Tag Archives: featured

WPC – WEEK 196 – TREE

Once again, we had a week of double digit submissions. I believe that to be the third consecutive week. People like TREE(s). A bunch of TREE huggers,the lot of you! Which is good, because people who don’t like TREE(s) aren’t good people.

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


WEEK 196 - TREE - ANDY SHARP
Andy Sharp

WEEK 196 - TREE - CARLA STENSLAND
Carla Stensland

WEEK 196 - TREE - CARLA STENSLAND
Carla Stensland

WEEK 196 - TREE - CARLA STENSLAND
Carla Stensland

WEEK 196 - TREE - KIM BARKER
Kim Barker

WEEK 196 - TREE - KIM BARKER
Kim Barker

WEEK 196 - TREE - KIM BARKER
Kim Barker

WEEK 196 - TREE - SHANNON BARDOLE=FOLEY
Shannon Bardole-Foley

WEEK 196 - TREE - TAMARA PETERSON
Tamara Peterson

WEEK 196 - TREE - CHRISTOPHER D. BENNETT
Christopher D. Bennett

WEEKLY 196 - TREE - LINDA BENNETT
Linda Bennett

WEEKLY 196 - TREE - LINDA BENNETT
Linda Bennett

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:


WEEK 197 - BREAKFAST
BREAKFAST

BREAKFAST! What a great theme! In fact, it is such a great theme because it was suggested by long-time Photography 139 fan Andy Sharp. But what is a BREAKFAST photo? Easy enough. A BREAKFAST photo is any photo of somebody eating BREAKFAST, preparing BREAKFAST, items used to make a BREAKFAST, or anything to do with BREAKFAST.

However, there is something to note. Next Monday at this time, I will be on a mission trip to Rapid City, South Dakota with my church’s Youth Group. I will be as far away from technology as a guy can get. So that changes things for next week. Sorta.

I will not be publishing the BREAKFAST submissions until I return. However, that does not change the deadline, the deadline is still 11 AM Monday.

There is a slight change in the rules below going forward, you might want to read them because it might make life easier for some of you!

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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.

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 sausagey Saturday or Sunday. Probably Sunday.

Misc. Flora

Hitting the 2018 backlog. Here are some pictures of flowers, all from my yard that I took on June 10.


Yellow Rose

Yellow Rose

Flower

Daisy

Daisy

Daisy

Daisy

The roses are just starting to bloom now, but I didn’t have any daisies this year. Daisies seem to be an unreliable flower, but the weather has also been crazy this year.

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This is your reminder that this week’s WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE theme is TREE:


WEEK 198 - TREE
TREE

A TREE picture is any picture that involves a TREE or a TREE byproduct.

Happy photo harvesting!

Bake the World a Better Place

Today’s post is actually a mixture of the backlog and new pictures.

I never got around to posting pictures from the 2018 Methodist Men Pie Auction. Last Sunday we had the 2019 Methodist Men Pie Auction. The proceeds for both go to support the Youth Group Mission Trip. Between the two pie auctions raised over $3000.

The Methodist Men Pie Auction has been a smashing success every year it has happened and every year I’m nervous it is going to be a big time failure. Hopefully I’m never right.

Here are some pictures for you to enjoy:


Methodist Men Pie Auction

Methodist Men Pie Auction

Methodist Men Pie Auction

Methodist Men Pie Auction

Methodist Men Pie Auction

Methodist Men Pie Auction

Methodist Men Pie Auction

Methodist Men Pie Auction

Methodist Men Pie Auction

Methodist Men Pie Auction

Methodist Men Pie Auction

Methodist Men Pie Auction

Methodist Men Pie Auction

Methodist Men Pie Auction

Methodist Men Pie Auction

Methodist Men Pie Auction

Methodist Men Pie Auction

Methodist Men Pie Auction

Methodist Men Pie Auction

Methodist Men Pie Auction

Methodist Men Pie Auction

Methodist Men Pie Auction

The 2018 helpers from the Youth Group were MacKenzie Mosher and Anna Olson. The 2019 helpers were Megan Osborn and Hailey Bryant.

I think Teresa took the 2018 pictures. Chris Cromwell took the 2019 pictures.

President Quest 2020 – John Hickenlooper

Last Friday I saw my 6th of 23 Democrat Presidential hopefuls when John Hickenlooper came to the Livery Deli.

To be brutally honest, I don’t think I’ve seen the person that will be the Democrat nominee yet. Of the six I’ve seen, I’d give Bernie Sanders the best shot and Beto, Kloubchar, and Booker a puncher’s chance. I don’t think Hickenlooper has any chance. But everything can change after the debates start.

Here is a little bit of information Hickenlooper:

John Wright Hickenlooper Jr(/ˈhɪkənluːpər/; born February 7, 1952) is an American politician and businessman who served as the 42nd Governor of Colorado from 2011 to 2019. He is a member of the Democratic Party. In 2019, he announced that he is running for President of the United States in 2020.

Born in Narberth, Pennsylvania, Hickenlooper is a graduate of Wesleyan University. After his career as a geologist, Hickenlooper entered a career in business and cofounded the Wynkoop Brewing Company in Denver. Hickenlooper was elected the 43rd mayor of Denver in 2003, serving two terms, until 2011.

Hickenlooper worked as a geologist in Colorado for Buckhorn Petroleum in the early 1980s. When Buckhorn was sold, Hickenlooper was laid off in 1986. He and five business partners opened the Wynkoop Brewing Company brewpub in October 1988 after raising startup funds from dozens of friends and family along with a Denver economic development office loan. The Wynkoop was one of the first brewpubs in the United States. Denver currently boasts more brewpubs per capita than any other city.

Here are some more information from his website:

In 2010, Hickenlooper became the first Denver Mayor elected Governor in 120 years. He was re-elected in 2014, after running an entirely positive campaign — a trademark of his time in public service.

In the past eight years, Colorado jumped from 40th in job creation to the number one economy in the nation. As Governor, Hickenlooper established and built an expansive set of workforce development programs that promoted skills-based hiring, career coaching, apprenticeships, and more.

Hickenlooper brought industry and environmentalists together to reduce methane emissions — a major contributor to climate change. The regulations they developed became the model for California and Canada and are considered the gold standard across the United States.

Hickenlooper also led Colorado’s recovery effort through major fires and floods, re-opening roads, bridges, and communities in record time. He stood up to the NRA to pass landmark gun safety legislation, including limits on high capacity magazines and universal background checks

He expanded Medicaid and opened a high quality state health insurance exchange program called Connect for Health Colorado, establishing an insurer in every county in the state. Today, nearly 95 percent of Coloradans have healthcare coverage.

I will reiterate that the Livery Deli is a terrible place for these events if you are a photographer. However, there was way less people there than were there for Amy Klobuchar, but the pictures are what they are…


John Hickenlooper

John Hickenlooper

John Hickenlooper

John Hickenlooper

John Hickenlooper

John Hickenlooper

John Hickenlooper

John Hickenlooper

John Hickenlooper

John Hickenlooper

John Hickenlooper

John Hickenlooper

John Hickenlooper

John Hickenlooper

John Hickenlooper


I don’t have any current plans to see anybody else right now. My weekend schedule gets busy, plus I leave for the mission trip. Hopefully somebody will fall into my lap, so to speak otherwise it could be a few weeks before President Quest marches on.

WPC – WEEK 195 – PARK

Insert comment on reaching double digits in submissions again.

Insert vague reference to GONE WITH THE WIND.

Submissions:


WEEK 195 - PARK - LOGAN KAHLER
Logan Kahler

WEEK 195 - PARK - LOGAN KAHLER
Logan Kahler

WEEK 195 - PARK - ANDY SHARP
Andy Sharp

WEEK 195 - PARK - KIM BARKER
Kim Barker

WEEK 195 - PARK - CHRISTOPHER D. BENNETT
Christopher D. Bennett

WEEK 195 - PARK - CARLA STENSLAND
Carla Stensland

WEEK 195 - PARK - CARLA STENSLAND
Carla Stensland

WEEK 195 - PARK - CARLA STENSLAND
Carla Stensland

WEEK 195 - PARK - MICKY AUGUSTIN
Micky Augustin

WEEK 195 - PARK - CATHIE RALEY
Cathie Raley

WEEK 195 - PARK - CATHIE RALEY
Cathie Raley

WEEK 195 - PARK - AUBREY and KATELYN AUGUSTIN
Aubrey and Katelyn Augustin

Insert reference to PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE:


WEEK 198 - TREE
TREE

TREE! Insert an explanation of what a TREE is, as if there is anybody in the world that doesn’t know what a TREE is.

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

Nobody this week showed taste, grace, and sophistication by signing up for a Photography 139 email subscription.

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Insert reference to Hank Willimas Sr.

2009-02-04 – Arizona Day 5

The pictures on from the folder 2009-02-04/Arizona Day 5 are from Day 5 of the Arizona Work Vacation. This was the first day I actually had to work on the occasion.

The Computer Mine hosts this event where they invites all of its customers to someplace exotic for a few days to learn more about our product and to learn from many of the industry leaders. This is the only time I’ve ever attended the Computer Mine Meeting, from now on referred to from now on as the CMM.

I didn’t take many pictures on Day 5 because I don’t know that there was a lot to photograph where we were at. We were in a casino in the middle of nowhere Arizona. The casino smelled like Satan’s ashtray. Satan’s ashtray smelled much worse back then because it was before he started vaping. Satan learned that constantly talking about vaping is actually even more annoying that smelling like garbage. That Satan is a tricky one.

On Day 5. In the middle of nowhere Arizona and actually working, there wasn’t much to photograph. So I photographed a few cacti. Have a looksie:


Arizona Work Vacation

Arizona Work Vacation

Arizona Work Vacation

Arizona Work Vacation

Arizona Work Vacation

I’ve never published any of these pictures before, so adding these pictures to the Photography 139 Gallery did not allow me to restore any historic “An Artist’s Notebook” posts.

Next Saturday’s walk down memory lane will involve more Arizona.

A Photo Journal – Page 37

Last Saturday in between seeing GODZILLA: KING OF MONSTERS and heading up to Kamrar, for a birthday dinner, I talked Nader into posing for Page 37 of THE PHOTO JOURNAL PROJECT.


Photo Journal - Page 37
Page 37 – Use aperture to capture melancholy.

I took a few other pictures of Nader before picking out my the picture that will be adhered into the physical THE PHOTO JOURNAL. Have a look:


Photo Journal - Page 37

Photo Journal - Page 37

Photo Journal - Page 37

Photo Journal - Page 37

Photo Journal - Page 37

Photo Journal - Page 37

Closing in on getting the project done. Okay. I still have a ton of pages to finish. But I’m working on it!

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This is your reminder that this week’s WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE theme is PARK:


WEEK 195 - PARK
PARK

A PARK photo is a photo that takes place at a PARK. Of course, there is more than one definition for the word PARK.

Happy photo harvesting!

President Quest 2020 – Amy Klobuchar

This is the 5th installment on my quest to meet, see, photograph, and possibly get photographed with the person that will take the Oval Office in January of 2021. On Memorial Day Sunday at noon I filed into the Livery Deli to see Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar.

There are a couple things to know about this event. Number 1, the Livery Deli is a terrible venue to hold such events and an event worse event to do any photography. Number 2, I badly underestimated how many people would be there.

Klobuchar isn’t polling all that well. Also, I thought that not many people would be free at that time of day on a holiday weekend. I thought that if we showed up at roughly noon, we would still be able to get a good seat. I was wrong. From talking to a member of the Klobuchar staff, 3 times the number of people that they were hoping for showed up.

Klobuchar became a national name when she lit up rape enthusiast and unqualified partisan Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing.

Here is a little more about Amy Klobuchar from the Wiki:

Amy Jean Klobuchar (/ˈkloʊbəʃɑːr/; born May 25, 1960) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the senior United States Senator from Minnesota. A member of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, Minnesota’s affiliate of the Democratic Party, she previously served as the Hennepin County Attorney.

Born in Plymouth, Minnesota, Klobuchar is a graduate of Yale University and the University of Chicago Law School. She was a partner at two Minneapolis law firms before being elected county attorney for Hennepin County in 1998, making her responsible for all criminal prosecution in Minnesota’s most populous county. Klobuchar was first elected to the Senate in 2006, becoming Minnesota’s first elected female United States Senator, and reelected in 2012 and 2018.

Here are examples of her positions from her campaign website:

Education: We also need to make sure all our children can get a great education. That means increasing teacher pay and funding for our public schools, with a focus on investment in areas that need it the most. And we need to make sure the rising costs of college aren’t a barrier to opportunity. Amy supports allowing borrowers to refinance student loans at lower rates, loan forgiveness for in-demand occupations, expanded Pell grants, and tuition-free one- and two-year community college degrees and technical certifications.

Agriculture and Rural Communities: America’s prosperity depends on supporting our family farmers and rural communities, but today farm income in America remains near historic lows. Amy has been an advocate for rural communities and our farmers, and she understands that this country has to do more to provide a strong safety net to help farmers, as well as invest in our rural communities, which includes hospitals, childcare, housing, connecting every household to high-speed internet by 2022, and a strong farm policy.

Economic Justice: We must beat back decades of systemic racism and inequality. Amy believes this begins with early-childcare and fixing our education system, addressing racism in health care such as disparities in maternal and infant mortality rates, ending housing discrimination so that everyone can afford to rent an apartment and own a home in a good neighborhood for their kids, and tackling disparities in wages and in retirement savings.

Labor: As the granddaughter of an iron ore miner and the daughter of a union teacher and a union newspaperman, Amy will bring one clear but simple guide to the White House: When unions are strong, our country is strong. As President, she’ll stand up against attempts to weaken our unions. That means achieving real labor law reform, ensuring free and fair union elections, protecting collective bargaining rights, rolling back Right to Work laws, and making it easier — and not harder — for workers to join unions.

Immigration: Comprehensive immigration reform is also crucial to moving our economy and our country forward. Amy supports a comprehensive immigration reform bill that includes the DREAM Act, border security and an accountable pathway to earned citizenship. She is committed to stopping the cruel and inhumane policy where the government is taking kids away from their parents.

Because I didn’t get a good seat and because of the terrible lighting, I didn’t get many pictures, but here are a few:


Amy Klobuchar

Amy Klobuchar

Amy Klobuchar

Amy Klobuchar

Amy Klobuchar

Amy Klobuchar

Amy Klobuchar

Amy Klobuchar

Amy Klobuchar

Amy Klobuchar

Amy Klobuchar


Klobuchar was the funniest and perhaps most relatable candidate that I’ve seen. I think that is the midwest part of her.

I believe the next candidate I am going to see is John Hickenlooper. Hey, they can’t all be rock stars.