Time to share the second collection of auxiliary images from my road trip to Washington County to harvest their town signs. A few of these are still in Riverside. Which I consider to be a must visit for anybody that likes Star Trek.
Ainsworth
Crawfordsville
Olds
Wayland
Coppock
Still one more collection of images to share from this road trip!
RED. A great color. I don’t know a person who doesn’t look great in cardinal. However, was RED a popular theme? You will have to keep scrolling to find out!
As of 12:01 PM on Monday, January 9, this was the current list of ACTIVE streaks (ignore the numbers in parentheses):
1-Nathanial Brown – 1 week
2-Mary Green – 1 week (2)
3-Monica Jennings – 1 week
4-Sara Lockner – 1 week
5-Willy McAlpine – 1 week
6-Mike Vest – 2 weeks
7-Tamara Peterson – 11 weeks
8-Brandon Kahler – 22 weeks
9-Linda Bennett – 25 weeks (2)
10-Sarah Toot – 26 weeks (4)
11-Angie DeWaard – 30 weeks
12-Dawn Krause – 34 weeks
13-Kim Barker – 40 weeks
14-Joe Duff – 41 weeks
15-Logan Kahler – 43 weeks (3)
16-Teresa Kahler – 52 weeks (2)
17-Carla Stensland – 52 weeks
18-Micky Augustin – 54 weeks
19-Andy Sharp – 55 weeks
20-Bill Wentworth – 56 weeks
21-Cathie Morton – 60 weeks
22-Elizabeth Nordeen – 61 weeks
23-Shannon Bardole-Foley – 63 weeks
24-Kio Dettman – 64 weeks
But you didn’t come here to listen to me talk all tommyrot about participation rates or streaks. You came to see the submissions and what streaks continued and what streaks flamed out:
Teresa Kahler (Iowa) – 53 weeks
Teresa Kahler (Iowa)
Teresa Kahler (Iowa)
Elizabeth Nordeen (Iowa) – 62 weeks
Micky Augustin (Iowa) – 55 weeks
Andy Sharp (Iowa) – 56 weeks
Bill Wentworth (Nebraska) – 57 weeks
Joe Duff (Texas) – 42 weeks
Kio Dettman (Iowa) – 65 weeks
Kio Dettman (Iowa)
Linda Bennett (Kansas) – 26 weeks
Linda Bennett (Kansas)
Logan Kahler (Iowa) – 44 weeks
Logan Kahler (Iowa)
Logan Kahler (Iowa)
Mary Green (Iowa) – 2 weeks
Mary Green (Iowa)
Shannon Bardole-Foley (Iowa) – 64 weeks
Sarah Toot (Pennsylvania) – 27 weeks
Tamara Peterson (Iowa) – 12 weeks
Nathanial Brown (Missouri) – 2 weeks
Nathanial Brown (Missouri)
Nathanial Brown (Missouri)
Christopher D. Bennett (Iowa)
Carla Stensland (Iowa) – 53 weeks
Carla Stensland (Iowa)
Cathie Morton (Florida) – 61 weeks
Cathie Morton (Florida)
Brandon Kahler (Iowa) – 23 weeks
Sara Lockner (Iowa) – 2 weeks
Becky Parmelee (Arkansas) – 1 week
Sabas Hernandez (Iowa) – 1 week
Dawn Krause (Iowa) – 35 weeks
Dawn Krause (Iowa)
Dawn Krause (Iowa)
Jesse Howard (Iowa) – 1 week
Monica Jennings (Iowa) – 2 weeks
Suzie Brannen (Iowa) – 1 week
Suzie Brannen (Iowa)
Kim Barker (Iowa) – 41 weeks
Jen Ensley-Gorshe (Iowa) – 1 week
Mike Vest (Iowa) – 3 weeks
We had submissions taken in:
+ Arkansas
+ Florida
+ Iowa
+ Kansas
+ Nebraska
+ Missouri
+ Pennsylvania
+ Texas
Florida and Missouri are new additions to the map, Making this year’s list:
+ Arkansas
+ Florida
+ Iowa
+ Kansas
+ Nebraska
+ Nevada
+ Missouri
+ Pennsylvania
+ Texas
That is 9 states. We’ve covered almost 20% of the states!
Once again, I did not help. I took my picture in my living room. But Nathanial and Cathie filled in a couple more states for us!
It wasn’t all good news though. Willy’s couldn’t extend his streak to 2 weeks.
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:
SILENCE! What a great theme for Year 10 of THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE.
But what exactly is a SILENCE image? I mean you can make the case that all pictures are in SILENCE, but for this theme I urge you to really search out a place of SILENCE and capture your image there, while not breaking the SILENCE.
While considering a place of SILENCE for you to photograph, meditate on the following quote and I have no doubt you will capture a great SILENCE image:
We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature – trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence… We need silence to be able to touch souls.
-Mother Teresa
I look forward to seeing your interpretation.
The picture has to be taken between 12:01 PM today and 11 AM next Monday. This isn’t a curate your photos project. This is a get your butt off the couch (unless you are taking your picture from the couch) and take pictures challenge. There is a limit of 3 submissions per participant. To be considered the photographer, you have to be the one that takes the picture. Don’t be stealing the work of other artists. You can submit pictures for other photographers that took pictures with your camera or phone, but give credit where credit is due.
You can send your images to either bennett@photography139.com OR you may text them to my Pixel 5.
That is it. Thems the rules!
That is all I got, so if the good Lord’s willin’ and the creek don’t rise, we will all be sharing your idea of SILENCE in this place that’s anything but next Monday.
I need to start today by wishing my sister Teresa’s best friend and also a good friend of all of our family, Sheri a happy birthday! Happy birthday Sheri!
That is a picture of Sheri graduating high school taken by my Dad.
I hope your birthday is/was as awesome as you wanted it to be!
Time to share the last collection of images I took while on a road trip with Teresa to harvest the town signs of Allamakee County.
Harper’s Ferry
Yellow River State Forest
Waterville
The iconic Lansing Mississippi River Bridge can be seen in the movie THE STRAIGHT STORY. It is the bridge Alvin Straight crosses to get to Wisconsin to visit his brother.
The next county of auxiliary images we will visit is Washington County.
Time for the third collection of auxiliary images I took on my road trip with Teresa to harvest the town signs of Allamakee County.
New Albin
I reckon that the bridge in Lansing over the Mississippi River is one of the most photographed bridges in Iowa. At least for its fairly remote location. Something I learned on this trip is that there are surprisingly few bridge that cross the Mississippi River in Iowa.
I’ve seen that bridge in Lansing photographed several times. It is an iconic bridge in a beautiful setting. However, on this trip a Lansing local informed us that it was going to be replaced in the next couple of years. If you want to see it, don’t dawdle.
There is one more collection of images from this trip left to share.
Time to share the second collection of images from my road trip to Allamakee County (and Clayton County) to harvest their town signs with Teresa. The first couple pictures are in Clayton County. The rest are in Allamakee County.
Hardin – Ghost Town
Waukon
Lycurgus
Lansing
There is still many more images from this road trip left to share. On the next collection I will talk about the bridge in the last picture that crosses the Mississippi River from Iowa to Wisconsin in Lansing. Enjoy it now, cause it won’t be around for much longer.
Back in June I cruised around both Clayton and Allamakee County harvesting their town signs with Teresa. It is truly the most beautiful part of Iowa and there isn’t a close second. But the Loess Hills are second.
All of these pictures were taken in Clayton County:
Volga
Elkader
St. Olaf
Monona
The St. Olaf Tavern finished in the Top 5 in last year’s Best Tenderloin Contest ran by the Iowa Pork Producers Associator.
There are plenty more pictures from this trip still to come.
Time to share the final collection of auxiliary images I took while harvesting the town signs of Fayette and Winneshiek Counties. Included in this collection are pictures taken at Montauk. Montauk is the mansion and home Iowa’s 12th Governor William Larrabee. I don’t know anything about William Larrabee, but I’m guessing his entire platform wasn’t to destroy rural schools to line the pocketbooks of the out-of-state interests that funded his campaign.
Here is the final collection of images:
Montauk
Clermont
Elgin
If you don’t know what The Straight Story is, here it is from the Wiki:
In June 1994, Straight’s 80-year-old brother Henry Straight (Palisade, January 4, 1914 – Iowa, June 15, 1998) had suffered a stroke. At the age of 73 and in poor health from diabetes, emphysema and other ailments, Straight could not see well enough for a driver’s license, so he decided his only option was to travel on his 1966 John Deere riding lawn mower.
Setting off in early July 1994, Straight drove the mower along highway shoulders, towing a trailer loaded with gasoline, camping gear, clothes, and food from his home in Laurens, Iowa to his brother in Blue River, Wisconsin.
About four days and 21 miles into the trip, the lawn mower broke down in West Bend, Iowa. Straight spent $250 on replacement parts, including a condenser, plugs, a generator, and a starter.
After traveling another 90 miles, Straight ran out of money while in Charles City, Iowa. He camped there for a few days until his next Social Security checks arrived in August. He was interviewed by local newspapers. On August 15, Straight’s lawn mower broke down again when he was two miles from his brother’s house near Blue River. A farmer stopped and helped him push it the rest of the way. At a top speed of 5 miles per hour (8.0 km/h), the trip took six weeks in all. After the visit, his nephew, Dayne Straight, drove him back to Iowa in his pickup truck.
Henry Straight recovered from his stroke and moved back to Iowa to be closer to Alvin Straight and the rest of his family.
Paul Condit, president and general manager of Texas Equipment Company, Inc., in Seminole, Texas, heard about the trip and gave Straight a 17-horsepower John Deere replacement riding mower worth $5,000. Straight disliked the media attention from the lawn mower trip. He turned down offers to appear on various TV talk shows including The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Late Show with David Letterman.
David Lynch (of all filmmakers) turned the story into the movie THE STRAIGHT STORY. Richard Farnsworth played Alvin Straight and was nominated for an Oscar for his performance.
The film was shot in chronological order along the original route that Alvin Straight took. Richard Farnsworth was suffering from terminal cancer during production and the paralysis of his legs shown in the film was real. He took his own life they year after the shooting of the film.
The movie currently streams on Disney+.
The next county we will visit for auxiliary images will be a little bit different. It will mostly involve a camping trip I made with Carla and Jason, but I consider them to be auxiliary images because I did take one town sign picture on the trip.
Today seems like a good day to share the rest of the pictures that I considered for the 2023 Photography 139 Calendar, but did not use.
Just because I rejected these images this year, doesn’t mean that one of them couldn’t show up in a future calendar.
This is your reminder that this week’s THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE theme is TRAINS, PLANES, & AUTOMOBILES:
But what is a TRAINS, PLANES, AND AUTOBOMILES picture? Simply put it is a picture that involves a TRAIN or a PLANE or an AUTOMOBILE. All 3 don’t have to be in the picture. One will suffice. The picture can also be of anything that is tangential to TRAINS, PLANES, AND AUTOMBILES. Roads, bridges, train tracks, terminals, stations, are all fair game.
I made this a theme this year because it will be one of the categories in this years Pufferbilly Days Photo Contest. If you submit a photo for this theme, you have a picture you can enter in the Pufferbilly Days Photo Contest.
Happy photo harvesting!
It is the first day of 2023. I’m not really a “resolutions” person. Pastor Adam was on vacation today so we had a substitute seromizer in church this morning. He gave an impassioned, longwinded sermon on resolve. It took more than a bit of my resolve to stay awake during the longest sermon these ears have heard in quite sometime.
But if I were to take the words on resolve to heart, I would say that I’m not without goals. Last year my main goal was to complete THE TOWN SIGN PROJECT. I did that.
My main goal in 2023 is to complete Phase 2 of THE TOWN SIGN PROJECT and put the book together. I should be freeing up sometime to work on that buy dropping a couple of photo projects that I did in 2022.
My second goal in 2023 is to begin work and complete my new photo project. Details are still foggy, but it is to create Boone postcard. Not a bunch of Boone postcards. Not even to print up a bunch of one Boone postcard. But to make one big image of one Boone postcard. While the end goal is one image, it will involve taking at least several hundred (probably thousand) images. It will make more sense when I get going on it.
My third goal in 2023 is to keep the positive momentum that was achieved in 2022 in participation rates for THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE. I’m not likely to go out and beat the drums looking for participants, but doesn’t mean you guys can’t. Right?
My fourth goal in 2023 is to consider and maybe take action on visiting and photographing every State Park in Iowa.
That seems more straight forward than it actually is because in addition to State Parks there are State Forests and State Preserves and State Recreation Areas. Boone County contains 3 Minor State Forests alone! We will see where this one goes, but we all know I could use the exercise.
I don’t have any goals related to the Iowa State Fair Photography Salon. That type of stuff is a considerable amount of luck. So best not to have goals that are out of one’s hands. Maybe my goal should just be to give my best effort.
Hopefully 2023 is a good year for all of us!
Time to share the December images for the FatMumSlim Photo A Day Challenge. This is also the final collection of images as I will be dropping this pursuit in 2023. It doesn’t take a lot of time, but it still eats up a fair amount of time. Hopefully time freed up that I can use to pursue some of those 2023 goals.
Here are the December images:
December 2 – I Bought This!
December 3 – Starts with T
December 4 – I Held This
December 5 – Something Red
December 6 – Peace
December 7 – Tree
December 8 – Looking Up
December 9 – Small
December 10 – Out + About
December 11 – Free Choice
December 12 – Lights
December 13 – Something Green
December 14 – Decoration
December 15 – A Star
December 16 – Candy Cane
December 17 – A Hat
December 18 – I Made This!
December 19 – Joy Is…
December 20 – Begins with S
December 21 – On the Floor
December 22 – A Gift
December 23 – A Tradition
December 24 – Someone I Love
December 25 – My Day
December 26 – This is Delish
December 27 – Colourful
December 28 – A Book
December 29 – Us
December 30 – How I Relax
December 31 – Best Part of 2022
Top 9 Most Popular Images
I did enjoy this project and I’m not walking away from it because I didn’t enjoy it. I “met” numerous other people in this community that I will continue to follow, like @bea.photoaday, @sara.fms.photoaday, @outnbout, @gerkgirl, @pink_koffie, and @lostfate13.
But there were other things I didn’t like. Most people used the challenge to curate images, rather than take new images every day. The person that ran the challenge is Australian. That meant that a lot of the prompts were seasonal for Australia, meaning they weren’t seasonal for Iowa. Prompts repeated an awful lot. Not that they wouldn’t after 365 days, but I felt like they repeated more than necessary.
These minor complaints aside, I would consider doing it again in a future year. Just not this year. I’m sure many of you have minor complaints about how I run THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE as well.
It is time to reveal the August image for the 2023 Photography 139 Calendar:
This picture is of the only fire watch tower in the state of Iowa. It is located in the Yellow River State Forest in northeast Iowa. It is only accessible via forest road. So if you plan on going to see it, don’t take a sedan. That isn’t to say the road is really rough. It doesn’t require a 4×4, but you definitely want something with some ground clearance. It is also basically a one lane road, so if you meet somebody coming the other way, you do need to make some room.
You can not climb up the fire watch tower. There is a fence around it. If you stand near it and look straight up, there is no floor.
I took this picture with Rodan139. There is not necessarily a strong reason for it to be with August. Teresa was with me when I took the picture and she was born in August. However, she never got out of the vehicle. She might have thought what we were doing was illegal. Which it wasn’t. I will let you know if what we are doing is illegal or questionably legal.
TECHNICAL DETAILS:
CAMERA: Hasselblad L1D-20c
DATE: June 25, 2022 – f/2.8
LENS: 28mm f/2.8
FOCAL LENGTH: 28mm
APERTURE: f/5.6
EXPOSURE: 1/400
ISO: 100
EXPOSURE BIAS: -.7
ALTITUDE: 363m Above Sea Level
Tomorrow I will reveal the September image of the 2023 Photography 139 Calendar.
Time to share a second collection of the 90 images I rejected for the 2023 Photography 139 Calendar:
I still have one more collection of rejected calendar images left to share.
