Category Archives: WPC – Reminder

Animals, Art, Jesse, Jorge, Road Trip, Self-Portrait, WPC - Reminder

Camping World Bowl Road Trip Day 4

May 1, 2020 Christopher D. Bennett

Day 4 of the road trip was a grind. We left Orlando and drove for like 15 hours to get back to Kuttawa, Kentucky.

The only real stop we made was a fancypants gas station in Georgia that sold pecans. I kinda thought the pecans down there would be cheaper and maybe they are, but they were still crazy expensive. But I’m not a pecan expert.

#wafflelife

The hotel we stayed at had a sweet aquarium.

Attached to their phones. Worse than traveling with teenagers.

Crane in the hotel parking lot.

Bikers?

I got so many yard decorating ideas from this place!

Damn right we hit another Zaxby’s!

Good night from Kentucky.

This wasn’t my style of road trip. I like to be able to stop at random things and meander and photograph. I hope this year’s bowl trip is either closer (I already know it will be in a better city) or I’m able to space it out over a longer time frame. Otherwise, flying might be the way to go.

I would love to go back to Memphis, but there are a lot of people laying down some pretty high expectations for Iowa State this season. I think it will depend on how well the offensive line comes together though.

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

TREE

A TREE image is any image that involves a TREE or a TREE byproduct.

Happy photo harvesting!

Formal Portrait, Jesse, Kalista, Kelly, Saydie, Self-Portrait, Taylan, WPC - Reminder

The 2019 Howards – Subset Uno

April 24, 2020 Christopher D. Bennett

We’ve reached a point in the backlog where most of what is left is portraits. Editing portraits is the hardest for me for a variety of reasons. At least group portraits. The solo portrait isn’t such a big deal. Couples is no big deal. But groups. Woof! There is a ton of group portrait curating in my future.

The first up is the first collection of pictures from the Howard Photo Shoot. As is tradition with the Howard Photo Shoot, the lighting was brutal.

Here is the first collection:

Little T was sans boyfriend for this year’s photo shoot. She has since caught the eye of a new beau. I hear that he is photo shoot worthy, but I guess we won’t find out until next fall.

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

NOSE

A NOSE photo is any picture that involves a NOSE.

Happy photo harvesting!

Animals, Naima, WPC - Reminder

Wild Goose Chase

April 17, 2020 Christopher D. Bennett

Delving into the 2019 backlog. This is a collection of pictures that span a couple different trips to Dickcissel Park with Naima. Most of the pictures are from the second trip where we encountered a wounded goose.

The goose had been injured some way above its leg. It was out there for a couple more days, but then it was gone. I’d like to think that it recovered enough and eventually flew off. I didn’t find any signs of a struggle or goose remains any way and every time I saw the goose, it was hunkered down in the same location.

While there is a fair chance it eventually became victim of a predator, it did have a pretty good system of working its way out onto the pond on the thin ice. Too thin for a creature that weighed much more than it to get to it.

Here are some pictures:

This is a meaningless statistic, but it is a huge milestone for the backlog. I am now down to two rows of folders to curate!

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A reminder that this week’s THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE theme is EARS:

EARS

An EARS photo is any picture that involves EARS or things that are used by EARS.

Happy photo harvesting!

Art, Nature, WPC - Reminder

Luna

April 10, 2020 Christopher D. Bennett

Happy Good Friday everybody! Good Friday was frequently my least favorite worship service, but every once in awhile I really got something out of it. I guess I’ll have to wait another year to see what Pastor Dave has in store for his Good Friday Service.

You may recall that we had a full moon on Tuesday night. I didn’t get out to photograph, but I photographed it on Wednesday night. What is interesting about this picture is the lens that I used.

It is a 400mm lens that belonged to my dad. Attached to the lens is a 2x teleconverter, that makes it an 800mm lens. I then attached it to my 77ii and took a few pictures of the moon.

Now these aren’t the sharpest full moon pictures you will ever see, because there is always a bit of image quality lost when you use a teleconverter, but the important thing to know about these 2 pictures I’m going to share is that they aren’t cropped. This is how close to the moon I can get with that setup. Wish I would’ve thought of this sooner.

I’ll go more into depth about this 400mm lens when when I go through a detailed listing of the lenses I own. You’ll just have to wait.

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

ART

An ART picture is any picture of a piece of ART or objects that are used in creating ART. A confident person would just argue that any picture they take is a piece of ART.

Happy photo harvesting!

Black & White, Macro, Music, Naima, Photoshop, Still Life, WPC - Alternate, WPC - Reminder

The Numbing Sensation of Everything

April 3, 2020 Christopher D. Bennett

I took several pictures of my sad, pathetic, battered, old trombone. These are the ones that didn’t make the big cut for the big show on Monday.

That poor trombone should probably go in the trash, but I worry that the trash man wouldn’t even accept it.

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

GOVERNMENT

A GOVERNMENT photo is any photo that has anything to do with the GOVERNMENT. Any level of GOVERNMENT. From a county hospital to a city park to federal highway.

Happy photo harvesting!

Animals, Macro, WPC - Reminder

White Anglo Saxon Protestant

March 27, 2020 Christopher D. Bennett 4 Comments

You know, I thought that the hatred that some of the men I know, the ones that suffer from toxic masculinity, have for flower pictures was borderline obscene. That was I encountered the irrational hatred of my wasp photography.

They are fascinating, beautiful creatures. Learn to love them. Unless you’re allergic. Then learn to love them from a distance. A good distance.

But for all the haters that never gave a young wasp a chance to shine, I say “Peace” and this is the final set of wasp pictures from 2019. We out!

Drops mic.

Pick mic back up.

Seriously. You know what a bee does when it stings you? Rips out its butthole and dies*.

You know what a wasp does when it stings you? “It says, I’m just getting started son.”

I’ll just close with a joke:

A wasp expert walks into a record shop

He goes to the owner and asks if they have the new edition of wasp sounds 2020.

The record shop owner says that they have it in stock and asks if the wasp expert would like to listen too it before he buys.

The wasp expert agrees and the record is placed on the record player.
The pin goes down and all of a sudden a horrible buzzing noise emits from the machine.

The wasp expert is horrified stating that in all his years of being a wasp expert, he has never heard anything as far from wasp sounds in his life.

The record shop owner looks confused until he notices something.

“Sorry” says the record shop owner, “I was playing it on the bee side!”

Drops mic again.

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This is your reminder that this week’s theme for THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE is MUSIC:

MUSIC

A MUSIC photo is any photo of MUSIC being created or played or of anything that might be used to create or play MUSIC.

Happy photo harvesting!

*Yes, I know this is only honey bees.

Animals, Birthdays, Black & White, Equipment, Logan, Macro, Mom, Naima, Nature, Pufferbilly Days, Scottie D., Self-Portrait, Still Life, Underwater, Work, WPC - Reminder

I Don’t Know Why You’re Mean to Me

March 20, 2020 Christopher D. Bennett 6 Comments

I took Thursday and Friday off this week to watch basketball. Obviously there is no basketball right now. There is no basketball for at least a month and there is no NCAA Tournament this year at all. I wasn’t sure if I was going to still take these two days off. I waffled for a few days and then I ultimately decided that I needed a few days off.

I understand that can sound tone deaf. To need a few days off, when there are many people that aren’t able to work right now. People who suddenly are finding themselves unemployed. I am blessed that for at least now, the Computer Mine is still open for business. I am also blessed that starting a couple days ago, the Computer Mine opened up the option to work from home for some employees. They started by opening it up to workers that are in high risk groups and workers that are around people that are in high risk groups. I fit into that second category.

I wasn’t sure I was going to work from home or continue to work from the office, but after listening to a few co-workers regurgitated Fox propaganda talking points, I knew that I no longer trusted my co-workers to make smart decisions for their health, for the health of the people the come into contact with, and the health of the people that they come into contact with.

Starting on Monday, I’m going to start working from home. Because of this, I spent Thursday building a computer to use as my work from home computer from some computer parts I have laying around. I didn’t want to complicate my main home computer. So that is what passes for ENTERTAINMENT for me yesterday.

I also added a web camera to my work-from-home-computer so I could have video calls with my co-workers:

It isn’t the best web camera in the world. In fact, it is the web camera I bought a few years back so I could set up a modest photo booth at my birthday party:

But it will get the job done as far as video chatting goes. Because the one thing that I’m definitely going to miss as I work from home for at least a couple of weeks is some of my fellow miners. Most of them have opted to work from home, but I think Joe, Micky, Elizabeth, and Ron and a few others still seem to be committed to showing up to the mine. I’m going to miss you guys

Working from home does mean that I’ll have more time on my hands. I won’t have the 20 minute or so one way commute every day. My one hour lunch break will also be spent at home. Plus with not going pretty much anywhere at night, I will definitely have added time to work on my photography backlog. You guys might have to endure some days of TWO “An Artist’s Notebook” entries! Oh the humanity!

Hopefully the webcam will help with the social isolation. Hopefully my dog adjusts to having me around all the time!

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Since I mentioned birthday parties, I might as well mention that while I have been planning to have a birthday party this year, it is definitely off. Which is sad because Scottie D. and I had a tremendous menu planned. Baby Got Rack was going to cater the heck out of that party! You’ll just have to imagine what it would have been like.

What you don’t have to imagine what it is like, was what the invitations were going to look like. My nephew Logan took some of the photos that were going to be used for the invitations, that were going to look like they came from a political candidate. Here are a couple of the pictures that won’t get used:

That last picture wasn’t getting used for sure, I just like it. Maybe 2021 will be a better year to bring the party back!

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Last week I took more than one picture for THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE, so here is a good chance to share the once that didn’t have what it takes to make the big show on Monday:

The pictures of Naima were taken with a new Lensbaby lens I bought for my new camera. I will probably going into some boring detail about it at some point in the future.

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

ENTERTAINMENT

I have no clue what participation will look like this week. However, I can assure you that even if you are taking social distancing to self-quarantine, this theme and every theme in the WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE is a theme that can be accomplished within the confines of your house or your yard.

Happy photo harvesting!

Black & White, History, Naima, Ruins, WPC - Alternate, WPC - Reminder

Hurting My Head from Things that I Said

March 13, 2020 Christopher D. Bennett

Happy Friday the 13th everybody! Considered to be a very unlucky day, but considering how bad of a shape our country is in right now, I don’t want to invite any more bad luck. So I am going to celebrate by watching a Friday the 13th movie tonight. Not sure which one yet, but maybe the 3-D one or maybe the one with Corey Feldman or maybe my favorite one, which involves a soundtrack littered with one “great” Alice Cooper song after another.

I’ve always believed that Friday the 13th was an unlucky day because those camp counselors decided to sneak off and “get it on” instead of watching that little special needs boy. I hope it was good for them, because he drowned and now we all have to suffer on this day… forever.

Turns out, that isn’t why Friday the 13th is considered unlucky. Turns out, maybe we don’t even know why it is considered unlucky. There are just theories on it, but nobody really knows.

One theory is that there were 13 guests at the Last Supper. Jesus and his 12 apostles. Judas betrayed him and on the next day, a Friday, Jesus was crucified.

This created a longstanding superstition that I’ve never heard of that having 13 guests at a table is a bad omen. This is why the Methodist Men always seat tables for 8 people. Not really, but it would be cool if we did.

But do bad things happen on Friday the 13th, besides the bad things that happen to camp counselors?

In 1964, the infamous Kitty Geovese murder.
In 1970, 300,000 people were killed in Bagladesh by a cyclone.
In 1996, Tupac was murdered.

Seems like a pretty terrible track record to me. So let me just celebrate this Friday the 13th with some of my favorite Tupac lyrics:

With all this extra stressing
The question I wonder is after death, after my last breath
When will I finally get to rest through this suppression?
They punish the people that’s asking questions
And those that possess, steal from the ones without possessions
The message I stress: to make it stop study your lessons
Don’t settle for less – even the genius asks his questions
Be grateful for blessings
Don’t ever change, keep your essence
The power is in the people and politics we address
Always do your best, don’t let the pressure make you panic
And when you get stranded, and things don’t go the way you planned it
Dreaming of riches, in a position of making a difference
Politicians and hypocrites, they don’t wanna listen
If I’m insane, it’s the fame made a brother change
It wasn’t nothing like the game
It’s just me against the world

Happy Friday the 13th. I hope you enjoy your favorite Friday the 13th movie tonight!

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Last Saturday morning I spent some time at McHose Park photographing the junk pile that is on the backside of the park for THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE theme JUNK. Why there is a small junkyard on the backside of probably the most beautiful city park in the Cyclone State is a bit of a mystery. This is what I believe happened:

A long, long time ago, I can still remember how, the city dump used to be on South Division Street. Eventually Boone decided that maybe the dump shouldn’t be in town and built a landfill outside of town a few miles. They needed to do something with the junk that was in the city dump and rather than move it or recycle it, they just shoved it all down the ravine on the backside of McHose Park. Problem solved. Given a choice between doing something smart and something lazy, people will usually take the lazy option. Over the years, rain and snow and wind and mud has slowly moved all that junk deeper and deeper into McHose Park. The beautiful part of it is that there is a lot of water run off that goes through those rusted out fridges, washing machines, barrels, tires, and cars through an abandoned old train bridge and right into the water of Honey Creek.

Here are some pictures of some beautiful old JUNK that didn’t make the cut for THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE on Monday:

What looks like was an old milk crate is something that I could see my sister Carla using in decorating somehow. I thought about grabbing it for her, but I’m not sure what the legality is of just taking junk from a city park is. But I did put it in a place where I can find it if I decide to push the limits.

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

WATER

A WATER image is any image where WATER is an important part of the composition of the picture.

Happy photo harvesting!

Animals, Art, Candid Portrait, Logan, Nader, Politics, Self-Portrait, State Fair, Street Photography, WPC - Reminder

ISFRXOII

March 6, 2020 Christopher D. Bennett

Even though it is barely March, it is about time that I start turning my thoughts to the Iowa State Fair Photography Salon. I hope to be more current with my images by the time I actually have to make a decision, but I am pretty sure I know of at least one picture I’m going to enter. Even though, I currently can’t remember that picture. I just remember taking a picture and thinking, I’m going to enter that in the Iowa State Fair. Could be a false memory planted by my therapist. Since, after all, having a therapist is a false memory placed by parts unknown.

Today’s collection is of pictures I took on the last day of the Iowa State Fair with the Sony RXOII. Nader went with me and Logan met me down there.

This is just the beginning of the pictures from last year’s Iowa State Fair.

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

JUNK

Remember, that there is a difference between JUNK and garbage. Also remember, there are many definitions of the word JUNK.

Happy photo harvesting!

Candid Portrait, Derrick, Event, Formal Portrait, WPC - Reminder, Youth Group

Ash Wednesday Spaghetti Fundraiser

February 28, 2020 Christopher D. Bennett

A big thank you to all the people that showed up and supported the Youth Group on Ash Wednesday! This year, it was a huge success! We raised more than double the money that we raised on last year’s Spaghetti Fundraiser!

Here are some pictures from the event:

Don’t worry if you couldn’t make it on Wednesday. There will be at least one more, possibly 2 more fundraisers for the mission trip to Indianapolis in the next couple of months!

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

FASHION

Remember a FASHION photo is any photo where you get an look at the clothing that the people are wearing.

Happy photo harvesting!