Posts Tagged ‘Photography’

Bonus Photo: I see you

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

The new lens works as a very good macro lens as well. This lit­tle guy scared the crap out of me by mak­ing a racket in the leaves next to me. I hopped up, and once I real­ized what he was, and ver­i­fied for myself that it wasn’t poi­so­nous (just a garter snake), I set­tled in to take some shots. I had a good 3 foot mar­gin between me and the snake to take this shot, which is about where I like to be, if not fur­ther. It’s going to be really fun to shoot some insects with this lens once they start com­ing out.

Bonus Photo: I see you

Daily Photo: Nesting Dove

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I took the new lens out for a try at the ponds yes­ter­day. I was a lit­tle dis­ap­pointed. No mat­ter how much reach I have, I still seem to be too far away from the ani­mals. I’m going to have to set up a blind and wait a few hours by the lake shore to get the shots I really want to get. I still have to be within 15 feet to get a shot like this one below. That’s far too close under nor­mal cir­cum­stances. Birds won’t let you get that close, and if they won’t, noth­ing else will. I even saw a fox, but the shots I took of him had him at about 1/​16th of the frame. Bigger than before, but not remotely big enough to make a good shot.

I guess my next big cam­era pur­chase will be a tele­con­verter. Take that 300 to a 600, only los­ing 1 stop. Maybe then I can finally get close-​​ups of birds and other ani­mals. Of course, at that point, it’ll be tri­pod full time. I’m going to try to find some time this week­end to go out again and try the lens a sec­ond time. I’m going to head out to the prairie dog colony and see how I fare out there.

Nesting Dove

Anatomy of a Steampunk Photoshoot

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

This was my first seri­ous shoot with logis­tics involv­ing a model, cos­tum­ing, and a shoot loca­tion. To spend an hour and a half behind the cam­era, I spent prob­a­bly 4 hours doing the var­i­ous admin­is­tra­tive tasks to set up. Here’s an overview of the process we went through to get the pic­tures I wanted.

The Model

A cou­ple of weeks ago, I posted a gen­eral cast­ing call on a site that con­nects pho­tog­ra­phers, make-​​up artists, and mod­els called Model Mayhem. I received quite a few responses, but most of them were from mod­els in the Denver area, which pre­sented logis­ti­cal prob­lems. I offered $15 an hour as my rate. I received prob­a­bly a dozen or so inter­ested responses, and I con­tinue to receive responses over time. Michelle was the stand-​​out of the group, and also, was local, a huge plus.

The prob­lem with a site like Model Mayhem is that there tends to be a bit of homogeny in the look and age ranges of the mod­els. Many, if not most, of the mod­els are young women in their 20s. This is fine for some of my needs, but I also need older mod­els, and male mod­els.
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Daily Photo: A Close Inspection

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I am hold­ing out on you. I admit it. The best images from the shoot are going to take some post work to bring up to the level for the Roundbottom sto­ry­line, and I think I won’t reveal them until they go live as part of a story. That way you folks will still have some­thing excit­ing to see… There are some pretty damned good out­takes here though. Like this one. I don’t play with color much because of the Roundbottom sepia thing, but some­times, I just have to make an image like this one, espe­cially when Michelle has such great tat­toos. When I have time, I’m going to write a post­mortem of the shoot, exam­in­ing it for ways that I can improve in the future.

P3309044

Daily Photo: Early Steam Rat (Incomplete)

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I had my sec­ond model shoot tonight. Over the past three days, we sorted out cos­tum­ing, a shoot loca­tion, and actu­ally did the shoot. The model, Michelle, was fan­tas­tic to work with, and I look for­ward to work­ing with her in future projects. I am plan­ning to make her char­ac­ter in the Roundbottom sto­ry­lines a some­what impor­tant one, so I sus­pect we’ll be shoot­ing again soon. The other all-​​star hero of this shoot was Sarah, who is pretty much respon­si­ble for the cos­tum­ing here. She’s a genius a putting this stuff together quickly. I think we’re going to do some shoots of her char­ac­ters, Miss Watkins, very soon. Miss Watkins will also be nar­rat­ing a field record­ings pod­cast as part of the Roundbottom project. Right I’m just build­ing my inven­tory of pho­tos and writ­ten pieces and pod­casts ideas up unti I have 3 months of con­stant work to be released on a weekly basis.

Note that this is not a com­plete Roundbottom image and in fact isn’t very close to the way I do the sepia on those other images. This is a quick and dirty look, just to get a feel on which images I want to develop fur­ther in Photoshop. The real Roundbottom images are going to take some time. I was look­ing, and out of a lit­tle over 90 shots, I flagged 45 as picks. That’s an unbe­liev­able ratio of good shots. I have some seri­ous culling to do…

The Steam Rat (Temp. Sepia)

Daily Photo: Little One in Gold

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

This is not a full frame–it’s a bit of a crop, as I’m still shoot­ing with my 45-​​150mm. The 70-​​300mm shipped today and should arrive on Wednesday. I’m going to rush straight from work and out to the ponds, so long as the storms that the fore­cast calls for do not mate­ri­al­ize. I love a good storm, but not on the day I finally get my wildlife pho­tog­ra­phy lens!

Little One

Daily Photo: Snow Branches

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

This is from a few weeks back. It’s amaz­ing how fast spring has set upon us. Green is every­where now, and it has improved my mood tremen­dously. I wish I had spent some of the week­end out actu­ally shoot­ing, but I will prob­a­bly get more than enough pho­tog­ra­phy done the day my new lens arrives. Until then, I’ll be serv­ing up var­i­ous left-​​overs from the win­ter and late spring. I have to say this one looks a bit under exposed to me right now, but I think that was about the right color of sky.

Snowy Branches

Testing the Photodropper Tool

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert
geyser/hot springs Yellowstone
Creative Commons License photo credit: ebroskie1234

I’ve added a new plu­gin to the site that should allow me to illus­trate my posts with cre­ative commons-​​licensed images. This is a test of that sys­tem. We’ll see how it works. If it does, I think it will give some nice fla­vor to the site. I’ll have another image-​​based plu­gin to test here in a few min­utes as well.  I’ve also added Thickbox, so click­ing on the image should result in show­ing the larger image.  Heh.  Very cool.

An Interview Regarding Dr. Roundbottom

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

K. Tempest Bradford has inter­viewed me for Fantasy mag­a­zine about my Dr. Roundbottom project. The inter­view is now live here.

K. Tempest Bradford: Did the ini­tial inspi­ra­tion for Dr. Roundbottom start with the pho­tog­ra­phy or with the story?

Jeremiah Tolbert: The work started specif­i­cally in pho­tog­ra­phy. I had an oppor­tu­nity after a week of rain to go out and take some pic­tures of mush­rooms. I started play­ing with some of the images in post, and ended up cre­at­ing my most pop­u­lar pho­to­graph, the eye­ball mush­room. From there, I started writ­ing flash fic­tion around the pho­tog­ra­phy, and Dr. Roundbottom was born.

K. Tempest Bradford: Did the ini­tial inspi­ra­tion for Dr. Roundbottom start with the pho­tog­ra­phy or with the story?

Jeremiah Tolbert: The work started specif­i­cally in pho­tog­ra­phy. I had an oppor­tu­nity after a week of rain to go out and take some pic­tures of mush­rooms. I started play­ing with some of the images in post, and ended up cre­at­ing my most pop­u­lar pho­to­graph, the eye­ball mush­room. From there, I started writ­ing flash fic­tion around the pho­tog­ra­phy, and Dr. Roundbottom was born.

Tempest: How does a typ­i­cal Roundbottom image come about?

Jeremiah: I’m pretty strongly lim­ited by my own sur­round­ings and what I have the capac­ity to pho­to­graph myself. Some of them come from exper­i­ments in pho­to­graphic tech­niques that I want to try out, and some of them come from spe­cific images that I con­ceive and then try and pho­to­graph. Then some just come about as happy dis­cov­er­ies of odd things as I explore my sur­round­ings with cam­era in hand.

For instance, there are not a lot of peo­ple in the Roundbottom pho­tographs at this point because of my lim­ited bud­get and access to period cos­tumes. Luckily, I have leads on some cos­tum­ing resources, so that will change with time as I do more sto­ry­lines for the project. Also, my wife is hard at work sewing a more for­mal Roundbottom cos­tume for myself, and a cos­tume for a female char­ac­ter that’s part of the narrative.

Daily Photo: The Steam Wraith

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

This is a Dr. Roundbottom image that I am work­ing on for a new sto­ry­line over at the Clockpunk web­site. I haven’t quite worked out all the details of the story, but this char­ac­ter here will cer­tainly end up being an antag­o­nist. I’m meet­ing with a model in an hour that we are cos­tum­ing to shoot for this set of sto­ries. She’s got a really cool look. I bought a cou­ple of 15 pound pipe wrenches that are period for this shoot, to give you a hint of what’s going on in this one. Here’s the photo. Note that you can click on the photo to enlarge it with­out leav­ing the site.

The Steam Wraith