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.