Archive for the ‘personal’ Category

Lest I Focus Solely on the Negative, And, Project PhotoRoadTrip

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I’ve veer­ing into neg­a­tive blog­ging ter­ri­tory lately, so I think it would be wise of me to make a post talk­ing about the pos­i­tive things that have hap­pened recently to remind myself that life isn’t all bad.

  • 7 of 10 pho­tos sub­mit­ted to iStock­Photo this past week were accepted.  That’s a new record for me.  Of the three rejected, I some­what expected it might hap­pen.  I’m slowly learn­ing how to shoot for them. I guess I have more time to pur­sue this now too!
  • My photo Clouds of FootHills I on Flickr reached a high of #25 on Flickr Explore for the day.  It’s moved all over the place, but see­ing it hit the Flickr Explore front page was a high­light of my pho­tog­ra­phy career so far.  Thanks to those of you who gave the photo love.  It cur­rently has 911 views, 108 favorites, and 63 com­ments.  It’s by far the most pop­u­lar thing I have ever shot.  And I thought I couldn’t shoot land­scape photography.
  • I sold a story a lit­tle while back.  I don’t think I’m allowed to say which and for what, but I will let you know when I can.  It is nice to know that when I put my mind to it, I can still be a writer. Maybe I will get more writ­ing done thanks to my unem­ploy­ment status!
  • The out­pour­ing of help from my friends, espe­cially you guys on Twitter, has been noth­ing short of astound­ing.  Thank you.  It’s times like this that you real­ize how good your friends really are.

I’m slowly pulling myself out of my slump and set­ting my goals, sketch­ing out projects and tasks, and think­ing about where I want to go and how I want to get there.  My goal of pro­fes­sional travel pho­tog­ra­pher is cer­tainly going to have to take a back-​​seat to some­thing more prac­ti­cal. And then there’s this:

ProjectPhotoRoadTrip

I think I’m a pretty decent pho­tog­ra­pher at this point.  I think I write pretty well too.  I have all this time on my hands sud­denly and I was think­ing that maybe I could put it to you all to fund a lit­tle project I’m contemplating.

I’m think­ing about tak­ing 2 weeks and tak­ing a road trip somewhere–maybe the Southwest?  Arizona, New Mexico.  Some place where it’s not freez­ing cold right now, and some place that offers inter­est­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for pho­tog­ra­phy.  I’ll stay off the inter­state and use the old high­way sys­tem, look­ing for unusual sights and vis­tas along the way.

I’m think­ing of launch­ing a Fundable project.  I’ll bud­get it all out very care­fully and post a trans­par­ent account­ing of what money I need and why.  In return for spon­sor­ing me, I will post daily blog updates, inter­views with peo­ple I meet on the road, por­traits of said peo­ple, land­scape pho­tos, and any­thing else that I can man­age.  I will write and doc­u­ment a trav­el­ogue in the way that only I can.     Donors  above a cer­tain min­i­mum amount will receive a print of their choice from the product’s pho­to­graphic results.  And if that’s not enough, then maybe I can offer to pay every­one back once I’m gain­fully employed again.   Photo Essay, NPR style.

I’m not sold on the Southwest.  I’d like to poll you all for your opin­ions.  Remember that I live in Colorado, so where I go should be within 2–3 days dri­ving dis­tance at most, and it should prob­a­bly be some place not cov­ered in snow and ice in February/​March.  Or you could be masochis­tic and com­mand me to go to Yellowstone.  There would be amaz­ing photo oppor­tu­ni­ties, I will just freeze to death.  It’s all good.

What do you think?  Crazy enough to work?  Interesting in see­ing what I can do?  Share your thoughts. Later, maybe, I’ll ask you to open your wallets.

Alas, EvilGir, We Knew You Well

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

The hits just keep com­ing.  I have had a flaky power socket on my per­sonal lap­top (named EvilGir on the net­work for the evil Gir sticker that graces its case)  for a while now.  I haven’t wor­ried about it because I fig­ured when it totally crapped out I would take it in for war­ranty repair, and besides, I did all of my day job work on the work Mac laptop.

Guess who held the extended war­ranty on my lap­top?  That’s right, Circuit City!  They also held the war­ranty on my newer desk­top which is cur­rently mak­ing groan­ing sounds of death when I boot it up.  These were Firedog war­ranties which as far as I can tell will no longer be ser­viced.  Someone cor­rect me if I am wrong here.

Now, I could send the lap­top in for repair–if I had the money.  As it is, it basi­cally doesn’t work as a lap­top.  If I move it at all, the AC power starts going on and off, which of course means the screen flick­ers because it likes to lower the screen bright­ness when on bat­tery power.   I have to wrap the power cord around the cor­ner and pull it tight to get any AC charge at all.

I’m sit­ting here look­ing at my (for­merly my) closed Macbook Pro. I closed it on Friday and haven’t opened it since.   A box will arrive this week to return it to my for­mer employer.  I am wish­ing to any deity that will lis­ten  that I had the money to buy one of my own.  I’ve been slowly becom­ing a mac con­vert through work these past five months.  Now I get to go back to crap Vista that locks up every day and crap lap­top which is about to per­ma­nently die–at least until I have a job and can afford to send it to Gateway for out-​​of-​​warranty repair.  It’s going to make every­thing that much harder.

Hope is in short sup­ply around here right now.  I prob­a­bly won’t sell my cam­era at this point, as I think I can get by a lit­tle on unem­ploy­ment.  But my prospects for free­lance are going to be seri­ously ham­pered with­out work­ing machines.  A work­ing lap­top was one of those things that makes being stuck in the hosue that much more tol­er­a­ble.  And I had this secret plot to try and raise money to fund my dri­ving through the south­west cam­era and lap­top in hand, blog­ging and pho­tograph­ing the whole trip.  That’s pretty much not going to hap­pen now.

Hey, maybe some­one from Apple will see this mes­sage and take pity on me, right?  I was a PC user for 20 years.  I had to use one of your machines for my day job and you sold me.  I’ve con­vinced sev­eral friends to buy com­put­ers from you since then.  Maybe you could loan me a 15″ mac­book pro until I get back on my feet?

Wishful think­ing I sup­pose.  Wishful think­ing is the only thing keep­ing me out of the pit of despair and self-​​loathing right now.

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.

10 Lessons Learned in 2008

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I’m not going to do New Years res­o­lu­tions.  I’m going to reflect back on what I learned, and allow that to guide my progress forward.

In no par­tic­u­lar order of importance:

  1. Cyberfunded Creativity Does Not Work
    For me, that is.  At least at the level I would like (break­ing even on expenses).  I think you stand the best chance of mak­ing money online if you have pop­u­lar­ity for some­thing other than what you’re doing. It’s damned near impos­si­ble to build an audi­ence for some­thing like Dr. Roundbottom.  For one, it’s too much of a niche inter­est (steam­punk photo fic­tion).  Second, I don’t have the pro­file of a BNA (Big Name Author).  I’ll keep doing it in 2009, but not with the same level of dedication.
  2. I Love Photography But it Won’t Make Me Rich
    I do.  I really love being behind the cam­era, shoot­ing just about any­thing.  Sure, it’s frus­trat­ing and the pic­tures rarely turn out the way I pic­tured them, but I feel like there’s a ton left to learn.  In 2009, I will be expand­ing my for­ays into pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­phy by doing some live band shoots I hope.  I will be mak­ing more and more trips into the Rockies to shoot wildlife.  I may open a print store to sell prints of some­thing other than Dr. Roundbottom images.  But unless I give up every­thing else, go back to art school, and pur­sue pho­tog­ra­phy as a full time pro­fes­sion, I can’t make a liv­ing from it.  Even then, jobs are scarce com­pared to the num­ber of peo­ple who want to be doing it.  Like many of my inter­ests, I got in at a time where the bar­ri­ers to entry were lower than ever.
  3. The World Doesn’t End if You Lose Your Job
    One of my great­est fears prior to this sum­mer was los­ing a job.  I take a great amount of pride in my job, and I also have a lot of school debt, so the two fac­tors com­bined cre­ate a lot of stress for me.   When I was laid off from my last job, I felt good, then depressed, and then 3 days later, I threw myself into look­ing for any kind of work I could get.  I picked up great new clients (Thanks, Jeff! Sarah! Jay!) and I learned a lot about the busi­ness.  Which leads to num­ber 4.  And by the way, head­ing into this econ­omy, this is an impor­tant les­son to remind myself of.
  4. I Can Run My Own Business
    Thanks to my lay­off. I learned that I do have what it takes to make it on my own, and if our health care prob­lem in this coun­try ever gets solved I will not hes­i­tate to start my own busi­ness.  Or if Sarah has a job with great ben­e­fits.  I really love work­ing for myself, even if it means 12 hour days.  The free­dom makes me so happy. And I have no trou­ble focus­ing on work while work­ing from home.
  5. I Still Want to be a Writer (Whatever That Means)
    I spent much of 2008 pretty sure that my urge to write had gone down the tubes, despite putting out quite a lot of work related to #1 above.  I didn’t write sto­ries, I stopped fol­low­ing SF news and blogs, and I stopped read­ing much SF.  But as I find myself grow­ing increas­ingly angry at the future and how it has been robbed from us by greedy bas­tards, I find once again that I have a few things I want to say.  I wrote 2 sto­ries this year, one within the last cou­ple of days (which I really need to edit and mail off tonight).  I’m hop­ing to at least dou­ble that out­put next year, and maybe, just maybe, finally start a novel.  I’m 31 years old and I have my whole career ahead of me.
  6. I Am Still in Love
    Sarah and I have had some rough times. My men­tal insta­bil­ity brought on by the death of many fam­ily mem­bers all at once nearly ruined every­thing.  But with each pass­ing year, I feel closer to her, and my love deep­ens sur­pris­ingly more.  Each time I think it doesn’t get any bet­ter, it does.  There are two dif­fer­ent kinds of love, and the first one is super­fi­cial, but more intense.  I think a lot of peo­ple get tied up in that love, in look­ing for it, and they miss out on the much more ful­fill­ing kind that only comes with time.
  7. I Am Loved
    I look at Twitter, I look at Livejournal, and I look at Facebook and I real­ize that I am a very lucky man to have the friends and fam­ily that I do. I wake up each morn­ing and see an amaz­ing per­son who any­one would say is way, way out of my league.  There are times when I feel iso­lated and alone, just a chem­i­cal imbal­ance really, but I think I have learned more in 2008 than any year before just how much peo­ple care for me, and how much I care about them in return.  I am look­ing to deepen my friend­ships and under­stand­ing of peo­ple in the com­ing year.  It will make me a bet­ter per­son in return.
  8. Change Can Happen
    I lost 70 pounds, and am mostly suc­ceed­ing at keep­ing the weight off.  We elected some­one truly new and fresh to the President of the United States.  Change does hap­pen, both within and in the world.  I can con­trol some of that.  Like our new President, I have the audac­ity to hope for a bet­ter tomor­row.  Not only that, but the deter­mi­na­tion to work for it in what­ever way I can.
  9. I Do Want to Have A Child
    I’ve been think­ing a lot about the mean­ing of life, and I think from a bio­log­i­cal stand­point, this is it.  Raising another life, another per­son into being.  That’s the point, and it should be denied to no one.  I don’t know when will be the right time, but my doubts about it have faded.  I want to be a father.  I think I’ll be a damned good one.  I’ve learned from some of the best; My father, my step­fa­ther, and my father-​​in-​​law.   Three great men.  I can’t go wrong.
  10. I Am Probably Not Going to Live Forever–But Who Cares?
    I’m slowly com­ing to terms with my own mor­tal­ity at age 31.  Maybe it’s my real­iza­tion at #9 that has begun to ease my fears which were brought on sharply by deaths in the fam­ily.  I still long for suc­cess­ful life exten­sion drugs.  I still want more time.  But I’m going to try and make the best of the time that I do have.  I’m not going to live each day like it’s my last, because that would prob­a­bly mean lay­ing in bed and wheez­ing a lot and clutch­ing at my chest.   I’m not ready to go yet, but maybe in another 100 years or so, I will be ready.  I’ll do what I can, and I’ll leave a mark on this world in ways that are almost as good as real immortality.

I hope that next year is bet­ter than the last for all of you.  I wish you all the best.  Times are hard right now, but we can make it through this together. We need to pull together as a com­mu­nity now more than ever before.  Look for those in need, and help them.  Share your pros­per­ity and it will grow in ways you never expected.  That’s what I will be try­ing to do in 2009, and I hope you will too.

Daily Photo and Dr. Roundbottom Hibernate Again

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

My cre­ative juices have ceased to flow in regards to pho­tog­ra­phy and the Dr. Roundbottom project.  A big part of this is that I don’t have space for stu­dio pho­tog­ra­phy, and when win­ter hits, it’s hard to get mod­els to agree to stand in 4 degree weather in any­thing other than parkas.    Another large part of this is that, well, I go into a very bad cre­ative slump this time of the year no mat­ter what I am work­ing on.

I’ve come to rec­og­nize it.  And I really hate to dis­ap­point the Roundbottom fans right now, when the site is just start­ing to grow.  But I’d rather not pro­duce con­tent at all than pro­duce sub­stan­dard con­tent.  As it is, it has no edi­to­r­ial over­sight and I’ve prob­a­bly run things that I’m less than proud of.  I don’t want to push that even further.

I’m hop­ing that I will get back to all of it after the first of the year.  Once the days start grow­ing longer, maybe things will improve.  In the mean­while, I will read, and take notes, and gen­er­ally try to store up mate­r­ial to come back out swing­ing when the time is right.

Stock Success for December

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

A good way to start off the week.  I had 5 images accepted at iStock– all wildlife pho­tog­ra­phy images for the most part.  That brings my port­fo­lio there up to 28 images.  Not much of it is great stock really–I need to get more proac­tive about shoot­ing for the use of stock.  I get such a thrill out of hav­ing a sub­mis­sion accepted.  Ahh, exter­nal val­i­da­tion.  It rocks.

In other news, I am now mostly 31 years old.  Am I a bet­ter per­son than I was when I turned 30?  That’s what I will spend much of tomor­row pon­der­ing, when not work­ing for the man.

Clockpunk: The Deadly Mr. Whiskers

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

This week was another heavy work week so I was unable to find the time to write a pod­cast script and get every­one together to record it.  With the Hiatus sched­uled now until December 8th, we should be able to get sev­eral scripts writ­ten and recorded.  I’m try­ing to move from writ­ing posts one at a time to writ­ing them in groups of sin­gle sto­ry­lines, and I’m try­ing to keep dif­fer­ent sto­ry­lines run­ning on the blog and on the podcast.

So, The Deadly Mr. Whiskers was a fun photo to shoot and chal­leng­ing to boot.  The model in this case is our cat Gildenstern (his brother’s name is Rosencrantz).   The toy was some­thing I spent the morn­ing mak­ing, and I have some behind-​​the-​​scenes pho­tos of it before the cats sav­aged it. It doesn’t really read very well in the cat photo unfor­tu­nately, but it’s made up to look like a lit­tle faery.  It had wings, but the cats demol­ished those early in the shoot, and they weren’t read­ing very well any­way, so we snipped them off.

Taking staged pic­tures of ani­mals is a pain in the ass.  Keeping the cat in the lights was impos­si­ble.  Getting him to play with the toy involved copi­ous amounts of cat­nip and even then, I couldn’t get him to attack it the way I wanted him to.  I have more pic­tures of my cats now than I ever really wanted.  This one was pretty much the best for what I was aim­ing for.  And with that, I’ll save fur­ther details for a members-​​only post on the Clockpunk site.

I hope you all have a won­der­ful week.

This is Odd

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Very strange.  I’m sud­denly feel­ing an urge to write some­thing non-​​Roundbottom again.  No strong ideas, really, but there are ideas and a tick­ling in the back of my head.  Maybe I should have that tick­ling looked at. Could be seri­ous.  Speaking of Roundbottom, I’m not going to have a pod­cast for this Sunday, but I hope to have a  less-​​complicated photo and accom­pa­ny­ing post to fill in the gap and keep the streak going.

My search for stu­dio space has been a com­plete fail­ure so I don’t know what I am going to do to take pho­tos for the project this winter.

You know, I think this itch might actu­ally be a side effect of my daily walks.   Getting away from the com­puter?  The motion gets me think­ing right?  I don’t know, but I find this intrigu­ing. I must explore the notion further…

Or per­haps it’s the results of last night’s elec­tion?  Maybe a spark of hope has ignited in the lump of coal where my heart should be. I wit­nessed his­tory that didn’t involve the world chang­ing for the worse.  I don’t really remem­ber the wall com­ing down and 9/​11 was not remotely pos­i­tive.  I didn’t get to see a moon land­ing.  So that doesn’t hap­pen often. I actu­ally felt some­thing akin to pride for my coun­try.   I was so focused on the right guy win­ning that I for­got who the right guy was until he was giv­ing his accep­tance speech.  “Oh yeah,” I said.  “Barack’s black.”   And the full weight of that hit me, and I grinned (inwardly) until I went to bed.  That’s not all who he is, but I had lost sight of that his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance until I was reminded of it again last night by the tears of Jesse Jackson and Oprah Winfrey.

The Ultimate Crime of Democracy

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Driving back from gro­ceries tonight, I heard an NPR inter­view about voter supres­sion tac­tics that appar­ently have been going on for years.

Let me speak plainly on this issue.  I don’t care what your polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tion is.  Every mem­ber of this democracy/​republic should hold it to be morally repug­nant to ever, ever attempt to mis­lead qual­i­fied vot­ers from exer­cis­ing their right.   It is the absolute foun­da­tion of our sys­tem, and I con­sider it the most vile of crimes.  That it con­tin­ues to occur each year, with­out any­one being pun­ished for the crime sick­ens me.  It is not an issue in which I see shades of gray.  It is absolutely wrong.  Those who are respon­si­ble for it have the unique dis­tinc­tion of qual­i­fy­ing as truly evil in my opinion.

Here’s what I think.  We find the peo­ple respon­si­ble for lying to vot­ers about vot­ing rights in an attempt to keep them away from the polls.  We find them and we try them in a court with a jury of their peers as the sys­tem allows for.  And if they are found guilty, they should be exiled.  Anyone who wishes to deny the basic rights of democ­racy from their fel­low cit­i­zens is an enemy to that democ­racy and should be removed.  Send them to the coun­try of their choice, and shoot them if they ever attempt to step on American soil again.

This will prob­a­bly be the last polit­i­cal post from me for a while, so don’t worry about me mak­ing a habit of this. My blog is not a polit­i­cal one.  I have strong polit­i­cal opin­ions, but I don’t feel the need to share them most of the time.  This is an exception.

My Plan to Survive the Financial Apocalypse

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Did you know you can buy a 3500 square foot home with 20 acres, three ponds, and a fruit tree orchard in Kansas for under $200,000, and still be a short drive from Kansas City?

So here’s my ten­ta­tive plan if we see a new depres­sion.  This plan is pred­i­cated on my abil­ity to keep my own job at least for a while… but if things turn bad every­where and I’m employed, I am lean­ing towards buy­ing good prop­erty out­side Kansas City and set­ting about grow­ing all our own food.

The orchard would be edi­ble through the sum­mer and then any­thing we don’t eat, we’ll can.  We’ll plant an acre or two of veg­eta­bles.  Chicken coop for meat and eggs.  A cou­ple of pigs.  A cow for milk and a cou­ple of beef cows. To sup­ple­ment, hunt­ing and fish­ing, for as long as that can be done.

I’m a total farm nerd and I had no idea.  It’s almost excit­ing to con­tem­plate try­ing to grow my own food, or at least a good chunk of it.

Anyone I know who’s look­ing at home­less­ness, fam­ily, friends, whatever–they would be invited to stay at the Tolbert Farm.  It’s not a com­mune if there isn’t reli­gion involved, right?

In all seri­ous­ness, the events of the past few months have hit home for me the impor­tance of a local com­mu­nity that could be self-​​sufficient.  The bail out seems to have done noth­ing to the stock mar­ket.  I sup­pose those com­pa­nies are able to still make pay­roll for a while, but how much fur­ther do we have to fall?  How much higher is unem­ploy­ment going to climb?  I don’t feel like we’re through this by a long shot.  Nor do the American peo­ple to judge by the ques­tions last night.

What are your plans to sur­vive a depres­sion?  Are you think­ing about it?  Is it a ridicu­lous idea?  Am I overly para­noid? Maybe.  But I was read­ing arti­cles about this credit melt­down over a year ago and shar­ing them with friends and won­der­ing what was going to hap­pen.  Those arti­cles turned out to be true, or if any­thing, to under­es­ti­mate the problems.

Writing more than ever feels like a lux­ury.  Hell, blog­ging feels like a lux­ury.  Electricity.

Right now, I’m keep­ing my head down.  Trying to pay off our remain­ing debt as fast as pos­si­ble.   And keep­ing the above pos­si­bil­ity in the back of my head.  I’ve read too much post-​​apocalyptic SF not to look at this sit­u­a­tion and try to think about what to do if it gets worse.