Archive for January, 2009

Photo: *Narrows Eyes*

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I’ve been enjoy­ing my time with the elk lately quite a bit more. By this last trip, I have learned where they can usu­ally be found in the park, pro­vided it’s not too cold, so I am able to get set up early enough that tourists don’t harass them before I get my shots. I’m hop­ing to get some much more inter­est­ing shots before i stop chas­ing them entirely. Rutting, bugling, and so on. Behavioral shots, basically.

I have decided that every­thing I do right now is prepa­ra­tion for me becom­ing the most bad ass travel pho­tog­ra­pher pos­si­ble. Photography is part of it, but so is phys­i­cal and men­tal con­di­tion­ing. My diet isn’t just to lose weight for no rea­son, it’s to be in bet­ter con­di­tion so as to travel to exotic places. I’m build­ing up a work­out plan as well. I need to be tough to do this job.

This is my cur­rent goal in life. It doesn’t exclude my goal of SF/​F writer, but it’s tak­ing pri­or­ity. You can expect this blog to be heav­ily slanted in that nature for the imme­di­ate future anyway.

Photo: *Narrows Eyes*

links for 2009-​​01-​​20

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Photo: Streaked RMNP Sunrise

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

My dawn pho­tos con­tinue to turn out look­ing pretty bizarre, but I like this one. One thing I have learned is, the hyper-​​real HDR pho­tos just don’t look as good with­out some form of clouds. Clouds are 50% of the effect at least, if not more.

Photo: Streaked RMNP Sunrise

Photo: Suntouched Peaks

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

This is a view of the peaks to the west in Morraine Park inside Rocky Mountain National Park. I lucked out finally and had a mostly obscured sun­rise, so I got to shoot the moun­tains with the sun just kiss­ing the peaks as it strug­gled into the sky.

Once upon a time, I couldn’t get out of bed before noon. Now I get up at 5:30 and drive an hour in the dark down treach­er­ous roads so I can take pho­tos like this one. Why? I’m never more at peace than I am in those moments. Shooting nature pho­tog­ra­phy is like pan­ning for gold. You some­times get lucky and find a lit­tle nugget, but most of the time your pan is filled with grit and muck.

I’m start­ing to get a lit­tle bored of RMNP though. Where do you think I should take a road trip to shoot next?

Photo: Suntouched Peaks

Email Weirdness

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I am in the process of switch­ing servers for my email server.  If you are try­ing to reach me and I do not respond within 24 hours, please email again. Thanks.

links for 2009-​​01-​​18

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Book 2009 #3: Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I can’t help but think this book would have had a big­ger impact on me if I had read it before Obama was elected.  It’s a great overblown rant against all the hor­ri­ble things DHS has done in the name of pro­tect­ing us.  It’s a decently writ­ten book with mod­er­ately inter­est­ing geek char­ac­ters fight­ing the good fight and using wire­less to do it (sound­ing sus­pi­ciously famil­iar?).  So Cory’s hot­but­ton issues show more than a lot of other writers–I don’t really mind because I share most of those inter­ests myself.  I wanted to like this book more than I did, and I liked it quite a bit, but the res­o­lu­tion is what even­tu­ally made me put it in the “not sure” pile.  I’m going behind a cut to talk about more in case you don’t want the end­ing spoiled. Continue read­ing ›

Book 2009 #2: The Devil You Know by Mike Carey

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I’ve been aware of Mike Carey for some time now, as the writer of a good run on the Hellblazer comic (which you prob­a­bly only know of as that abor­tion of a movie Constantine) as well as the writer of Lucifer (which I wasn’t a big fan of.  Nothing wrong with it really, just not my bag).  As far as I know, this is Carey’s first novel, and it’s a very good one.

Felix Castor is an exor­cist liv­ing in London.  In his world, it’s just some­thing you’re born to do, or not.  And he was born with the capac­ity.  Felix has some friends, some bad his­tory, and no money.  Sound famil­iar?  Felix is your arche­typ­i­cal down-​​on-​​his luck pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor, only he gets rid of ghosts instead of solve mys­ter­ies.  At least at first, but even­tu­ally you know he’s gonna solve a mys­tery.  And he does, and it’s quite satisfying.

I often gripe about the mem­o­ra­bil­ity of SF/​F char­ac­ters by chal­leng­ing peo­ple to name ten mem­o­rable SF/​F char­ac­ters by name.  Then I ask them to name ten char­ac­ters from the works fo Charles Dickens.  It’s an exercise–in what, I’m not sure, and I’m pretty sure John Joseph Adams put me onto it.  In any case, Felix Castor has an inter­est­ing name, so he’s got one foot out of the “for­get­table char­ac­ters” grave already.  Through the course of the book, you come to like this schmuck.  He means well. He screws up a lot, he gets the everlov­ing shit beaten out of him (then he gets laid–the gumshoe karmic bal­ance restored), and even­tu­ally he solves the mys­tery and every­one is happy.  Sort of.

If you like hard­boiled detec­tive sto­ries, then you will like The Devil You Know.  If you like super­nat­ural thrillers that don’t nec­es­sar­ily involve peppy blonde women with super­nat­ural tat­toos on their lower backs (per­fect for the book cover), then you’ll prob­a­bly like this as well.  It’s out in paper­back, and a sec­ond book in the series is cur­rently out in hard­back. I don’t think I’m going to be able to make the wait.

Photo: King of the Hill

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

One of the bet­ter shots from my work in Rocky Mountain National Park this morn­ing. Caught this guy on the road out of the park, actu­ally, on my way to get some break­fast. Go figure.

Photo: King of the Hill