A month or so ago I took Rodan139 out to Don Williams to do a little drone photography. There was no crash or anything that was anything that even remotely resembled a crash, but there was a weird issue where my phone kept disconnecting from the drone.
It wasn’t an issue because the controller never came disconnected, but it was a cause for some concern. However, after going through everything having taken Rodan139 from several flights since then, I have figured out it was a phone issue and I have since corrected it.
Here are some pictures I took on my weird trip to Don Williams:
More pictures from more flights still in the hopper!
First things first. Even though Photography 139 doesn’t take days off, it does acknowledge holidays. I hope you have had a wonderful Memorial Day Weekend, but also take the time to remember why it is you got a 3 day weekend. To honor the people who have died while serving in the United States Armed Forces.
Happy Memorial Day!
As is usual when a holiday falls on Monday, participation rates for THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE dip. While this happened again today, the people who did submit for BLUE were very passionate about BLUE.
There were pictures submitted that were taken in Rome, Philadelphia, Saylorville, and even Fraser!
But you didn’t come here to listen to me talk all tommyrot about participation rates. You came to see the submissions:
Andy Sharp
Andy Sharp
Carla Stensland
Kim Barker
Christopher D. Bennett
Kim Barker
Tamara Peterson
Tamara Peterson
Angie DeWaard
Andy Sharp
Shannon Bardole-Foley
Stephanie Kim
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:
GROUP PORTRAIT
GROUP PORTRAIT! What a great theme! But what is a GROUP PORTRAIT? A GROUP PORTRAIT is simply any portrait that features more than one person. It doesn’t have to be a formal posed portrait. A candid portrait works just as well.
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. 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 grouped Monday.
The pictures in the folder called 2009-02-18/Arizona_Day_3B are from the work/vacation to Arizona. The pictures are all from after Jesse and I met up with Lowell and Strabala and went back to the mini-mountain thing in Phoenix.
As it would just so happen, while we were there, Air Force One flew overhead. Looking at those pictures really made me nostalgic for when our country wasn’t the laughingstock of the entire world. Good times. Good times.
By adding these pictures to the Photography 139 Gallery I was able to restore the following historic “An Artist’s Notebook” entry to its original glory:
A couple Saturdays back I went to the Des Moines Farmer’s Market with my Mom. I was mostly on a mission to take a picture for the theme STREET PHOTOGRAPHY for THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE. However, I also spied an opportunity to knock Page 97 off of my list for THE PHOTO JOURNAL PROJECT.
Page 97 – Photograph a human as though it were an animal.
While I can only physically adhere one photograph into the physical A PHOTO JOURNAL, there is one more picture I did consider for this page:
The last youth group was a couple Wednesdays back. I’m hoping to use that new free night as an opportunity to knock out several more pages from THE PHOTO JOURNAL PROJECT.
I currently have my eyes on knocking out a few of these pages:
Page 109 – Photograph a word to change its meaning.
Page 121 – Show us that photography is a form of magic.
Page 116 – Shoot an advert where the image says it all without the need for any additional copy.
Page 20 – Make something big look small.
Page 21 – Make something small look big.
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This is your reminder that the theme for this week’s WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE is BLUE:
Last Friday I took a birthday road trip with Jesse. It wasn’t my birthday, but it was the day before my birthday and I knew my actual birthday was going to be filled with working on my Mom’s bedroom ceiling and graduation open houses. So I took Friday off from work and Jesse and I hit the open road.
The ultimate goal of the road trip was to visit and photograph two waterfalls in the Decorah area. I had visited one of them a couple years back and I was never really satisfied with the photographs I took. The other waterfall I had never seen and it sounded very intriguing as it was described as a 1 mile hike to even get to it.
I have tons of photos of these two waterfalls coming in upcoming blog posts. Also pictures of a Civil War re-enactment with some of the “friendliest” folks you ever met in your life, plus a few new entries into THE TOWN SIGN PROJECT, pictures of The Little Brown Church, and The Smallest Church.
Plus there is a bunch of video I’m going to edit into a vlog at some point. On this trip I fully intended to take a picture for Page 104 of The Photo Journal. I knew exactly how I wanted to take this picture. I wanted to take it with Rodan139. Unfortunately it rained pretty much all of the day and I wasn’t risking Rodan139 in rain. It isn’t supposed to fly in rain and at this time, I’m not going to push the boundaries.
Luckily, when we were at The Smallest Church, the sky was precipitation free and it fit my definition of the theme for Page 104:
Page 104 – Keep walking until you are lost. Take a photograph the moment you realize you are lost.
Now we weren’t lost, not in the traditional sense. I knew where we were, but I didn’t know the fastest way to get back on the path home without pulling up the GPS. That is as lost as I get. We didn’t walk to The Smallest Church, but seriously, there is zero chance I’m ever going to get lost walking. My sense of direction is just too good.
The Littlest Church is sometimes billed as The World’s Smallest Church, but it isn’t. It isn’t even close. However it is very small. The church seats 8 people and measures 14′ x 20′.
A few Saturdays back I went out to Long Park with Johnathan and Logan to test Rodan139 out as there were some quirky things that happened with it on the previous day when I took it to Don Williams. Turned out it was more of a phone update issue than anything and was nothing to worry about. Rodan139 is fine and dandy. At least for right now.
The videos I took of Logan and Johnathan will show up on the YouTube channel at some point, but that point isn’t exactly soon.
While we were out there, it was the perfect time to knock off Pages 84 & 85 of THE PHOTO JOURNAL PROJECT. This idea is stolen, I mean “influenced” by an illustration I once saw.
Page 84 – Photograph a lie.
Page 85 – Photograph a truth.
I don’t want you to think the truth is that Logan and Johnathan don’t get along. They certainly do. In fact, Johnathan, Logan, and Brandon worked like a seamless machine just the other day while hanging ceiling drywall at my Mom’s house.
For those wondering about the knives. Logan is holding my basement knife that is mostly used for opening popcorn bags. It was gifted to me by Vest. Johnathan is holding by upstairs knife. It is mostly used to open up UPS packages. That knife belonged to my Dad.
I did consider using my car knife, which was gifted to me by Kim, but it was left in my car and Johnathan drove.
A couple Saturdays back I went to downtown Ames to watch Evie’s piano recital, making her the third Gorshe I have now seen in concert. just 3 more to go and I will have collected the entire set. Although I think it will be awhile before the twins are ready to tackle the music scene.
I arrived at the concert venue about 45 minutes early, so I figured I would knock out Pages 74 & 75 of THE PHOTO JOURNAL PROJECT.
Pages 74 & 75 are to make “A record of interesting backgrounds that I can return to later should I need to shoot someone’s portrait.”
There are spots for 11 of these backgrounds in the physical PHOTO JOURNAL. As you will quickly find out, I’m partial to brick walls. Decrepit brick walls.
This wall is actually in Boone.
Plenty more from THE PHOTO JOURNAL PROJECT coming this week!
My photo organization for early 2019 is a complete mess. I’m trying to reorganize it a bit on the fly. Today’s collection of images come from the folder 2009-02-18/Arizona_Day_3.
These pictures were taken in Arizona as the vacation part of the trip was starting to wind down and the business part of the trip was getting ready to start up. Lowell and Eric came into town and we met up with them and checked out some more Spring Training.
Here are some pictures:
By adding these pictures to the Photography 139 Gallery, I was able to restore the following historic “An Artist’s Notebook” entry to it’s original glory:
Last Saturday I took the drone out to Don Williams to practice. I took a few images there that I will post at some point, but not at this time.
The images I will post today are from when I was cruising back to Boone. I took a slightly different route than normal and I ended up on an old gravel road bridge that crosses over the Boone Scenic Valley tracks. This portion of the track is farther west than the most common trains go. This portion of the tracks are almost all the way to Wolf. As I looked down on the tracks I realized it was a perfect time to cross off Page 43 of THE PHOTO JOURNAL PROJECT:
Page 43 – Take a picture that only works in black and white.
I took a few other pictures while I was there:
I think I have something like 25 pages left in THE PHOTO JOURNAL PROJECT.
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A reminder that RURAL is the week’s theme for THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE:
I have recently had a battle in my head and in my wallet. I knew I wanted to purchase a new camera that was something like an action cam, only so much more. It has the qualities of say a GoPro, but the image quality is vastly superior. The amount of control you have with the camera is like night and day.
The camera I’m talking about is the Sony RX0. I had it in my sights for several months. Then Sony went and released the Sony RX0 II. This put in something of a quandary. Three months ago, there was nothing wrong with the Sony RX0, but now there was a Sony RX0 II that was superior.
I had to make a decision. By the old and save a few bucks or pull the trigger on the new and lighten the wallet a bit.
Lucky for me, while I was wrestling with the decision, a bit of an unforeseen windfall landed in my lap and I decided to pull the trigger on the Sony RX0 II.
I’ve only had it since Tuesday, but I already love the little guy:
Happy birthday to me!
Here are a few of the first pictures I’ve taken with the RX0 II:
Here are some of the specifications of the camera:
Number of Pixels (Effective)Approx. 15.3 Megapixels
Lens Type ZEISS Tessar T Lens, 6 elements in 6 groups (6 aspheric elements)
F-Number (Maximum Aperture) F4.0
Focal Length 7.9mm
Focus Range (From the Front of the Lens)Approx. 0.66′ (20cm) to Infinity
Focus Area Wide (25 points [contrast-detection AF]), Center, Flexible Spot (S/M/L)Expanded Flexible Spot
ISO Sensitivity Auto (ISO125-12800, selectable with upper/lower limit)
125/160/200/250/320/400/500/640/800/1000/1250/1600/2000/2500/3200/4000/5000/6400/8000/10000/12800 (Extendable to ISO80/100)
White Balance Modes Auto, Daylight, Shade, Cloudy, Incandescent
Fluor.: Warm White, Fluor.: Cool White, Fluor.: Day White, Fluor.: Daylight, Underwater Auto, C. Temp./Filter, Custom
Electronics Shutter 1/4″ – 1/32000
Continuous Shooting Speed Speed Priority Continuous Shooting: approx. 16fps, Continuous Shooting: approx. 3.5fps (Maximum) (With Max. Recording Pixels)
Waterproof Yes (IPX8 equivalent)
Dustproof Yes (IP6X equivalent)
Shockproo fYes (6.5′ (2.0m) (MIL-STD810G C1 Method516.7-Shock)
Crushproof Yes(200kgf/2000N/440lbf)
I made an unboxing video of it the RXO II for the YouTube Channel. It isn’t necessarily something I would recommend watching, unless you really like unboxing videos. It is in black & white, because I lazily didn’t check my camera settings before I started recording:
It isn’t the most watchable video in the world, but it allows me to practice my minimal video editing skills.
I’m going on a Birthday Road Trip on the morrow. I plan on using the RX0 II to do a vlog of the trip. I’m definitely not going to get in the habit of vlogging, but I wanted to test the RX0 II as a vlogging camera because some people say it is the greatest vlogging camera ever and some say it isn’t good for it at all.
One last thing, if you are a GAME OF THRONES fan, we will be watching the series finale at The Union Street Theater on Sunday night. You are invited! Jay might even be making cake. He also has a 20 year old surprise.
