Back in August I breakfasted at the Mason Jar in Eagan, Minnesota with Jesse, Bethany, and Nora. It was a weird experience as the Mason Jay has bizarre rules about coloring on their patio, but we made do.
Here are some pictures from the experience:
At the end of the day, I would eat there again. The food was pretty good. It was just the service that was a little suspect. Not bad, just suspect.
The next food adventure will involve the Tenderloin Trail 2.0.
Time to start sharing the final collection of auxiliary images from THE TOWN SIGN PROJECT. The final county I harvested town signs from was Davis County. Teresa went on the final THE TOWN SIGN PROJECT road trip. There are only 4 incorporated towns in Davis County, so there were stops in other counties. Including the first stop in Pella for the Jaarsma Bakery:
Near Chillicothe
Ottumwa
Floris
Drakesville
Bloomfield
There are plenty more pictures left to share from this road trip. Including two sweet general stores!
Today is the birthday of the Miller Triplets. So I must wish them happy birthday!
This picture was taken at their 1st birthday party in 2019 so that makes them… 5! They are 5 years old?!? How did this happen!
Back in February I purchased a new lens. It was a Sigma 150-600mm DG DN OS Sports Lens. At one point, I was going to write a long post on it with a collection of the first images I took with it. But here it is. Halfway through October and the lens is old news now, so real need to go into too much details about the specifications of the lens. But I still want to share some of the first images I took with it. I went down to the Kate Shelley High Bridge and went to Lake LaVerne and took a few pictures of Logan.
Here are those pictures:
On the day I went to Lake LaVerne I also hit up the Ames Library. I took pictures there for THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE theme BOOKS. I didn’t use any of those images. Here is a collection of those:
I do love that lens. It is kind of a limited purpose lens, but I should find more of those limited purpose opportunities.
I’m currently out of drone pictures, so thought I would move up the next post on the Orange City Tulip Festival a couple of days early.
We start this collection off where the collection ended. We had just got our poffertjes and had sat down to eat the deliciousness!
These buckets of water are throughout the parade route. Little kids clean the road before the Orange Festival Royalty walk through. I hope to get pictures of that next year.
Fried Almond Patties are a game changer!
The world needs more conveyor belts.
Still a couple more collections of images from this trip left to share!
A few months back, Teresa and I went to the Stanhope Watermelon Day. After watching the parade we left for a bit to get lunch in Bradford at The Stumble Inn. The Stumble Inn in on the Tenderloin Trail 2.0. It was the Runner-Up for Iowa’s Best Pork Tenderloin in 2019.
Here are some pictures from the meal:
The Crispy Pig is their tenderloin.
Teresa’s Grilled Tenderloin
The short answer is, this was an excellent tenderloin! One of my favorites I’ve ever had. Good breading. Good thickness. Toasted bun. They served Pepsi. The onion rings were phenomenal.
On a scale, of would I go avoid this place to would I pursue it, I would definitely pursue this tenderloin!
In fact, one of the few reasons I haven’t had this tenderloin again is because there are so many other tenderloins out there that I need to try. Including at least a few more from Tenderloin Trail 2.0 to this years finalists for Best Tenderloin to the 2022 Best Tenderloin Winner. But I will have this tenderloin again someday!
Also, the meal comes with a complimentary homemade mint, which was also delicious.
Next Sunday’s food adventure will involve a food truck at the Boone County Fair.
Seems like a good time to hit the backlog again. I took these pictures around my yard back on January 8 after a frost had made everything into a bit of a winter wonderland. It seemed like it was a good time to go out and take some pictures.
Actually still quite a bit of backlog from January alone. Hmmmm…
Time to share another collection of images from my trip to Scott County to harvest their town signs. Most of these pictures are also taken in Le Claire and this collection ends in Davenport. It includes a brief stop I made at Antique Archaeology. The store made famous by the show American Pickers. It is a cool store and definitely worth the trip, but I think the downtown area of Le Claire is also worth the trip as well.
The collection starts where Volume 2 ended. With a great blue heron on the banks of the Mississippi River.
Pleasant Valley
Davenport
This is actually in Illinois.
Back in Davenport.
Still plenty of pictures from this road trip left to share.
We’ve come to the end of the black & white week. Time to share the black & white pictures I took last Sunday. Some of these pictures are from wandering around my yard. Some are from the Howard Family Photo Shoot. Some are from the Octagon Art Festival.
This might be the biggest collection yet, so we might as well get to it:
If you are wondering about the Howard family photos, I kept a separate camera set to black & white to snap a few photos here and there. The photo shoot was not in black & white. Except for the clothes they are wearing.
If you are wondering how many black & white photos I took last week to get one submission for THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE… the answer is…
Although to be transparent, somewhere on Tuesday I knew the basic setup of the picture I was going to use for my submission. So you could say I took that image and then over 800 safeties.
Black & White Week has concluded. But remember.
There was nothing wrong with this website. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. I am controlling transmission. If I wish to make it louder, I will bring up the volume. If I wish to make it softer, I will tune it to a whisper. I will control the horizontal. I will control the vertical. I can roll the image, make it flutter. I can change the focus to a soft blur, or sharpen it to crystal clarity. For this last week, you sat quietly and I controlled all that you saw and heard. There is nothing wrong with this website. You participated in a great adventure. You experienced the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to… Black & White Week.
I now return control of this website (not really) to you, until next year, when the Control Voice will take you to Black & White Week!
Today is Elizabeth’s birthday, so I have to wish her a happy birthday!
I hope your birthday is as amazing as you can handle! Filled with breakfast burritos without hashbrowns and/or Happy Joe’s Pizza!
Today I’m going to share a collection of images I took last Friday for last week’s THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE. Because I got stuck at the Computer Mine a couple of nights earlier in the week I planned on leaving at 9 AM, but I hung on until 11 since there is a lot of sickly in my department.
I think I made lunch and then probably took a nap. The I took Naima to the vet for her shots. Then I went to Iowa State to maybe pick up some stuff for the game the next day. Then I went down to Ankeny to pickup a bunch of Iowa State stuff for future tailgates. I took pictures on a bunch of it.
Here is the collection of pictures from the day:
That is it for Friday, but there are two more days of black & white images left to share!
This collection of alternate images for last week’s theme for THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE will include pictures I took on Wednesday and Thursday of last week. Most of them I took on my lunch break from the computer mine on Wednesday. I went to downtown Ames to talk to Derrick about the upcoming football game on Saturday, but he was actually at the bank. So I did wander around a little bit and do some street photography.
I got stuck working late yet again on Wednesday night, so I didn’t take many pictures in the evening.
Here is the collection of images from Wednesday:
On Thursday I woke up to a foggy morning. I had to work at the Computer Mine worldwide headquarters. So I snapped some pictures on the way there. Then I snapped a few pictures at work and then did some shopping after work. Then took a few more when I got home.
Here are the Thursday pictures:
A lot of examples in this collection for why I love black & white photography so much. Or one of the reasons. There is just so much play in the exposure control that you get with black & white that you don’t get with color photography. Which isn’t to say that it is less demanding, because if anything, it can be more demanding. However, there is so much latitude in exposure and some of the things that can destroy a color photo like grain (or digital noise) can actually enhance a black & white image.
4 days down, but believe you me… we are just starting to get warmed up.
