Posts Tagged ‘personal’

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.

Weighing My Interests

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I had a very long week at work this past week, so most of my week­end was devoted to very low energy pur­suits.   I read a lit­tle, watched some TV, saw Quantum of Solace (okay, but not as good as the last one) and played the demo of Left 4 Dead, Valve’s new Zombie Survival Co-​​op game (fan­tas­tic so far and I can’t wait to play the full game).  More than half of today was devoted to mak­ing a prop for tomorrow’s Roundbottom photo, and then shoot­ing.   The newest post should be pretty amus­ing, even if it’s not the most meaty thing I’ve writ­ten lately.  After this, I’m tak­ing a 2 week hia­tus to attempt to build up some mate­r­ial and think about what I really want out of this project.

Lately, I have felt like I have to make a choice between writ­ing and photography–that I only have enough time out­side of my job to really mas­ter one of these two pur­suits.  It’s prob­a­bly not true, but I know that I split my ener­gies among too many things.  I was feel­ing okay about maybe dip­ping my toe back into the writ­ing waters, espe­cially after see­ing a great review of the Seeds of Change antholo­gies.  And then I saw some com­ments on a site about some of my work that was pretty bru­tal, and I lost what lit­tle moti­va­tion I had.

Until I can find a rea­son to write that can stand up to the whims of Joe Random Internet Commenter, then it’s best that I not do any writ­ing.   This is one of the things I like about pho­tog­ra­phy.  If peo­ple don’t like your pho­tog­ra­phy, they rarely say any­thing.  If they like it, they do.  But when it comes to fic­tion, peo­ple seem to be com­pelled to tell you at length just how much you suck. It prob­a­bly has some­thing to do with the time invest­ment it takes to con­sume a story vs look at a photo.

Sometimes I think that my pho­tog­ra­phy would get bet­ter if it was cri­tiqued to the same degree my fic­tion has been, but then, neg­a­tive comments–comments of any sort–don’t really count as cri­tique.  And maybe some of the fun of pho­tog­ra­phy would be drained if I took it that seriously?

Earlier, I went for a pho­towalk down by the river to clear my head and just be in the now.  Lately, I am too busy think­ing and the nature of my work doesn’t allow for me to get into the now very often.  By “the now” I mean, the groove,  the flow, what­ever.  A state of being and doing, where time is mean­ing­less and the ego slips beneath the sur­face.  I took a few decent shots, and stum­bled upon a bunch of beaver chews.  I walked up and down the area look­ing for the dam, but I couldn’t find it.  I will prob­a­bly go back the next time I want to take a walk and see if I can spot it.  It was very nice.

When I think about how plea­sur­able it is to go on a pho­towalk or take pic­tures in gen­eral, I won­der why I can’t have that much fun writ­ing any­more.  At some point, it stopped being about fun and started being some­thing else.  God knows I value my leisure time like it’s made out of dia­monds since my Dad died, so maybe I take writ­ing so seri­ously because I don’t want to waste anyone’s leisure time with crap writ­ing.  Ahem.  Which I sup­pose I am kind of doing right now.  I com­mand you not to read this unless you are steal­ing time from your employer!

There, I feel better.

One day I am going to look back at all the time I have spent ago­niz­ing over all this and I’m going to be angry at myself for not just shut­ting up and doing some­thing.  I used to tell peo­ple that the key to writ­ing was to “shut up and write” but I’ve got­ten awful at fol­low­ing that par­tic­u­lar advice.  But not tonight–I’m too tired to be angry with myself about it.

To School, Or Not to School?

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I have been think­ing about try­ing to enroll in a graphic design or pho­tog­ra­phy pro­gram here in the Fall.  I don’t know any­thing about what it’s like to go back to school and get a new bach­e­lors when you already have one.  I don’t have any idea how much it would cost, and obvi­ously, I would have to take more loans. I already have $40,000+ in stu­dent loans left from my last one.  So–is it worth it?

Reasons for get­ting a graphic design degree

  • A lot of jobs are requir­ing it that a few years ago did not
  • Would really hone my skillset and give me the ground­ing in fun­da­men­tals I seek
  • Would pos­si­bly let me get through a bad time in the economy
  • Could still take free­lance while doing so, just at a lower volume

Reasons against going back to school:

  • I can barely earn enough to live and pay loans right now as it is.  Will adding another degree really make me that much more employ­able that I can make enough to han­dle the new, larger debt load?
  • I could prob­a­bly find a job some­where with­out one
  • School can be very tedious
  • I already have more real world expe­ri­ence equiv­a­lent than a degree gives

My job search has been fairly unfruit­ful right now.  It’s tough not to be dis­cour­aged and won­der if I need a big change in life.  I was talk­ing with Jay this morn­ing, and he was try­ing to point out that it doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily reflect badly on me.  It’s hard not to feel dis­cour­aged though.  My free­lance busi­ness is going okay, but how long will that last?

I’m adrift on a sea of uncer­tainty today.  I’m wait­ing for a wind to nudge me in the right direc­tion, but maybe I should just pick a direc­tion and start paddling.

An Updated Biography

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I have taken some time on this fine after­noon to write new words into my About Me page.  They might be of some amuse­ment value to those of you who know me well, and even those of you who do not.

(Shortest. Post. Ever.)

Travel Day

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I am trav­el­ing to Oregon today and will be slow to respond to emails.  Rest assured that I want to hear from you and I will respond as soon as I can.  Until then, have a good one!

Personal Interlude

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Things have been very busy out­side of the day job (and at the day job as well, but who cares about that stuff?).  I put most of the fin­ish­ing touches on a new web­site for Rudi Dornemann last week.  I’ll let you know here when he signs off on the site, and I’ll try and write up a post­mortem at that point.  It was a fun project, involv­ing updat­ing an older design of mine for a dif­fer­ent sort of website.

I final­ized my art­work for the Strange Horizons dona­tion card over the week­end as well. I will let you know how to get that spe­cial Roundbottom art when the dona­tion drive begins. I’m really pleased with how the image turned out.  The poor lit­tle gob!

I’ve also put nearly every book I own into boxes for the impend­ing move to our new place (only six blocks away from the cur­rent house, but $300 a month cheaper).

Blogging will be lighter over the com­ing two weeks as I’m in the process of fin­ish­ing up a cou­ple of free­lance projects while pack­ing for the move. I cur­rently have no projects sched­uled for June or July, so if you are look­ing for a designer, and want to dis­cuss the pos­si­bil­ity of hir­ing me, you know how to reach me.  An awe­some new web­site would be a good invest­ment of your gov­ern­ment stim­u­lus check!

I will be on vaca­tion in Oregon for the sec­ond week of June, but I can still work on a project for the lat­ter half of the month. If noth­ing turns up, I’ll put that time into build­ing the new Roundbottom site to go with the relaunch, and in gen­eral, just doing more photography.

Have you missed some of the recent Daily Photos?  This link will take you to the tag that I file all the daily images under.  I don’t usu­ally post images over the week­end, but some­times I get excited about shar­ing the work I’ve done and upload it ear­lier.   On my list of things to do is to cre­ate a feed specif­i­cally for just the daily pho­tos so that I can offer up my blog as a photo blog and get it listed in the direc­to­ries for those.

One last excit­ing thing.  We pur­chased a 24 inch LCD for the office com­puter over the week­end.  It is mighty.  So mighty that it gives me eye strain to work on it cur­rently.  I’ve had to dim down its light as much as pos­si­ble just to han­dle look­ing at it for more than 20 min­utes.  But I opened up Photoshop first thing after installing it. Oh boy, the room.  The room…  Unfortunately, the machine it is hooked up to is not pow­er­ful enough to run the Age of Conan MMOG I just bought, which means I do not have a com­puter that can run it period.  Perhaps a video card upgrade will solve my prob­lem, but that is $100+ I don’t want to spend after drop­ping so much on the new mon­i­tor.  Luckily, I didn’t really pay for the Conan game, but traded in a ton of stuff for it at GameStop.  All part of slim­ming down my pos­ses­sions for the move.  The next step in this is hold­ing a garage sale this com­ing weekend.

House Warming

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Hello and wel­come to the new Jeremiah Tolbert​.com. Over the com­ing months, as I can spare the time, I will be rolling out new fea­tures. Currently, the port­fo­lio and pho­tog­ra­phy sec­tions need work, and the newslet­ter and the free­lance pages have zero on them. Everything else should be in work­ing order, at least until I decide to try some­thing entirely new and weird.

Please, look around, and let me know what you like, don’t like, what works, and what looks buggy. I value any and all feed­back. If you’re see­ing this on LJ, I would appre­ci­ate you, just this once, com­ing over to the site itself and leav­ing a com­ment. I need to make sure the com­ment sys­tem is work­ing well. Your com­ment might go imme­di­ately into mod­er­a­tion, but that just helps me fig­ure things out if it does.

Thanks for your patience as I work out the kinks and get things run­ning more smoothly. I think you are going to find that I’m tak­ing my blog­ging game to a whole new level with this release.

Memories of Africa

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Besides my ostrich encounter, there were really only two occa­sions where I felt that my life was threat­ened by wildlife in Kenya. There were sev­eral occa­sions of fear­ing for my life involv­ing other peo­ple, but that’s another post.The inci­dent hap­pened in Tsavo. Tsavo is famous for one thing in par­tic­u­lar. Man-​​eating lions. Around the turn of the cen­tury, Colonel Patterson was tasked with build­ing a bridge for the British Empire (a bridge that still stands today, and is not remotely impres­sive). He watched in hor­ror as worker after worker (mostly “coolies” from India) were dragged away, killed, and devoured. Eventually, Patterson killed two lions, but only after unbe­liev­able dif­fi­cul­ties. The lions were named The Ghost and The Darkness, and a film about this inci­dent star­ring Val Kilmer came out in the mid-​​90s. The lions’ bod­ies are on dis­play in the Chicago Museum of Natural History. They are male lions, but they have no manes. None of the male lions in Tsavo have them. Upon see­ing the area, you would imme­di­ately real­ize why.

Elefanti Tsavo East
Creative Commons License photo credit: Oscar&Alessia

Tsavo was green and dense with thorny thicket when we camped there. It was not like the rest of the African savan­nah. It is almost cer­tain that the male lions of Tsavo do not have manes because if they did, they would never make it ten feet through the underbrush.

The first night we made camp, we could hear lions roar­ing as the sun set. It was the first time we had heard any­thing like it, and we were all thrilled. We put our tents, which were made for three peo­ple. After an evening around the fire, we all retired to our tents. I slept for a few hours, but woke some time after mid­night with a press­ing need to ah, relieve myself. There was only one problem.

The roar­ing con­tin­ued, but it was much, much closer now. Without open­ing the tent, it sounded as if a lion was not more than 30 yards away. Another lion was answer­ing this lion from the oppo­site side of our camp.

I tried to hold it as best I could, but even­tu­ally, I absolutely had to go to the bath­room. I roused my tent mates and we opened the ten flap just a bit and pointed our flash­lights into the dark­ness. The eyes of some­thing flashed green at the very edge of the light. The roar­ing stopped.

“Okay,” I said. “I’m going to step right out­side the tent, and piss to the left. You guy watch those eyes, and if they start com­ing towards me, say some­thing.” And that’s what I did. It seemed like I was uri­nat­ing the con­tents of a small ocean. I kept my eyes on my busi­ness and did not look at the lion. If I did, I, well, froze up. Finally, I squeezed out the last drop of fluid and not even paus­ing to zip my fly, I dove inside the tent.

The eyes never moved. We sealed up the tent and went back to sleep as best we could with mas­sive cats roar­ing all night. In the morn­ing, the lions were gone.

I can’t remem­ber where the sec­ond brush with death hap­pened. It was either Tsavo also, or Amboseli. We were rid­ing in a Land Rover down a muddy road in the park, and the brush was fairly thick on either side of the road. Everything that wasn’t green with life was a dark red from the clay mud. Wildlife was hard to spot. I stood on my seat, hold­ing onto the edges of the hole in the roof, and scanned with binoc­u­lars, look­ing for some­thing inter­est­ing. Then, the dri­ver spot­ted it.

A bull ele­phant came out of the brush not even twenty feet from us. His skin was streaked red, and his tusks were almost four feet long. He took a hes­i­tant step, then flared his great ears for­ward. I snapped a shot with my cam­era. Then, he charged.

Our dri­ver gunned the engine, and we tore off down the road. The ele­phant stopped in the road behind us and raised his trunk in dis­dain. For less than a sec­ond, I was pretty sure I was going to be thrown from the Rover and tram­pled to death. Everyone in the vehi­cle laughed hys­ter­i­cally, and I mean that lit­er­ally, for half an hour afterward.

When my Dad killed The Family Dog

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

My dad died two years ago. It’s been hard to get over. We had a year from his can­cer diag­no­sis until he passed away, and I never wanted to admit what was hap­pen­ing and I’m only just admit­ting it now. I didn’t want to see him on his death bed in the end, because I knew that if I didn’t see it, part of me could deny it had ever hap­pened. He was 44 years old. In case you’re won­der­ing, I am 29. My par­ents were young when I was born, and I’ve always banked on that to avoid those tragedies that we all face some day. Life is strange that way. All of my friends with par­ents in their 50s and 60s still have theirs, and I’m down one already.

You focus on the happy mem­o­ries at first, but some­times, there are less pleas­ant mem­o­ries that repeat­edly rise up like angry ghosts, demand­ing to be accounted for. They spring on you in the mid­dle of the night, take grip on your mind, and refuse to let go. Lately, I can’t stop think­ing about how my father killed his dog when I was eight.

My par­ents had recently divorced. To this day, I’m not sure what the cir­cum­stances were. As part of attempt­ing to make it up to myself, my sis­ter, and my lit­tle brother, our par­ents each got a puppy. That dog that lived with my mother was Beauty. I can­not remem­ber the name of the dog that lived with my father.

The two were sis­ters, mutts, small­ish dogs, but not pun­ters like poo­dles or chi­huahuas. They were lov­ing, but hard to train. And my father’s dog liked to chew things.

I did not see him kill the dog. I am not sure how I know what hap­pened, but I can pic­ture it like I was there. My father was liv­ing in the base­ment of his old­est sister’s house on the east side of Topeka. During the day, he worked as a meter man. He wore a blue uni­form that was often mis­taken for a policeman’s uni­form with black shoes that he kept well-​​polished. I think he had a spe­cial affec­tion for shoes then, given that he walked miles and miles every day as part of his beat. This was before the scoot­ers meter peo­ple use now.

He came home from some­where, I imag­ine it was to buy what few gro­ceries he could afford after giv­ing most of his money to my mother to feed us, and his dog, the one whose name I can­not remem­ber, had chewed one of his work shoes to pieces and was start­ing in on the other. It was then, in a fit of anger, that he threw the remain­ing shoe at his cow­er­ing dog, strik­ing her in the head. She whim­pered, fell onto her side, and died.

I know this story. Someone told it to me, but it was not my father. He never spoke of it. I saw tears in my father’s eyes sev­eral times over my life– he was not the kind of touchy-​​feely mod­ern man that some fathers are, but he was not so stoic either. But I can remem­ber ask­ing my father about his dog, and see­ing him shake his head and turn away to keep me from see­ing his tears.

My mother gave Beauty to my father. Despite all the trou­ble they had, despite the fact that he had killed his own dog a week before, she gave him the dog. If he were alive, he would prob­a­bly tell me that the rea­son was that my mother couldn’t han­dle the dog, that Beauty was con­stantly mak­ing messes and she gave him the dog in frus­tra­tion. I’m not so sure about that.

A year later, she was remar­ried, and we moved in with my father. Beauty became the fam­ily dog, and at some point, I for­got the other dog. We gave Beauty away to my mother’s sis­ter when my father remar­ried and we moved from Topeka to Lawrence. She’s long dead now. She was a good dog. Gentle and for­giv­ing of children.

I wish I could remem­ber the dog’s name. I think that some small part of me should honor her like I honor my father. He wasn’t per­fect, but I know he never meant to hurt his dog.