Tag Archives: featured

Andy, Angie, Art, Becky, Carla, Dawn, Jen, Jodie Cue, Kim, Micky, Monica, Tamara, WPC - Submissions

WPC – WEEK 238 – GOVERNMENT

April 6, 2020 Christopher D. Bennett 4 Comments

As we get deeper and deeper into quarantine, I think that there is a chance that participation rates will decline. However, this week, we did manage to make it all the way to 27 straight weeks of double digit submissions! WooHoo!

But you didn’t come here to listen to me talk all tommyrot about participation rates. You came to see the submissions:

Jen Ensley-Gorshe

Micky Augustin

Andy Sharp

Carla Stensland

Kim Barker

Monica Henning

Tamara Peterson

Christopher D. Bennett

Jodie Cue

Dawn Krause

Carla Stensland

Angie DeWaard

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:

ART! What a great theme! But what is ART?

Here are a few observations on ART from experts:

“Art is never finished, only abandoned.”
-Leonard da Vinci

“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”
-Thomas Merton

“Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.”
-George Bernard Shaw

“All art requires courage.”
-Anne Tucker

“I shut my eyes in order to see.”
-Paul Gauguin

“Love of beauty is Taste. The creation of beauty is Art.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.”
-Johnathan Swift

and of course the quote that is the tagline for this website:

“Art is a lie that enables us to see the truth.”
-Pablo Picasso

I look forward to seeing your interpretations!

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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.

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 artistic Monday!

Black & White, Formal Portrait

Senior Sunday – Garrett – Volume 1

April 5, 2020 Christopher D. Bennett

Another on of the Seniors that I am featuring on Senior Sunday is Garrett Larson. Garrett is the son of Willy’s running buddy Avril. I don’t know Garrett anywhere near as well as I know Autumn, who I have been on 5 mission trips with or Taylan, who I danced with at my wedding, but that was in some ways made his photo session even more fascinating.

As you will see in the photos, Garrett is an avid, passionate cyclist. It was a look into a subculture I knew nothing about and I enjoyed learning about. In particular, I enjoyed learning about how much cyclists hate runners and vice-versa.

Here are some pictures:

I especially loved listening to him and his cycling friends bag on runners since Avril runs nearly as much as Willy. These are the things that amuse me.

Andree, Art, Jesse, Johnathan, Jorge, Logan, Railroad, Russell, Self-Portrait

2009-10-01

April 4, 2020 Christopher D. Bennett

I need to start my post by wishing a very happy birthday to my man Andree!

Happy birthday Andree!

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The picture in the folder 2009-10-01 are from a trip I took to an Art Festival in Ames with Johnathan and Logan. Plus there are a few pictures there of Thomas the Tank.

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:

Coltrane’s 1st Wife’s Middle Name

Next Saturday’s walk down memory lane will involve shirts with beavers on them.

Black & White, Event, Photoshop

Fly Iowa X

April 3, 2020 Christopher D. Bennett

Time for the 10th installment of pictures of when Fly Iowa was in Boone back in August.

Featured in this collection of photos is a plane that was painted to look like Air Force One. This airplane was the end of the show. Thank goodness because it flew around to that awful Lee Greenwood song. But more on the pilot and their terrible taste in music in a later post, probably.

Only 200 Fly Iowa pictures left to curate.

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!

Flowers, Macro, Vest, Work

Yesterday is Gone Now

April 2, 2020 Christopher D. Bennett

People have actually asked me what I have been listening to while I have been working from home. I just finished off Day 9 from work from home and my listening choices have reflected a little bit what they are when I work at the office.

Now I can’t listen to music in a meaningful way when I’m at the office. But on my drive to work I listen to 96.1. It seems to center me and prepares me for the day.

I now listen to 96.1 from 7-9 in the morning. After that, I have been listening to classical music.

Today I listened to Rachmaninoff, Liszt, Ravel, and Dvorak.
On Wednesday I listened to Richard Strauss, Wagner, Johannes Strauss, and Brahms.
On Tuesday, I listened to Chopin, Schubert, Beethoven, and Mozart.
On Monday, I listened to Haydn, Handel, Vivaldi, and Bach.
Tomorrow, I have Mendelssohn, Grieg, and Schumann on deck.

One thing I discovered is that I now like Liszt way more than I recall. I’m going to have to pursue this at a future time.

The classical music usually takes me to about 2:30. The last 90 minutes of my day I listen to Murph and Andy on KXNO.

I don’t know if I can think of any other positives about working from home, but I can say that this week I’m starting to hit more of my stride. I have a better handle on my system now. Hopefully it is smooth sailing here on out.

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Tonight’s post is a bit of a short post. I worked with my webmaster a bit this evening to work out some kinds in the website that resulted from a recent update. That took up some of my website time.

However, I think those of you that don’t hate flowers will enjoy this small collection of flower photos I took last October:

Zinnias and mum, if you are wondering.

Black & White, Event, Photoshop

Fly Iowa Goes to H-E-Double Hockey Sticks

April 2, 2020 Christopher D. Bennett

Time for the 9th installment of images from when Fly Iowa was in Boone back in August.

Only 300 Fly Iowa pictures left to curate!

Flowers, Macro

Feel Like Whistling

April 1, 2020 Christopher D. Bennett

“If you’ve never been thrilled to the very edges of your soul by a flower in spring bloom, maybe your soul has never been in bloom.”
— Audra Foveo

On Monday I took my first flower pictures of the year! Huzzah!

I’m sure there are plenty more pictures of flowers in my future. My daffodils haven’t bloomed yet, but that has to be coming in the near future.

These are the first flowers to bloom at my Mom’s house.

Black & White, Flowers, Logan, Macro, Mom, Naima, Taylan, Underwater, Youth Group

Piebald

April 1, 2020 Christopher D. Bennett

Another post hitting up the 2019 backlog. This post is a collection of a few different photo outings, but perhaps none of them had enough pictures to have their own post.

Some pictures are flowers from my Grandma’s house. Then there are some pictures from the Youth Group Pool Party. Plus, there are also pictures from the dog pool party, where Naima gave her worst performance yet.

Naima hates the dog pool party held at McHose Park every year. I thought that as she has grown to love going into the pond at Dickcissel Park, she would begin to enjoy the dog pool party more. The opposite has occurred. She hates it more and more every year. Last year, she literally last maybe 5 minutes. Then she turned and walked out of the pool and back to the car.

It happened to be the same time that my Mom was showing up to watch the dogs. She took Naima home in my car and I stayed to talk to Logan while he took pictures for the newspaper.

The Youth Group Pool Party is the kickoff of the Youth Group year. If you look closely, you can see that Taylan is one of the lifeguards.