Posts Tagged ‘the great desert adventure of 2009’

Photo: Look Up

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I still have some Antelope Canyon pho­tos that I only shared via my big slideshow, so I’ll be post­ing those over here a lit­tle bit in the com­ing days.

I rarely go back and look at my pho­tog­ra­phy more than a month later. I’m usu­ally always on the move, try­ing to find new, great pic­tures to take. It’s been nice to look at my shots from the trip this morn­ing and think, “Yeah. I did a pretty good job on these.” It’s sur­pris­ing to me how much fun it is to look at my own pho­tos with fresh eyes.

I’m going to try and get out and shoot some spring pho­tos soon. I will kick myself if I let spring go by with­out try­ing to doc­u­ment it a lit­tle. I know I’ve said that I’ve put pho­tog­ra­phy aside, and I really have for the most part. I don’t see a path to rea­son­able income from it, so I’m focus­ing all my time on becom­ing a bet­ter designer and build­ing good sites for my clients (with a lit­tle time left over for some writing).

But I still need time with my cam­era. I still love it. Photos like this remind me of that.

Photo: Look Up

Last Photo: Glimpse of the Sky

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

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

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

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: Garden of Eden

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

This is the Garden of Eden for­ma­tion in Arches National Park near Moab, right at sun­set. I for­get the name of those moun­tains in the back­ground. Hmm. Should prob­a­bly crop this one down closer to the horizon.

Photo: Garden of Eden

Photo: Turret Arch

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

This is Turret Arch in Arches National Park, a lit­tle before sun­set. This one is not HDR, unlike a lot of other shots from my trip.

Good morn­ing, web world.

Photo: Turret Arch

Photo: Blues Sky Crack; also, the Whole Enchillada

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

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: Spires

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Post-​​expedition ennui is over­whelm­ing me today. Things turned com­pli­cated and sour at Sarah’s work while we were gone. I’ve had lit­tle suc­cess in my job search, and the need to do so grows ever more press­ing as Sarah finds it harder and harder to deal with work­ing in a field she never had any desire in which to work. She wants to be a teacher, and for that, we need to get her back into school. To do that, we need to get me a job with benefits.

Photo: Spires

Photo: Narrow Passage

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

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

Photo: Petrified Forest National Park

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

This is what it’s like out here. Everywhere you turn, there’s an amaz­ing geo­log­i­cal view. Painted deserts, pet­ri­fied dunes, mesa, shiprocks, arches… after a cer­tain point, you almost become dead­ened to the majesty of it all.

Yesterday, we had a lovely time in Mesa Verde before head­ing on to a tourist trap town called Durango where we stopped for the night. We’re going to eat break­fast at a French bak­ery and then see how much progress we can make towards dri­ving home.

Photo: Petrified Forest National Park

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