Posts Tagged ‘Arizona’

Last Photo: Glimpse of the Sky

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This brings us to a con­clu­sion of this run of pho­tos here on the JeremiahTolbert​.com blog. After a lot of con­sid­er­a­tion, I’ve decided to give up pur­su­ing pho­tog­ra­phy pro­fes­sion­ally for the time being.

As you may know, I’m unem­ployed and look­ing for work. When I was first laid off, I enter­tained the idea of try­ing to find a way to become a pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­pher instead of going back to web design. Surprisingly, there aren’t many “jobs” to be had as a pho­tog­ra­pher unless you like shoot­ing wed­dings (I don’t).

And the truth is, I’m nowhere near good enough, and the time it will take for me to become good enough is far longer than the time I have. So I’m giv­ing it up. I need to focus all of my efforts on things that might actu­ally make me money, and pho­tog­ra­phy has been noth­ing but a dis­ap­point­ment mon­e­tar­ily. My work just isn’t at the level it needs to be to sell any­thing but crappy stock.

I’m am so tired of spend­ing energy on things I am “sort of” good at. Not great, not really good, just kinda good. That’s me and every­thing I do. I’m not great at any­thing. To become great at some­thing, I need to give up some of the inter­est I have. So pho­tog­ra­phy is going back to being a per­sonal hobby and noth­ing more. I’ll be spend­ing all my time from now on writ­ing and design­ing and build­ing web­sites. Mostly design­ing and build­ing websites.

I might share a photo from time to time if I can be both­ered to take any, but don’t expect them reg­u­larly any­more. I can’t waste any more time on this with our sav­ings dwin­dling and my unem­ploy­ment clock slowly run­ning out. I have to be a respon­si­ble adult. Hard damned times we live in.

Once again, I am left wish­ing I was born 20 years earlier.

Last Photo: Glimpse of the Sky

Photo: Grand Canyon Watchers

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The Grand Canyon was crowded. That’s how I will remem­ber my first expe­ri­ence there. The Moab parks had vis­i­tors, but it was pos­si­ble to see parts of the park with­out being sur­rounded by a dozen peo­ple. With the Grand Canyon park, you were rub­bing shoul­ders at every sin­gle over­look. I can’t stand being around other peo­ple in the wilder­ness. They talk loudly on cell phones, they stomp all over every­thing, they feed wildlife, and gen­er­ally do absolutely every­thing they should not, and it dis­gusts me.

The view of the Canyon was amaz­ing, though. I just don’t think I want to spend much more time there dur­ing the tourist sea­son. What’s even worse is that it was really hazy, so the pic­tures didn’t turn out great.

Photo: Grand Canyon Watchers

Photo: Blues Sky Crack; also, the Whole Enchillada

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Today, we have yet another view in Antelope Canyon. I hope you guys like these because I have a hell of a lot more. It was def­i­nitely the high­light of the trip for me, pho­to­graph­i­cally. This one was a lit­tle tricky, and involves com­bin­ing two expo­sures to get that sky and the walls of the canyon but still look natural.

The Whole Enchillada

Also, I’ve gone ahead and uploaded a flash gallery of the best pho­tos from the entire trip. If you want to see them one a day, skip this, as I’ll still be blog­ging them over the com­ing weeks. But if you want to make a run through them all and tell me what you think, here’s the gallery.

Photo:  Blues Sky Crack; also, the Whole Enchillada

Photo: Narrow Passage

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I still have Mesa Verde pho­tos to go through, but I haven’t had time to get them out of the cam­era and processed, so I’m going to back­track a bit and show you more of Lower Antelope Canyon. Slot canyons are a very pop­u­lar place for pho­tog­ra­phers to work. I don’t think on this first trip of mine that I shot any­thing really unique or orig­i­nal there. But it was a great learn­ing expe­ri­ence to spend a few hours down there. I could pho­to­graph for two hours a day down there for a week and not explore every angle of interest.

Photo: Narrow Passage