Hitting up the old 2019 backlog. The pictures I share today are from the graduation church service for our church’s seniors. The other pictures are pictures I took on the same day.
I have seen some of those kids, ahem, young adults since they moved on to their next adventures. I’ve seen Casey and Anna and Mackenzie and Megan and Halle. They are all doing great things!
I took a few pictures on Easter of last year that seems like a good time to share.
I think the pictures of the Easter Egg Hunt were taken by Jaxon. In fact I’m positive they were taken by Jaxon.
We are a little more than a month away from Lent now and I’ve been thinking on what I’m going to do for Lent. I would say that traditionally Methodists don’t really give up something for Lent. Instead they add something for Lent.
I’ve been playing with the idea of going pescatarian for Lent.
Why pescatarian?
#1. Eating less meat is the best thing you can do to help the planet:
Industrialized agriculture and the onset of the worst species extinction crisis since the demise of the dinosaurs means that livestock and humans now make up 96% of all mammals. But despite consuming the vast majority of farmland, meat and dairy accounts for just 18% of all food calories and around a third of protein.
The mighty hoofprint of farmed meat isn’t just inefficient. Deforestation to make way for livestock, along with methane emissions from cows and fertilizer use, creates as much greenhouse gas emissions as all the world’s cars, trucks and airplanes. Meat rearing practices risk mass extinctions of other animals, as well as spawn significant pollution of streams, rivers and, ultimately, the ocean.
#2. Goals should be realistic and attainable. While going pescatarian will vastly reduce the amount of meat I eat, it is a realistic goal, because I know there is no way I could pull off going full vegetarian and let’s not talk about going vegan.
#3. A pescatarian diet is healthier. It is healthy for the heart, reduces the risks of some cancer, diabetes, and metabolic syndrome.
#4. The prophet Kurt Cobain taught us that “it’s okay to eat fish, ’cause they don’t have any feelings.”
This means that I need to get that road trip to Corning with Shannon to tenderloin it up on the books before February 26.
I guess now that we are in 2020, pictures from 2019 would be considered backlog. I won’t get into my goals for 2020 until I write my 2019 review post, but one of my goals is to get in the ball park of caught up with my backlogs. That way this post will feel more contemporary. I might have to go back to adding a Sunday post, but I guess we will see.
Today is a collection of pictures from my church’s Confirmation Services in 2019.
There won’t be a confirmation class in 2020. One of those things that frequently gets lost in the shuffle when our church has a pastoral change.
Merry Christmas everybody! Today is the day we celebrate the birth of Jesus!
I believe that is important on this day to remember who Jesus was and who Jesus wasn’t as the Christian church wrestles for its soul. I recently saw a quote that breaks down who Jesus was and who Jesus wasn’t, very succinctly.
“Jesus WAS a radical nonviolent revolutionary who hung around with lepers, hookers, and crooks; WAS NOT American and never spoke English; was anti-wealth, anti-death penalty, anti-public prayer; BUT was never anti-gay, never mentioned abortion or birth control. Never called the poor lazy, never justified torture, never fought for tax cuts for the wealthiest Nazarenes. Never asked a leper for a co-pay.; and was a long-haired brown-skinned homeless community organizing anti-slut shaming middle eastern Jew.”
-John Fugelsang
Another John Fugelsang quote I love is this:
“I’ve come to view Jesus much the way I view Elvis. I love the guy but the fan clubs really freak me out.”
Some of them freak me out to man and I go to church at least twice a week.
On this, the day that we celebrate the arrival of the Messiah, let us remember who Jesus was and celebrate him.
Christ is Born!
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At this point, I’ve hopefully distributed almost all of my Photography 139 calendars. I feel it is probably safe to start revealing what pictures I choose to include during a frantic Black Friday design session.
This is the front cover:
The front cover image is a picture of water drops on a mirror. The image was converted to black and white and then processed in Photoshop through a technique I like to think that I invented, so I will make a name for it and call it Double Inverse Solarization. This picture was selected by popular vote to be entered in the Pufferbilly Days Photo Contest in the Photoshop category. It won that category.
More picture reveals in the following days!
For like the last 15 or 16 or more years, my church has held a free Thanksgiving dinner open to anybody in the community. The last few years I have went down and photographed the event until I needed to tap out and go to my family Thanksgiving.
Here are a few of my favorite photos from the day, you might even recognize a few faces from the Youth Group (present and past):
If you don’t want to cook for Thanksgiving or just find that you are alone, feel free to join us next year for Thanksgiving!
Now that the 2018 backlog is mercifully behind us, it seems like a good time to check back in with THE SELFIE PROJECT. The 2019 version of THE SELFIE PROJECT has almost ran its course. I won’t repeat it in 2020, but maybe I’ll bring it back in 2021. We’ll see.
Here are my favorite images from November:
November 2
November 3
November 4
November 7
November 9
November 11
November 12
November 13
November 14
November 15
November 16
November 17
November 20
November 21
November 23
November 24
November 25
November 26
November 27
November 28
November 29
I think November was one of my best months. At least for interesting pictures.
Before I get too much into the end of the 2018 Backlog, I do want to talk about Advent. On Wednesday we finished our Advent candle services for the Youth Group. The proudest moment of that was when Emily actually remember what Advent means! I was pretty pumped, let me tell you.
This Sunday, Mom, Logan, and I lit the Advent Candles during the first service at church. Today is the second Sunday of Advent and I forgot that because I missed the first Sunday of Advent when I went to Manhattan, Kansas last Sunday.
I thought (lest you forget that this is a Christian website) we could have our own little advent service here. I could just lift the reading straight from what the readers at my church read. We will have to do two candles this Sunday because I slacked off last week.
THE FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT
One: Advent calls us to prepare our hearts for the coming of Christ.
All around us people prepare for parties, dinners and presents.
These events could distract us from the real reason for our anticipation.
On the other hand, they also could prepare us;
they could be the voice crying in a wilderness of materialism:
“Prepare the way for the coming of what is really important.”
All: Rather than get lost in the wilderness of distractions,
we will let the music and the lights make us sensitive
to the voice that is even now calling our name.
We will listen for the Word in the words and even in the noise.
One: A reading from the Prophet Isaiah, Chapter 40, verses 1-5,9.
Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.
A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.” Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings, lift it up, do not fear; say to the cities of Judah, “Here is your God!”
Please join me:
All: In this season of hustle and bustle
we are tempted to get frantic and join the panic
to shop our way into the holiday spirit.
In this moment, we resist that temptation
and choose instead to be at peace
with who we are and where we are on this path.
We will let this time prepare us,
and we will hear God’s call
to be those who prepare the world.
One: On this first Sunday of Advent
we choose to be a peaceful presence
in this midst of a frantic season.
So, today, we light the first candle
as an act of preparation and call it Peace.
One: As our days grow shorter and our nights longer,
we who are people of faith turn to symbols
such as candles, evergreens and wreaths
to proclaim our belief in the unquenchable light.
In hopeful anticipation,
we prepare for the coming of the Reign of God.
Listen for the Word in the words of the prophet
for the second Sunday of this new church year:
All: We open our hearts to the Word in the words.
One: A reading from the Prophet Isaiah, Chapter 64, verses 1, 7- 9.
O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence. There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity. Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity forever. Now consider, we are all your people.
Please join me:
All: As we begin our journey to the light,
we confess that our lives have not always been lived
in ways pleasing to God.
Our shame has left us feeling distant from
the One who is both Mother and Father to us all,
the One in whose hands we are like clay.
Yet even now,
our longing for the One
who tears open the heavens and comes down
kindles like a fire in our soul.
Even now as we wait, we dare to hope.
One: We who are pregnant with anticipation
feel hope rise up within us.
And so we light this second candle
and name it Hope.
Yes, I know the candles are lit out of order.
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A special Sunday post to celebrate the end of the 2018 backlog. From now on “An Artist’s Notebook” will live more in the here and now, however, it should be pointed out that there is quite the 2019 backlog, but I can probably hammer that out in another 9 months or so…
Focus Stacked Image
Believe it or not, some of the Naima pictures weren’t taken at Dickcissel. They were taken at the Jay Carlson Wildlife Area. I don’t take Naima there very often because it just isn’t setup very well for her.
The 2018 Backlog is dead! Long live the 2019 Backlog!
Happy day to celebrate America’s addiction to soul-crushing consumerism! I will barely be leaving my house other than to ring the bell for the Salvation Army (4-5 at Hy-Vee if you are interested in dropping in and saying hi), do a little photography, and go watch Ashley Joens and the gang crush some hapless fools. So go punch another person in the face to save 5% on 2015’s television model for me.
Hitting up the 2018 backlog with a collection of Naima pictures. These pictures of Naima frolicking in the snow, which she is know to do. Big fan of snow, that dog. Extreme cold, not so much. Snow, definitely.
I believe this only leaves 4 folders left in the 2018 back log. We should be finished up my the middle of December, at the latest!
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This is your reminder that this week’s WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE theme is COLORFUL:
A COLORFUL photo is a photo of any object that is filled with color.
Happy photo harvesting!
Happy Thanksgiving! Every year on Thanksgiving I like to think about my many, many blessings. I know, real original. You should feel free to try it sometime. But make sure you let everybody know that I invented gratitude.
I am thankful for my friends:
I am blessed with an amazing church family:
I am blessed with a decent job and work friends that I don’t mind seeing more than 40 hours a week:
I’m blessed to share my house with Naima:
This is only a small sampling of my blessings, but I feel to go on much longer would sound like boasting. Thank all of you for choosing to be part of my life!
Running just a tad bit behind schedule today. As I am on vacation and my motivation levels might not be what they normally are. Fortunately, for the 9th straight week, motivation levels were high enough that we had double digit submissions. Perhaps a record. I don’t know. I’ll have to check with the Photography 139 historian.
But you didn’t come here to listen to me talk all tommyrot about participation rates, you came to see the submissions:
Andy Sharp
Elizabeth Nordeen
Elizabeth Nordeen
Dawn Krause
Micky Augustin
Tamara Peterson
Michelle Haupt
Tamara Peterson
Carla Stensland
Christopher D. Bennett
Monica Henning
Becky Parmelee
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:
COLORFUL! What a great theme! But what is a COLORFUL photo? That is pretty straight forward. Any photo that is filled with COLOR. Find something COLORFUL and photograph it. Go crazy with the saturation in your photo editing. Remember, there is more than one definition of the term COLORFUL.
I look forward to seeing your interpretations.
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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.
OR
I now allow people to text me their submissions. In the past, I had made exceptions for a couple people that aren’t real computer savvy, even though it was an inconvenience for me and required at least 3 extra steps for me. I am now lifting that embargo because I have a streamline way of uploading photos. I’m not giving out my phone number, but if you have it, you can text me.
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
Nobody showed class, taste, and sophistication this week by signing up for a Photography 139 email subscription. I’ll try and do better next week.
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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 colorful Monday!
