Archive for the ‘Photography’ Category

Photo: Close Encounters of the Corvid Kind

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Yesterday, we drove through the Petrified Forest National Park. It’s not the most visu­ally spec­tac­u­lar of parks, really. Once you’ve seen a few hun­dred pieces of pet­ri­fied wood, the excite­ment fades. The park has a few other areas of inter­est, includ­ing a cou­ple of pet­ro­glyph areas that are inter­est­ing, but some of them you have to use binoc­u­lars to even see. They pale in com­par­i­son to the Newspaper Rock of the Canyonlands in Utah, which lets you get very close and see the glyphs in detail.

So the pho­tos of the Painted Desert aren’t really that impres­sive, but I met this one in the park­ing lot and it was very coop­er­a­tive, even curi­ous about the sounds my cam­era made. I think it was hop­ing I might throw it a snack for behav­ing so well, but I know bet­ter than to feed wildlife. Anyway, it went right back to rum­mag­ing in the garbage cans so it wasn’t exactly starving.

Ravens mate for life, and they are every­where in this part of the coun­try. Everywhere I look, I see pairs of ravens sit­ting, watch­ing. I’ve seen a few prong­horn ante­lope as well, but for the most part, this trip has been wildlife-​​free.

If I’m still look­ing for work come April/​May (and I prob­a­bly will be in this mar­ket), I think a trip to Yellowstone is going to be in order.

Photo: Close Encounters of the Corvid Kind

Bonus Photo: The Fiery Furnace at Dawn

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I’ll prob­a­bly end up pho­to­shop­ping out the lens flare later on, but right now I kind of like it. This is another HDR from Arches National Park at dawn(ish). I was going to shoot this same pic­ture at sun­set last night but couldn’t be arsed. Have to pace your­self on these kinds of adven­tures or you’ll get exhausted too soon. Yesterday evening was a rest period.

Bonus Photo: The Fiery Furnace at Dawn

Photo: Sunrise Behind The Windows

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Today’s a dri­ving day. We’re going to round up our belong­ings here in a bit and get on the road to Page, Arizona. Page is near Antelope Canyon, a place I’ve been antic­i­pat­ing pho­tograph­ing since I started tak­ing nature pho­tog­ra­phy more seriously.

This is an HDR from the dawn shoot­ing, look­ing back towards the sun and through the North and South Window Arches. You can kind of see Turret Arch peek­ing through there too.

Photo: Sunrise Behind The Windows

Photo: Dawn in Arches National Park

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Up at the crack of dawn and back to the park this morn­ing. Sadly, clouds had gath­ered to the east, obscur­ing that golden light I wanted to paint on my can­vas. We had about 10 min­utes of golden hour instead of an hour. Got a few good shots though.

After dawn shoot­ing, we drove to the Needles District of Canyonlands. It was nice, but not nearly as impres­sive as Arches National Park. However, we got to see pet­ro­glyphs , which were amaz­ing. I had never seen them before myself. More pho­tos later. Now is the time for rest­ing. Maybe more sun­set pho­tog­ra­phy tonight, maybe not. We’ll see how we feel in a cou­ple of hours.

Photo: Dawn in Arches National Park

Photo: Double Arch

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

We arrived in Moab a lit­tle before noon. The light at this time of the day is ter­ri­ble, so we did some scout­ing, fig­ur­ing out what the best van­tage points would be when the sun was set­ting. Then we headed into town and ate at a “cafe.” I think “cafe” is code in tourist traps for “over­priced.” We’re now holed up in a Motel 6 wait­ing for the sun to get a lit­tle lower on the hori­zon. Then we’ll head back into the park and try to get some honest-​​to-​​goodness land­scape photos.

The plan is to shoot dawn in the park again tomor­row, then drive to Canyonlands in the after­noon to scout. Monday morn­ing, we’ll shoot Canyonlands and then get on the road to the Grand Canyon. Wash and repeat, basi­cally. We’re hav­ing a blast!

Photo: Double Arch

Where Should We Go?

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Sarah and I are leav­ing for a much-​​needed cheap vaca­tion on Saturday.  The only thing is… we don’t really know where we’re going.  We’ve dis­cussed sev­eral dif­fer­ent options, but none of them are per­fect.  Here are the options:

The Desert Road Trip

This is the default trip.  This involves load­ing up every­thing in our car and aim­ing for Flagstaff.  This is a photography-​​oriented trip.  We’d visit many great desert scenes such as Lower Antelope Canyon, the Grand Canyon, the Petrified Forest, and so on.  We’d spend 9 days roam­ing the American Southwest look­ing for beau­ti­ful images, meet­ing inter­est­ing peo­ple, and gen­er­ally soak­ing up the atmos­phere.  It woudl be very relaxed and leisurely.

The New York Crazy Trip

We’ve also con­sid­er­ing fly­ing into New York for the week.  I’ve never been, and I’ve been get­ting inter­view calls for design com­pa­nies based there.  If I get a follow-​​up inter­view with one com­pany, I would need to go, so why not com­bine job-​​seeking with plea­sure?  Airfaire deals are right under our bud­get of $1500, so we’d have to eat inex­pen­sively while there to keep from going through our cash too quickly, but we could make it work.

“Lets Go Into Debt Again” Trip

I’ve been watch­ing the prices to Paris, London, Barcelona, and Costa Rica for a cou­ple of weeks.  Unfortunately, none have dropped quite to the lev­els that they would need to for us to be able to jus­tify it with­out ring­ing up credit card debt, which is not some­thing you real­lyw ant to do when you’re unem­ployed.  Vacations are impor­tant, but you still have to come home at the end of them and deal with your finances.   So if a vaca­tion pack­age to Paris mirac­u­lously turned up for $1500, you can bet that’s where we would go.  But that’s not likely to happen.

Something else?

Got a wild idea of what we can do for 9 days for under $1500?  Preferrably some­thing not bone-​​cold?  Drop us a line with your sug­ges­tion.  I have no idea where we are going to be on Sunday.  I’m excited to find out though.  And if you have ideas for the Desert Trip about things I should pho­to­graph, let me know.  I don’t really know the area that well.

Photo: Some Life Survives

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Another out­take from the Wastelands promo shoot. I liked this one for the errant piece of grass that crept into the shot. Happy lit­tle accident.

Photo: Some Life Survives

Looking for a Future

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Another out­take from the Wastelands give­away shoot. I really liked this one, but again, it doesn’t suit the needs of the shoot.

Looking for a Future

Photo: One Bad Mother

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

An out­take of my shoot for the Wastelands give­away over at Tor​.com. This is actu­ally I think my favorite from the shoot, but it didn’t suit the pur­poses of the shoot (mate­r­ial for a cap­tion contest).

Photo: One Bad Mother

The Latest Photo Shoot: After The End of the World

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Tor​.com /​ Science fic­tion and fan­tasy /​ Blog posts /​ Tor​.com It’s the End of the World as We Know It Caption Contest.

Click on over to Tor if you’d like to see my lat­est sci­ence fic­tion pho­tog­ra­phy project–a postapoc­a­lyp­tic night­mare land­scape and a badass sur­vivor.  They’re giv­ing away a copy of the print along with some other awe­some swag as part of the cap­tion con­test.  Go enter!