Archive for December, 2009

Announcing JT365

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Today is my 32nd birthday.

I can’t say that I’m happy about it.  But I’m com­ing to terms with it.

At this point in my life, birth­days for me are a reminder of my mor­tal­ity.  They ceased being about gifts when I was in my teens.  For a while in my col­lege years, I thought my birth­day was bad luck due to a string of nasty events around my birth­day, so I went out of my way to hide it from friends well into my late 20s.  I’m past that non­sense, but I still grow melancholy.

I wanted to do so much more with my life than I have.  It feels as if I have squan­dered the last ten years, even though I know this is not so.  I have some won­der­ful things to show for my time.  Nothing of seri­ous con­se­quence in the greater world, but… I am con­tent with this.

It’s time that instead of doing things to impress other peo­ple and draw atten­tion to myself out of some mis­guided sense that it would be a way of achiev­ing a kind of immor­tal­ity, I have instead deter­mined that I will attempt to ded­i­cate my remain­ing time towards liv­ing a life that I can look back on with­out regret.  As my old boss used to say, each day is a gift, and it is up to us how we use them. I have long squan­dered them on things that I will not remem­ber when my time comes to pass.

So today, in an attempt to live each day more fully, to con­nect more with the pas­sage of time and develop more of a sense of being here in the now, I am launch­ing my 365 day pho­tog­ra­phy project.   I am tak­ing and select­ing one pho­to­graph each day for the next year. There’s noth­ing orig­i­nal about it.  Many peo­ple have done these before, but I have not.   I  At times, I will exper­i­ment with new tech­niques. Sometimes, I will prob­a­bly not be able to get out of bed, and so I will be forced to find some inter­est­ing way of cap­tur­ing the ceil­ing of my bedroom.

If you all, the audi­ence, serves a pur­pose in this project, it is to keep me hon­est.  I find that when you do some­thing like this out in the open, you feel more ded­i­cated to the task.  I let myself down often enough, but it’s a moti­va­tor to avoid let­ting oth­ers down. Ultimately, how­ever,  this is a project I do for myself.  You’re wel­come to take plea­sure from the project, and I hope you do. But I’m doing this for so many more rea­sons than usual.

The 365 project can be found here. You can fol­low it on twit­ter here.

So that’s my pri­mary goal right now, on the road to turn­ing 33.  We’ll see how it goes.

Photo: Fall Bugle

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I made a cou­ple of trips to Estes Park this past fall, but the pho­tog­ra­phy was not great. This is prob­a­bly the best elk shot I got this year. Next year, I need to pay bet­ter atten­tion and get up there when the aspens are turning.

Photo: Fall Bugle

Photo: Shadow and Form

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I really needed to go for a walk this morn­ing, so I headed over to a small nature area a mile away from my house for a walk. Everything is dead and stark, and not very pho­to­genic. However, I found these snow-​​covered river rocks and I was cap­ti­vated by their shape and the way the light defined it. Today’s photo, actu­ally taken today. I think I am going to start a 365 project on Wednesday–that’s where you take and post a photo every day. Is there inter­est in that?

Photo: Shadow and Form

Photo: Swept

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I really need to go make more pho­tos soon. I’m out of pic­tures, and I’m sure as hell not blog­ging any­thing else lately. That’s okay, though, because I’ve had a lot of work going on, and that is a very good thing.

I’m plan­ning another redesign of this site to show­case what I’ve learned lately. I’m grow­ing in leaps and bounds as a designer, I think, but I’m also exper­i­ment­ing with some weird ideas too. Just don’t be shocked if you come to visit here in a few weeks and noth­ing looks the same…

One gripe to end things out for today– this cof­fee shop has tables that are too high for their chairs to type com­fort­ably and the chairs are not that com­fort­able either. But they used to pro­vide pil­lows to ele­vate you to a more com­fort­able typ­ing posi­tion. I come in today, and they have none–they’ve got­ten rid of them. Which I think marks this as the end of my time work­ing and drink­ing here. I’m not going to give myself carpal tun­nel just because I like the ambiance. Starry Night is at least a com­fort­able place to sit.

Photo: Swept

Photo: Arches National Park, South Window

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

The desert is beau­ti­ful. Looking out the win­dow at all this snow, I miss it. Although right now, this desert is prob­a­bly cov­ered in snow too.

Photo: Arches National Park, South Window

Photo: Spiral Stone

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

From some ruins in Mesa Verde National Park. This one block was the only one I could find adorned with any kind of pat­tern. I find some­thing very hyp­notic abouuu…ffffff

Photo: Spiral Stone

Photo: Glowing Exit

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

My life has turned into one long series of argu­ments with the cat over eat­ing, inter­rupted with occa­sional bouts of work.   Prior to the week before last, any dis­cus­sion with my cat about eat­ing would be about him eat­ing too much.  Now, he’s sick with unspec­i­fied liver prob­lems, prob­lems that would cost a min­i­mum of $500 to diag­nose further,possibly more. With the vet’s agree­ment, we’ve decided to take a more con­ser­v­a­tive route with him and see what we can do with just  get­ting him stuffed with food–part of the prob­lem, he said, was that he wasn’t eating.

Now, he doesn’t throw up any­more, that’s a good sign.  But get­ting him to eat con­stantly is like argu­ing with a tod­dler. You can’t explain to him why he needs to eat.  You can keep try­ing to trick him, but he catches on and I’m run­ning out of meth­ods.  We even have this high calo­rie paste that we’re sup­posed to be able to get him to lick off his paws or what­not, but we put some of that on and he just got pissed and let it stay there until it dried up and flaked off.  Despite this, he seems to be act­ing fairly normal–certainly not act­ing as sick as he did when we took him into the vet first.  I just don’t know what to do with him.  He feels bony.  When the vet calls today, I guess I will make more arrange­ments to have him in and weighed and given fluids.

Anyway, here’s another canyon photo.  Last one, I think, until I go back some time.  Which at the rate this cat is cost­ing me money, will be 2015.

New Photo: Grand Canyon B&W

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

When we arrived at the Grand Canyon, I was very dis­ap­pointed with how hazy things were. But I try to be a lemons-​​to-​​lemonade kind of pho­tog­ra­pher, so I exper­i­mented with the con­di­tions. This has turned out to be one of my favorite black and white land­scapes I’ve taken.

New Photo: Grand Canyon B&W

Photo: Waves III

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I dug back into my archives and I dis­cov­ered that I still had pho­tos from the desert expe­di­tion last spring wait­ing to be uploaded and posted.

This is another study of the slot canyon called Lower Antelope Canyon near Page, Arizona. It’s a remark­able site and one of my favorite places to pho­to­graph. So far…

Photo: Waves III

Photo: Tired Bones of the Earth

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

This one is my least favorite of the bunch, but I’m out of pho­tos after this one–hope to get out and do some shoot­ing this after­noon so I can get back into a full and reg­u­lar sched­ule of pho­to­blog­ging. So here’s a cast-​​off to keep you occupied.

Photo: Tired Bones of the Earth