his belief that the earth is flat.

He sells flat earth shirts. He orders books about the earth being flat. He intended to go to the Flat Earth Convention last year. He plans on going this year. He says he can not date a girl that isn’t open to the earth being flat.

It isn’t a joke to Joe. It is a core, perhaps the core part of his identity.

Here is Page 82:

Page 82 – Show us the world is flat.

Now the original intent of “Show us the world is flat” was to get up high and look down on the earth and then compress the image by using a telephoto lens. I decided to go in a different direction.

My goal is still to knock at least one of these pictures out a week. I have yet to take one this week as I haven’t had the free time I expected yet, but these are some of the ones I’ve been thinking on:

PAGE 21 – Make something small look big.
PAGE 43 – Take a picture that only works in black & white.
Page 68 – Let a window do the talking.
Page 90 – Create ambiguity with a blend of natural and artificial light.

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

TOOL

Remember that a TOOL photo is simply any photo involving a TOOL. Remember that there are multiple definitions of the world TOOL.

Happy photo harvesting!