Category Archives: Boone FUMC

Angie, Animals, Basketball, Bill, Boone FUMC, Drone, Frank, Geri, Iowa State, Jay, Mom, Naima, Nature, Night, Politics, Self-Portrait, Self-Portrait Project, Shannon

Selfie Project – March

April 24, 2019 Christopher D. Bennett Leave a comment

It has been awhile since we checked in with THE SELFIE PROJECT. I figured today was as good of a day as any to check out March before April is over.

I’m not sure I did more interesting things in March than I did in February or January where it felt like I never left the house. I think I’ve continued that in April. I actually even left the state in April!

Here are my favorites from March:

March 1

March 2

March 3

March 4

March 6

March 7

March 8

March 9

March 10

March 12

March 14

March 16

March 17

March 19

March 21

March 22

March 23

March 24

March 26

March 28

March 29

March 31

No doubt you already excited to see my April “adventures”.

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

2009-01-05 & 2009-01-25

April 20, 2019 Christopher D. Bennett Leave a comment

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 Leave a comment

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!

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.

Animals, Boone FUMC, Candid Portrait, Event, Naima, Teresa, WPC - Reminder

You Don’t Have Time to Scream!

March 22, 2019 Christopher D. Bennett

One of the new traditions that Pastor Doug brought with him to Boone First United Methodist Church is Critter Sunday. Critter Sunday is a Sunday when you are encouraged to bring your pet to church. Then in between services, Pastor Doug blesses your pet.

There are many things that I will miss when Pastor Doug leaves for his big fatty promotion in June, but Critter Sunday will be one of the things I miss the most. Top 5. Top 10 at the worst.

While it is certainly possible that the new Pastor will carry on the tradition, I don’t expect. Pastor Doug has a special place in his heart for animals. It would be a bit much to expect the new Pastor to be the same.

Here are some pictures from Critter Sunday:

I have to thank Summer for being Naima’s keeper while I was taking pictures of the other pets.

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This is your reminder that this week’s WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE is STILL LIFE:

STILL LIFE

A STILL LIFE photo is a photo of an inanimate object.

Happy Photo Harvesting!

Art, Black & White, Boone FUMC, Candid Portrait, Formal Portrait, Jaxon, Jodie Cue, Music, Still Life

Boone FUMC Church Directory: Chapter 5

March 14, 2019 Christopher D. Bennett 2 Comments

I think this is the final collection of pictures I took for the Boone First United Methodist Church Directory.

I think these pictures were taken on Graduation Sunday. However, that isn’t the reason for the red balloons. I just can’t remember the reason for the red balloons. Might have been the church’s birthday. That seems vaguely familiar.

I know at least a couple of these ended up in the Directory:

This process gave me some ideas for the next Directory. I might have to take a more active role in crafting it.

Boone FUMC, Candid Portrait, Jodie Cue, Music

Boone FUMC Church Directory: Chapter 4

February 13, 2019 Christopher D. Bennett 4 Comments

This collection of pictures I took for Boone First United Methodist Church’s Church Directory were taken because the Committee (I feel like I’m in an Orwell novel when I write ‘the Committee’, but if the last few years have taught us anything, it is that Orwell was a bloody optimist) wanted pictures of the choir, the praise band, Doug sermonizing, and of Children’s Time. These were taken on Mother’s Day, so the Children’s Time pictures are actually of a pageant of some kind the kids put on for their mothers.

I don’t actually think that any of these pictures are actually in the directory, but I haven’t studied it to within an inch of its life, like some people.

Have a peek:

If our church looks like a happening place filled with all sorts of hip cats and the kind of place that you would like to check out, then you are correct. You don’t have to stand on ceremony though. Just invite yourself in. As the saying goes, “Walk-ins Welcome!”.

There is a “traditional” service at 9 AM on Sundays. A “contemporary” service at 11:15 AM on Sundays. There are a plethora of other activities sprinkled though out the work that you can pick from once you get plugged in.

Andy, Art, Black & White, Boone FUMC, Candid Portrait, Formal Portrait, Jaxon, Tamara, Youth Group

Boone FUMC Church Directory: Chapter 3

February 6, 2019 Christopher D. Bennett

Seems like another good time to release a collection of photos that I tooke for the Boone First United Methodist Church’s Church Directory.

In this collection are pictures I took of a particular stained glass window that the committee wanted, a communion set that the committee wanted, some Youth Group pictures the committee wanted and a choir picture the committee wanted.

You will see no pictures of Kio, which I believe is what the committee wanted. Too soon? Love you Kio!

There is still at least one, possibly two more sets of pictures from the Boone FUMC Church Directory Photo Shoots still out there to publish!

Animals, Art, Boone FUMC, Candid Portrait, Commercial, Kio, Mom

The Proverbial Swan Song

January 30, 2019 Christopher D. Bennett 2 Comments

While I was preparing to write this entry I went down a rabbit hole on the origins of the term “swan song”.

I have heard the term many times, but never really understood what it meant. Apparently there is a belief dating back to ancient Greece that swans stay mostly mute for their life and then right before they die, they sing a beautiful song.

There is still a fair amount of debate on whether or not swans do in fact sing a beautiful song before they die. I would like to think it is true since swans are among the most beautiful of birds. They certainly are the most beautiful bird that you can see in Iowa, in the wild.

The term isn’t always morbid. Is has come to be synonymous with doing something great right before you retire.

I don’t know if this post 100% qualifies, but it is about a form of retirement for me.

For the last couple of years I have done some pro bono photography (although I once was paid in homemade treats for Naima) for the Boone Area Humane Society. The last time I did photography for them was when I covered their annual Pet Memorial Day Celebration.

Due to the shifting sands of the power structure of the Boone Area Humane Society, I have a feeling that I won’t be asked to do any photography for them in the coming years. But that is a story for a different time.

Here are some pictures from that event:

Kio ran the event. Pastor Doug gave a speech and lead us in prayer. It was a cool event. I hope it continues to happen in the future, but the way things stand currently, I have my doubts.

Another loss that people in one of my communities are experiencing is that we learned that we will be losing Pastor Doug and his amazing wife Jodie near the end of June. It is a good deal for Doug because he is getting a big fatty promotion. He will be the District Superintendent of the Southeast District. He will be posting up in Mount Pleasant.

For our church, it kinda sucks. Doug is a great Pastor and Jodie is possibly an even better Pastor’s wife. Losing both of them will leave a hole in our church that the next person or persons will have quite a time filling.

The new Pastor will also be like the 80th Pastor we have had in the last 5 years. Now that is probably hyperbole, but search your feelings, you know it to be true.

There is a common misconception that somewhere in The Bible it says “God won’t give you more than you can handle.” It is a common phrase that is trotted out as a reassurance when people are going through difficult times or grief.

The truth is that this isn’t in The Bible. Sorry, but sometimes that light at the end of the tunnel is a train.

That being said, I would like to give the common response to the phrase, “God won’t give you more than you can handle.”

I wish God didn’t know we were so strong*.

The good news is that while God doesn’t say anything about giving us more than we can handle, God does say that we won’t be tempted beyond our limits:

“No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.” (1 Corinthians 10:13)

Therefore, I hope my church will not be tempted to feel sorry for itself. I hope my church won’t feel tempted to cling to the past. I hope my church won’t be tempted to resist the future.

A new Pastor is coming. While they will be the 80th Pastor in the last 5 years, I have faith that we will get a good one. We are in a good position and while we aren’t exactly a “destination” denomination, we are in a relatively good place and we have some powerful people looking out for our interests.

Playing the numbers game, we’ve really only had one bad Pastor in the last 15 years. While they were a really, really, really, really, really bad Pastor (I mean the guy sermonized at least once a month about past congregants he had smited and that is just the tip of the iceberg), we aren’t due for another like him for at least 30 years. Those are my calculations at least.

While I’m sad to be losing such great people, I am optimistic about the future and what a new Pastor will bring to our church and what our church will bring to a new Pastor!

There is light at the end of the tunnel and at this time, I don’t hear a train.

*On a personal note, this phrase has always bothered me.

Blogging, Boone FUMC, Fisheye, Mom

Candlelight Service

January 16, 2019 Christopher D. Bennett 2 Comments

I have been working on something the last few days that nobody at all will care about, but I think is somewhat of an accomplishment:

I have added a SSL Certificate to my website and now my website is secure.

I know, you don’t care. Even my fellow miners at the Computer Mine aren’t impressed. That is okay. I live with only impressing myself on many a day.

What does it mean for you? Probably, absolutely nothing. But when you look up in the address bar of this here website, you will see a little lock so that you know your information is private when you send it to this site.

It is a beautiful lock. The most beautiful I’ve ever seen!

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The webmaster at my church requested that I take some pictures of the Candlelight Services on Christmas Eve. So I took a few pictures. Have a looksie:

The room with the trees is where we take communion on Christmas Eve.

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Here is an update on my 10 Step Process to buying a drone.

~~Car paid off. – I got the pink slip daddy!~~
~~Training Budget Reimbursement – Bought about 10 books and signed up for an online portrait photography class that I will discuss someday.~~
~~Purchase Popcorn Maker – The Union Street theater has procured its very own popcorn maker from Flat Earth Joe. The one that was borrowed from Andy’s friend of a friend has been returned.~~
Computer Upgrade – I have completed upgrades on my home computer. I’ve put in a solid state drive to run the OS and the applications, I upped the RAM to 16 GB and I replaced the video card with a video card with twice the ram and that is capable of running 3 monitors.
Figure out the effect of the Iowa GOP Tax Scam – The Iowa GOP Tax Scam will indeed result in me paying more taxes. There is about a $7 effect on my paycheck, meaning I am getting a tax cut of roughly $200. (Assuming the withholding from my paycheck is being done right.) However, since the Iowa GOP Tax Scam made it so a 6% sales tax is levied on all online purchases, I will be taxed well more than the $200 benefit. For example, I’ll pay over $100 in taxes on purchasing the drone that I wouldn’t have had to pay before the Iowa GOP Tax Scam became law.
~~Rear Brakes – I had the rear brakes replaced on my car last night. It costs me about 40% of what I was expecting Win!~~
Computer Mine Bonus – Whether or not we get a profit sharing bonus should be determined in the next week or so.
Bank Fraud Resolution – This is supposed to be resolved by January 31. I have my doubts. All indications are that my bank wants me to find a new bank. Perhaps a credit union. Perhaps I should talk to Nate’s friend.
Federal GOP Tax Scam – I want to see if the Federal GOP Tax Scam will hurt my refund or not. I do not anticipate it will, but I don’t want a February surprise to hit the drone budget.
Change Jar – I want fill and return my change jar to the bank before I pull the trigger on the drone purchase. I think I have about 2-3 inches of coin to collect. This isn’t really a necessity, I just want to do it.

6 out of 10 completed. What isn’t mentioned in the 10 part plan is that I won a $250 gift card to Amazon at the Computer Mine Holiday Party. That is a bonus 11th step.